Speaker 1: Col Zone Media.
Speaker 2: The summer of twenty seventeen was a hot one. The
Speaker 2: weather was hot. I'm sure I can barely remember now.
Speaker 2: In May, the editor of the Nazi website The Daily
Speaker 2: Stormer declared that it would be this summer of hate.
Speaker 2: A month later, another article on the site ended with
Speaker 2: a triumphant prediction, expect a hot summer. And I'm not
Speaker 2: talking about the thermometer. The political temperature was rising rapidly.
Speaker 2: It was the first summer of Donald Trump's first term
Speaker 2: as president, and all over the country, right wing extremists
Speaker 2: of all stripes were feeling bold. The summer of hate
Speaker 2: culminated in the murder of Heather higher Here in Charlottesville
Speaker 2: on August twelfth, twenty seventeen. Perhaps because that day ended
Speaker 2: in a hate crime murder, the Unite the Right rally
Speaker 2: is often the only one of the dozens of violent
Speaker 2: hatefield rallies that summer that most people still remember, But
Speaker 2: they were happening all over the country in the months
Speaker 2: leading up to Unite the Right. In Portland and Seattle,
Speaker 2: Patriot Prayer rallied for Trump, for free speech, and against communism.
Speaker 2: In Berkeley, repeated rallies ostensibly for Trump or the concept
Speaker 2: of free speech became a training ground for a Nazi
Speaker 2: street fighting gang. In cities all over the country, protests
Speaker 2: for or against Confederate monuments were just a thin excuse
Speaker 2: for fascists spoiling for a fight. Almost any given weekend
Speaker 2: that summer, somewhere in the country there was a contingent
Speaker 2: of armed militiamen ambling around a public park acting as
Speaker 2: self appointed protest security. Some of these rallies drew crowds
Speaker 2: of thousands and made the national news. Some were just
Speaker 2: a few dozen bigots standing on a street corner, drawing
Speaker 2: only the momentary notice of passing motorists.
Speaker 1: And on one morning early.
Speaker 2: That summer, the same protest took place simultaneously in over
Speaker 2: two dozen cities across the country. I'm Molly Conger, and
Speaker 2: this is weird Little Guys. This episode isn't actually about
Speaker 2: a guy, not just one guy anyway. If you're a
Speaker 2: regular listener, you've probably already figured out that it is
Speaker 2: rarely actually even about one guy at all. But typically
Speaker 2: an episode revolves loosely around one weird little guy, using
Speaker 2: him as an entry point to explore the world he
Speaker 2: existed in. But last week's episode left me with some thoughts.
Speaker 2: I was having trouble putting to bed questions about the
Speaker 2: ordinary men who cross paths with our weird little guyes,
Speaker 2: men who may be on their own path toward extremism
Speaker 2: or just their own self destruction. And it also got
Speaker 2: me thinking about the nature of a crowd, the way
Speaker 2: we can lose ourselves within them, the way they can
Speaker 2: give us permission to act in ways we otherwise would not.
Speaker 2: The crowd grants the individual plausible deniability, but the individuals
Speaker 2: within it give the crowd more power than it would
Speaker 2: have had without them. And I've been thinking too about
Speaker 2: the current state of affairs, the ways in which our
Speaker 2: political discourse has changed over the last decade. How these
Speaker 2: once fringe ideas have been mainstreamed. Things that were once
Speaker 2: unthinkable are happening every day now. How did we get
Speaker 2: to the place we are now where people who seem
Speaker 2: so normal have the same kinds of ideas that just
Speaker 2: a few years ago were relegated to the pages of
Speaker 2: Stormfront and four chan. And as I was ruminating on
Speaker 2: all of this, I thought of a picture, one in particular,
Speaker 2: saved years ago in one of my hundreds of folders
Speaker 2: of half finished ideas about a guy. It's a picture
Speaker 2: that was taken on the morning of June tenth, twenty seventeen,
Speaker 2: in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The photo shows a handful of members
Speaker 2: of the neo Nazi group Vanguard America on their way
Speaker 2: to the steps of the Pennsylvania Capitol Building for an
Speaker 2: event billed as the March against Sharia, a protest against
Speaker 2: the imaginary threat of a Muslim theocracy in America. These
Speaker 2: members of Vanguard America all have their faces covered, either
Speaker 2: with black bandanas or the half faced skull mask that
Speaker 2: was favored by a certain flavor of neo Nazi. But
Speaker 2: the men at the head of their tiny mark is
Speaker 2: bear faced, proudly leading this little band of Nazis down
Speaker 2: the street. Vanguard America would later evolve into Patriot Front,
Speaker 2: a white supremacist organization led by Thomas Rousseau, and today,
Speaker 2: when Patriot Front takes to the streets, its members too,
Speaker 2: all cover their faces, except the leader as their public face.
Speaker 2: Rousseau marches unmasked. So, looking at this photo of these
Speaker 2: Vanguard America members, perhaps this bear faced man is their leader.
Speaker 1: But I know he isn't.
Speaker 2: Maybe he's so proud of being a Nazi, that he
Speaker 2: made the choice to show his face, But the truth
Speaker 2: is the exact opposite. By today's standards, thatt Man, Benjamin
Speaker 2: Hornberger is just a pretty typical Maga Republican. He wasn't
Speaker 2: and isn't, as far as I can tell, a Nazi
Speaker 2: at all. Later that same evening, one of the men
Speaker 2: who had marched behind him posted in a discord server
Speaker 2: where the Unite the Right rally was being planned, writing.
Speaker 3: We got a Normy to lead our march away from
Speaker 3: the Sharia event. I don't think he fully knows what
Speaker 3: he got himself into. I told him after, you know,
Speaker 3: you just let a march of a bunch of Nazis.
Speaker 2: And the poster notes that the man they'd talked into
Speaker 2: joining them hadn't showed up with any group and he
Speaker 2: didn't even seem to hate Jewish people. Another user chimed in,
Speaker 2: saying when the Jews call him a Nazi anyway, it'll
Speaker 2: red pell him a little, to which the original poster agreed,
Speaker 2: writing that's exactly what we were saying. You're on our
Speaker 2: side now, goy. Whether you like it or not. They
Speaker 2: are in the Nazi discord. They were all in agreement.
Speaker 2: These more mainstream conservative rallies were a great place to
Speaker 2: network and recruit, of course, but also a valuable opportunity
Speaker 2: to shape the discourse and push people they call normies
Speaker 2: further to the right. They believe that the average white
Speaker 2: Republican man would be radicalized by the experience of being
Speaker 2: called a bigot, and instead of engaging in any self
Speaker 2: reflection on why they were shouldered to shoulder with Nazis
Speaker 2: at a rally for bigots, they would instead double down
Speaker 2: and come to love being a bigot. This is, unfortunately
Speaker 2: not an uncommon path to radicalization. But let's back up
Speaker 2: for a second. What on earth was the marsh against Sharia?
Speaker 2: The rallies were organized by a non profit organization called
Speaker 2: Act for America. Its founder, Brigitte Gabriel, started a group
Speaker 2: called American Congress for Truth in the months after nine eleven,
Speaker 2: and in two thousand and seven, Act for America was
Speaker 2: spun off as the organization's lobbying and activist arm. The
Speaker 2: policy statement on their website today boasts that they are
Speaker 2: the nation's premiere grassroots movement dedicated to preserving America's culture, sovereignty,
Speaker 2: and security. Groups like the Council on American Islamic Relations,
Speaker 2: the American Arab Anti Discrimination Committee, and the Southern Poverty
Speaker 2: Law Center consider ACT for America one of the nation's
Speaker 2: largest anti Muslim hate groups. In February of twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: Brigitte Gabriel had dinner at Mara a Lago with presidential
Speaker 2: candidate Donald Trump. ACT for America's Facebook page posted a
Speaker 2: photo of the meeting in a room with entirely too
Speaker 2: much gold painted woodwork. There's Trump wearing a pale pink tie,
Speaker 2: and he has one arm around Gabriel and he's giving
Speaker 2: a thumbs up with his other hand. According to the caption,
Speaker 2: Gabriel was there to give him a national security briefing.
Speaker 2: Not long after their meeting, Trump announced that he'd chose
Speaker 2: Michael Flynn, an ACT for America board member, to be
Speaker 2: his campaign's national security advisor. At act's annual conference that year,
Speaker 2: Flynn gave a speech in which he called Islam a
Speaker 2: malignant cancer. Over the years, Brigitte Gabriel has said that
Speaker 2: Muslims are infiltrating the government to destroy America, that people
Speaker 2: should call the FBI to report the construction of mosques,
Speaker 2: that Islam is a cancer infecting the world, and that
Speaker 2: Islam is a radical ideology, not a religion at all,
Speaker 2: and thus should not be afforded the protection of the
Speaker 2: First Amendment. In the wave of Islamophobia that followed nine
Speaker 2: to eleven, she somehow managed to situate herself as some
Speaker 2: kind of expert on Islamic extremism. In two thousand and six,
Speaker 2: she published her first book, Because They Hate. The book
Speaker 2: is a propagandistic memoir of sorts about her childhood as
Speaker 2: a Christian in Lebanon. The book has been described by
Speaker 2: Georgetown University history professor Ivon Hadad as not historically accurate
Speaker 2: as an account of the Lebanese Civil War. In his
Speaker 2: book The Islamophobia Industry, Nathan Lean describes Gabriel's origin story
Speaker 2: as quote tendentious, if not outright deceitful. But somehow in
Speaker 2: two thousand and seven, she was invited to give a
Speaker 2: talk about the book at the US Military's Joint Forces
Speaker 2: Staff College. During the q and A portion, a man
Speaker 2: in an Air Force uniform stood and read several passages
Speaker 2: from the book in which Gabriel describes Islam as an
Speaker 2: inherently violent and fanatical religion, and then he asked a question.
Speaker 4: Should we resist Muslims who want to seek political office
Speaker 4: in this nation?
Speaker 1: What a great question? Uh.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, If a Muslim who has who is a practicing
Speaker 5: Muslim who believes the word of the Koran to be
Speaker 5: the word of Allah, who abides by Islam, who goes
Speaker 5: to musque and praise every Friday, who praise five times
Speaker 5: a day, this practicing Muslim who believes in the teachings
Speaker 5: of the Koran, cannot be a loyal citizen to the
Speaker 5: United States of America.
Speaker 2: Her answer went on for nearly five minutes, and she's gish,
Speaker 2: galloping through unrelated points and misinterpretations of the Quran. She
Speaker 2: says Muslims are all liars, they're all killers, that they
Speaker 2: can't be trusted to tell the truth, let alone uphold
Speaker 2: an oath of office. And she rounds out the answer
Speaker 2: by reiterating that no Muslim can be trusted to be
Speaker 2: loyal to the United States. And then she calls on
Speaker 2: the next audience member with a question. A man stands.
Speaker 2: He's a United States Army officer with nineteen years of service,
Speaker 2: and he's also a practicing Muslim. He's calm, his face
Speaker 2: is neutral, as if he had not just sat through
Speaker 2: a torrent of lies attacking his very existence, but he
Speaker 2: probably knew that he had to be lest he be
Speaker 2: seen as the untrustworthy, volatile, violent extremist she already believes
Speaker 2: all Muslims are, and he asks if she is a
Speaker 2: member of the Husbara Fellowship. Gabriel interrupts him, asking what
Speaker 2: Hasbara Fellowship is, as if she's never heard of it,
Speaker 2: and then denies having any connection to the organization. The
Speaker 2: Husboro Fellowship is an organization co founded by Israel's Ministry
Speaker 2: of Foreign Affairs, and they train American college students to
Speaker 2: be pro Israel activists, and contrary to her sharp denial,
Speaker 2: she had in fact been listed on the organization's website
Speaker 2: as a member of their Speakers Bureau for several years.
Speaker 2: All that to say, Brigitte Gabriel is a bigot and
Speaker 2: a liar, but she is one who has successfully talked
Speaker 2: her way into a lot of rooms with a lot
Speaker 2: of powerful people, and managed, for the most part to
Speaker 2: maintain eveneer of legitimacy and respectability while earning a comfortable
Speaker 2: living peddling hate, and by twenty seventeen, Act for America
Speaker 2: was a decade old, she had the ear of the
Speaker 2: sitting president securing a meeting with Trump at the White
Speaker 2: House in March of twenty seventeen. ACT for America's March
Speaker 2: against Sharia rallies don't show up on their website anymore. Unsurprisingly,
Speaker 2: the earliest reference to the rallies I could find was
Speaker 2: around mid April, when Facebook event pages started popping up
Speaker 2: for events in nearly thirty cities.
Speaker 1: In her thesis for.
Speaker 2: A master's at Oxford, Isabel Canan studied the way ACT.
Speaker 1: For America organizes.
Speaker 2: Regrettably, that thesis appears to be unpublished, so I couldn't
Speaker 2: read it, But in a twenty eighteen interview about her research,
Speaker 2: Canaan says those March against Sharia events were part of
Speaker 2: an attempt to maintain the facade of being a true
Speaker 2: grassrooms its organization, rather than what they truly are, which
Speaker 2: is a lobbying group. The rallies were an effort to
Speaker 2: quote create the perception that the majority shares its warped opinion,
Speaker 2: Canaan wrote. Both Canaan and the Southern Poverty Law Center
Speaker 2: have speculated that ACT for America is not being honest
Speaker 2: about the size of the organization, providing artificially inflated numbers
Speaker 2: of active chapters and the grassroots organizers in them. In
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen, Act for America was claiming to have over
Speaker 2: one thousand chapters nationwide, and the website displayed a map
Speaker 2: showing pins with locations for five hundred chapters.
Speaker 1: In twenty eighteen, the SPLC.
Speaker 2: Was only able to confirm the existence of forty seven chapters.
Speaker 2: In her research, Canaan attempted to contact twenty five chapters
Speaker 2: and was only able to confirm the existence of six.
Speaker 2: An Ohio based member of the Council on American Islamic
Speaker 2: Relations told Canaan that at least one of the alleged
Speaker 2: ACT chapters in Ohio was just two very active individuals.
Speaker 2: And it's not just progressive watchdogs and academics calling ACTS
Speaker 2: numbers into question. Anti Islam activist Dave Galbots had worked
Speaker 2: for Brigitte Gabriel for three years. When the two had
Speaker 2: a falling out in twenty seventeen. He wrote in a
Speaker 2: blog post that March that there had only been fifty
Speaker 2: participants in that month's Chapter Leader's Call, and that might
Speaker 2: explain why the rallies went the way that they did.
Speaker 2: You see it's very hard to organize grassroots rallies without
Speaker 2: actual grassroots activists.
Speaker 1: They wanted to put on a.
Speaker 2: Big show, but the average ACT member is, according to Canaan,
Speaker 2: a white evangelical retiree whose activism is mainly confined to
Speaker 2: signing up for the emails and occasionally making a donation.
Speaker 2: That demographic is not actually very likely to attend a protest.
Speaker 1: Let alone organize one.
Speaker 2: ACT members donate money, which is used for lobbying efforts,
Speaker 2: but most members aren't engaged in any way with the organization.
Speaker 2: In order to maintain their brand and keep those donations
Speaker 2: coming and capitalize on the momentum of those early months
Speaker 2: of the Trump presidency, they needed to project the image
Speaker 2: of being a true grassroots organization, one with active and
Speaker 2: engaged members, so they faked it. In late spring twenty seventeen,
Speaker 2: Act for America hired Scott Presler to coordinate the events.
Speaker 2: Presler was a rising star in conservative activism, having founded
Speaker 2: Gays for Trump in twenty sixteen, and now he had
Speaker 2: less than two months to figure out how to put
Speaker 2: on twenty eight simultaneous rallies all over the country. He
Speaker 2: couldn't exactly just reach out to local ACT chapterly because
Speaker 2: those didn't really exist. In most cases, the organization had
Speaker 2: never bothered to cultivate a group of motivated, engaged local organizers.
Speaker 1: So it appears that what he did.
Speaker 2: Was just tweet out that they needed interested volunteers to
Speaker 2: put on rallies in their own towns. And you'll never
Speaker 2: guess who stepped up. I suspect you all guessed correctly
Speaker 2: during the break it was white supremacists. When Acted for
Speaker 2: America needed volunteers to handle the work of putting on
Speaker 2: their local march against Sharia. A lot of the active,
Speaker 2: engaged bigots who knew how to handle that work were
Speaker 2: not members of Act for America, but they were members
Speaker 2: of other groups, groups like the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers,
Speaker 2: and Identity Europa. Nazis didn't just attend these events. They
Speaker 2: didn't happen upon them. They organized them, and they served
Speaker 2: as the headline speakers. But there is another story to
Speaker 2: tell before we get there, because no one was really
Speaker 2: talking about these events at all until something terrible happened.
Speaker 2: Scott Presler had dutifully created Facebook event pages for the
Speaker 2: rallies in at least twenty six cities, with the earliest
Speaker 2: posts I can find on pages that still exist showing
Speaker 2: that he probably started working on that at the end
Speaker 2: of April. But there wasn't a lot of traction in
Speaker 2: April and most of May. There's hardly any news coverage
Speaker 2: in any of those cities about these upcoming events. It's
Speaker 2: possible people were posting about it on social media, but
Speaker 2: those posts or accounts just don't exist anymore. Big nationwide event,
Speaker 2: there just isn't a lot of evidence that people were
Speaker 2: talking about it.
Speaker 1: No, no one.
Speaker 2: Was talking about the March against Saria, and till the
Speaker 2: last few days of May twenty seventeen, when Portland Mayor
Speaker 2: Ted Wheeler made a public plea for the March against
Speaker 2: Syria in Portland to be canceled. On May twenty sixth,
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen, two black teenagers were riding the max light
Speaker 2: rail train in Portland, Oregon. It was a Friday afternoon
Speaker 2: and the pair were.
Speaker 1: Headed to the mall after school.
Speaker 2: They were normal, happy teenagers having a normal fun afternoon.
Speaker 2: One of the girls, a Muslim immigrant from Somalia, was
Speaker 2: wearing her hijab.
Speaker 1: She would later.
Speaker 2: Say it was like our faces were a trigger, because
Speaker 2: when they got on the train, and Jeremy Christian saw
Speaker 2: those two girls. He immediately locked on to them, shouting
Speaker 2: things like fuck Muslims and go back to Saudi Arabia.
Speaker 2: People were staring he was making a scene, and when
Speaker 2: he stood up and started to move toward the girls,
Speaker 2: Talisian nam Kaimich was the first to intervene, moving towards
Speaker 2: Christian and getting out his phone to record what was happening.
Speaker 2: When Christian turned his attention toward this first Good Samaritan,
Speaker 2: another man on the train could see that things were
Speaker 2: about to get violent. Michah Fletcher would later testify that
Speaker 2: he could tell Tullisian had never been in a fight before,
Speaker 2: and while Fletcher is far smaller in stature than either
Speaker 2: of those men, he'd grown up getting bullied, and he
Speaker 2: said he knew all too well what it looks like
Speaker 2: right before a situation gets violent. I'm not sure if
Speaker 2: Michah Fletcher recognized Jeremy Christian in that moment, or if
Speaker 2: he didn't realize until later that this wasn't the first
Speaker 2: time he had tried to de escalate a situation caused
Speaker 2: by this particular man shouting racial slurs in public. Just
Speaker 2: a month earlier at a rally put on by the
Speaker 2: far right group Patriot Prayer, Jeremy Christian arrived wrapped in
Speaker 2: a Revolutionary War era flag carrying a baseball bat in
Speaker 2: a Wendy's parking lot. A crowd had formed around Christian
Speaker 2: as he attempted to provoke counter protesters into a physical fight.
Speaker 2: Michah Fletcher was there, dressed as a gesture, trying to
Speaker 2: diffuse the tense situation by distracting the crowd with a
Speaker 2: pretty competent juggling routine. He would later testify about that day, saying,
Speaker 2: It's just less scary for other people. If I'm able
Speaker 2: to show up in a way people would laugh at
Speaker 2: instead of looking intimidating, I.
Speaker 1: Would prefer it.
Speaker 2: But on May twenty sixth, on the train, there was
Speaker 2: no chance that whimsy would win the day. Michah Fletcher
Speaker 2: moved towards this brewing confrontation, and he shouted at Jeremy
Speaker 2: Christian that you can't talk to kids like that, and
Speaker 2: you need to he could off this train. Christian already
Speaker 2: had his knife in his hand.
Speaker 1: But no one saw it.
Speaker 2: Suddenly, both Micah and Tualisian had been stabbed in the neck.
Speaker 2: A third man Ricky Best, a retired army veteran and
Speaker 2: father of four who was on his way home from work,
Speaker 2: moved to intervene, and he too was stabbed in the neck.
Speaker 2: The girls fled the train, terrified that he would kill
Speaker 2: them now that the men who tried to protect them
Speaker 2: were bleeding out before their eyes. Ricky John Best and
Speaker 2: Talisian Nankaimche were murdered. Micah Fletcher survived. As Tulisian collapsed
Speaker 2: on the floor of the train, a woman knelt next
Speaker 2: to him. She took off her own shirt, depressed to
Speaker 2: his wound, telling him you're not alone.
Speaker 1: We're here.
Speaker 6: What you did was total kindness. You're such a beautiful man.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. The world is so cruel.
Speaker 6: She held her shirt to his neck there on the
Speaker 6: floor of the train, praying over him and trying to
Speaker 6: keep him calm. He said his last words to that
Speaker 6: gentle stranger, Tell everyone on this train, I love them.
Speaker 6: Micah Fletcher stumbled out of the train at the next stop,
Speaker 6: collapsing on the platform in front of a man waiting
Speaker 6: for the train with his family. Fatman, an army veteran.
Speaker 2: Used what he had at his disposal to try to
Speaker 2: stop the bleeding a child's jacket and the pink baby
Speaker 2: blanket from his daughter's stroller. On a Friday afternoon, just
Speaker 2: before Ramadan, an entire train full of people watched a
Speaker 2: self proclaimed Nazi stab three men who were brave enough
Speaker 2: to defend two children from a racist, Islamophobic tirade, and
Speaker 2: in just two weeks, the March Against Sharia promised to
Speaker 2: bring anti Muslim activists to Portland. On Monday, May twenty ninth,
Speaker 2: it was national news that Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler did
Speaker 2: not want the March against Sharia in Portland. Permits for
Speaker 2: events in the area where the rally was set to
Speaker 2: be held, are not actually issued by the City of Portland,
Speaker 2: but by the federal government through the General Services Administration,
Speaker 2: and they declined to pull the permit, but ACT for
Speaker 2: America voluntarily canceled the Portland event anyway, moving it to
Speaker 2: Seattle instead, and then all of a sudden, people were
Speaker 2: talking about the March against Sharia. The very next day,
Speaker 2: on May thirtieth, in a discord server for members of
Speaker 2: the neo Nazi group Vanguard America, Thomas Rousseau posted a
Speaker 2: link to ACT for a Mayor because website for the rallies, writing,
Speaker 2: we keep saying we need to stand up against Islam.
Speaker 2: Well here's your chance.
Speaker 1: To get started.
Speaker 2: Barely a minute later, another user had copied and pasted
Speaker 2: that exact message into a discord server for the neo
Speaker 2: Nazi group the Traditionalist Worker Party. That same day, May thirtieth,
Speaker 2: act for America's rally coordinator, Scott Presler, heard from an
Speaker 2: excited pair of new volunteers, Billy and Tina Roper. On
Speaker 2: June first, Presler created a Facebook event for a march
Speaker 2: against Sharia in Batesville, Arkansas, which would be organized and
Speaker 2: hosted by Billy Roper. Billy Roper is a Nazi. I
Speaker 2: don't mean that in like a colloquial, casual, careless sort
Speaker 2: of sense. He is a Nazi, out and out died
Speaker 2: in the wool Hater. His name might sound familiar if
Speaker 2: you listen to every episode of the show. He gave
Speaker 2: a speech at Ariyan Fest two thousand four in Phoenix,
Speaker 2: a few weeks before Denis Mahon built that bomb and
Speaker 2: sent it to the Diversity office in Scottsdale. Billy Roper
Speaker 2: was raised by a second generation clansman, and he turned
Speaker 2: to neo Nazi organizing as a young man, joining the
Speaker 2: Council of Conservative Citizens in his twenties and quickly rising
Speaker 2: through the ranks as a regional leader in National Alliance.
Speaker 2: Shortly before the death of National Alliance founder William Luther Pierce,
Speaker 2: Rober had moved to the Nazi group's compound in West
Speaker 2: Virginia to serve as deputy membership coordinator. He was pushed
Speaker 2: out of National Alliance after Pierce died, and he's been
Speaker 2: trying to lead his own wing of the movement for
Speaker 2: the last twenty years. He led a group called White Revolution.
Speaker 2: For a while he had the Shield Wall Network, and
Speaker 2: these days he's trying to start his own ethno state
Speaker 2: called Ozarkia. Billy will get his own episodes eventually. But
Speaker 2: the point is Scott Presler obviously did not google Billy Roper.
Speaker 2: This wasn't some obscure figure or a man who did
Speaker 2: his not see organizing under a pseudonym. This was page
Speaker 2: one Google results territory. I'm pretty sure that one of
Speaker 2: the first things he would have found had he looked,
Speaker 2: were news stories about the time Billy Roper emailed the
Speaker 2: entire membership list at National Alliance about how much he
Speaker 2: was enjoying nine to eleven. On nine to eleven, like
Speaker 2: before noon, he wrote, the enemy of our enemy is
Speaker 2: for now at least our friends. We may not want
Speaker 2: them marrying our daughters, just as they would not want
Speaker 2: us marrying theirs. We may not want them in our society,
Speaker 2: just as they would not want us in theirs. But
Speaker 2: anyone who is willing to drive a plane into a
Speaker 2: building to kill Jews is.
Speaker 1: All right with me.
Speaker 2: I wish our members had half as much testicular fortitude, and.
Speaker 6: That was widely reported that would have come up.
Speaker 1: There's no indication that.
Speaker 2: Any vetting of any kind was done here. Scott Pressler
Speaker 2: was just taking all comers, setting up Facebook event pages
Speaker 2: with ACT for America's official endorsement on them in any
Speaker 2: city where someone offered to put on an event. On
Speaker 2: June fourth, Billy Roper posted on the Stormfront that he
Speaker 2: was organizing the event and would be giving a speech.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until June sixth.
Speaker 2: Though, when he published an episode of his podcast advertising
Speaker 2: the event, that it was made perfectly clear that he
Speaker 2: wasn't just attaching his name to this event for attention.
Speaker 2: He wasn't riding act's coattails. He was working with and
Speaker 2: had the approval of, ACT for America, and on the podcast,
Speaker 2: Roper described participating in a conference call with other event organizers,
Speaker 2: a call that was hosted by Act for America, and
Speaker 2: Roper doesn't name names, but he does hint that he
Speaker 2: wasn't the only extremist on the call. Within hours of
Speaker 2: that episode appearing online, the Southern Poverty Law Center was
Speaker 2: reporting that Act for America had given Billy Roper their blessing.
Speaker 2: Email exchanges later published by Roper showed that Pressler must
Speaker 2: have seen this news pretty quickly, because by late afternoon
Speaker 2: that very day, he wrote the Roper's an email with
Speaker 2: the subject line Act for America marches urgent and the
Speaker 2: body reads only Billy, please give me a call. Act
Speaker 2: for America quietly removed the listing for the Batesville rally
Speaker 2: from their website that night. Now it kind of sounds
Speaker 2: like this is a point.
Speaker 1: In their favor, right.
Speaker 2: Sure, they dropped the ball when it came to vetting,
Speaker 2: but when they found out they were working with.
Speaker 1: A Nazi, they dropped him.
Speaker 2: That's got to account for something, right, But far from
Speaker 2: being exact honerative, I think it only underscores what's going
Speaker 2: on here. They don't mind working with extremists, they just
Speaker 2: don't want to be publicly humiliated, especially not by the
Speaker 2: Southern Poverty Law Center. Earlier in twenty seventeen, Act for
Speaker 2: America joined forces with a few dozen other SPLC designated
Speaker 2: hate groups to launch a site called SPLC Exposed, dedicated
Speaker 2: to attacking the credibility of the people who were drawing
Speaker 2: attention to their hateful organizations. So they couldn't give the
Speaker 2: SPLC an easy win here by refusing to back down
Speaker 2: from working with a man whose literal occupation was white
Speaker 2: nationalist organizer. There was no plausible deniability there, and the
Speaker 2: timeline of that day makes it very clear that someone
Speaker 2: had Act for America was just sitting at a computer
Speaker 2: refreshing the SPLC's website all day to see if they
Speaker 2: were talking about them, because they saw that article about
Speaker 2: Billy Roper instantly. But the SBLC was only able to
Speaker 2: report that there was a Nazi organizing one of these
Speaker 2: Act for America events because Billy Roper ran his mouth.
Speaker 1: It's impossible to say which of.
Speaker 2: The slew of white supremacist speakers and organizers that ACT
Speaker 2: might have been willing to cut ties with if it.
Speaker 1: Had been reported ahead of time.
Speaker 2: But I can tell you that they never disavowed any
Speaker 2: of them afterwards. Some of the white supremacists who spoke
Speaker 2: at those events were lesser known figures, ones who may
Speaker 2: have been able to slip through a vetting process had
Speaker 2: there been one. But some of these people, some of
Speaker 2: these guys, they could have googled.
Speaker 7: Fucking fantastic man. Yeah, so there was these these sharia
Speaker 7: law protests. I'm surprised, like, I don't know what happened
Speaker 7: that I didn't catch onto these things earlier. Like I
Speaker 7: read about this on Saturday, and I was like, Oh,
Speaker 7: I should have gone to one of these things.
Speaker 3: What's what's the story.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Yeah, ACT for America. It's Bridget Garriel's thing. They
Speaker 4: put on a nationwide anti Sharia protest called March against Sharia.
Speaker 4: So it happened in twenty three different cities all over
Speaker 4: the country. I was one of the organizers for the
Speaker 4: Orlando event because Orlando is my hometown.
Speaker 3: All right, fantastic.
Speaker 7: So you got together on Saturday.
Speaker 4: And everybody did it across the country.
Speaker 7: Yeah, you got together with what I think you said
Speaker 7: you were with Identity Europa.
Speaker 4: Yeah, a lot of groups came out. Identity Europa was
Speaker 4: one of them. They unfurled their banner for my speech specifically.
Speaker 2: Now there's a chance you might recognize those voices. They
Speaker 2: are two of the more uniquely annoying accents of the
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen era white nationalist figures. And that is crying
Speaker 2: Nazi Chris Cantwell with the long Island accent, and the
Speaker 2: one faking a Southern accent is white nationalist attorney Augustus
Speaker 2: Sole and Victis. And that's from an episode of Christopher
Speaker 2: Cantwell's pod cast. Two days after those rallies, Invictus organized
Speaker 2: and headlined the Orlando March against Sharia, and he posed
Speaker 2: for photos with an Identity Europa banner held by members
Speaker 2: of that now defunct white nationalist organization. Augustus and Victus
Speaker 2: had a very busy summer in twenty seventeen. He spoke
Speaker 2: at altwright rallies all over the country for months. In May,
Speaker 2: he told a crowd in Boston that a new civil.
Speaker 1: War was upon them.
Speaker 2: Two weeks later, at a pro Confederate Statue rally he
Speaker 2: organized in Orlando, he blamed Islam for mass shootings and
Speaker 2: Ranston about white genocide. He gave speeches in Chapel Hill, Washington,
Speaker 2: d C. Austin, and Huntington Beach. He criss crossed the
Speaker 2: country that summer, but wherever he went the message was
Speaker 2: the same. Now is the time for violence.
Speaker 4: No one's going to fix this for you.
Speaker 8: That's why it doesn't matter if we are armed, or.
Speaker 4: Even if our security details are armed.
Speaker 5: What matters is that you.
Speaker 9: Are armed, and you are prepared for war, and you
Speaker 9: are prepared to carry on the heritage of your forefathers.
Speaker 2: And by June he was on board as an organizer
Speaker 2: for the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.
Speaker 1: In August, after his.
Speaker 2: Speech at the March against Sharia, he led a dozen
Speaker 2: members of Identity Europa in chance of one people, one
Speaker 2: nation and immigration, and that's a chance they would use
Speaker 2: again in August as they marched through the grounds of
Speaker 2: the University of Virginia with their torches. And around the
Speaker 2: same time that morning that Augustus and Victus was straining
Speaker 2: to be heard over the passing cars in Orlando. The
Speaker 2: March against Sharia in New York was in full swing too.
Speaker 2: The hosts of Fox and Friends scoffed at the way
Speaker 2: the mainstream media had characterized the event as anti Muslim,
Speaker 2: something they thought was very unfair, so they'd send a
Speaker 2: correspondent out into the streets to get the real story.
Speaker 9: It's not about being against Muslims. It's just being against
Speaker 9: the ideology of I guess, murdering homosexuals and treating women
Speaker 9: as a second class maybe under a second class set,
Speaker 9: as they're just the humanizing.
Speaker 10: Over in Britain.
Speaker 8: They were just frogs boiling in water and now they're dead.
Speaker 3: Critics will say that you're anti Muslim? Are you anti Muslim?
Speaker 7: Absolutely not, absolutely not.
Speaker 2: This one really messed me up. I had to take
Speaker 2: a break after I found this video. I see a
Speaker 2: lot of really upsetting stuff in my research, you know,
Speaker 2: sometimes you have to take a.
Speaker 1: Break to cry, take a walk, close the computer. But
Speaker 1: this one was just surreal. It's hard to wrap your
Speaker 1: head around who's in this video. Fox and Friends didn't ask.
Speaker 2: Any of those rally attendees their names, at least not
Speaker 2: that they showed on air, so as presented, this clip
Speaker 2: just shows random man on the street, candid interviews with
Speaker 2: average people, and you probably don't recognize their voices, but
Speaker 2: I think you'd know their faces, because that's former Fox
Speaker 2: and Friend's co host and current Secretary of Defense Pete
Speaker 2: Hegseth asking Proud Boys founder Gavin McGinness and neo Nazi
Speaker 2: troll Jovi Val what they think about Islam. And I
Speaker 2: didn't watch the confirmation hearing, so I don't know if
Speaker 2: they ever got to the bottom of this allegation from
Speaker 2: a former employee that Pete Hegseth once got blackout drunk
Speaker 2: and started yelling, keel all Muslims at some bar in Ohio.
Speaker 2: But either way, I'm not sure we're getting a straight
Speaker 2: answer about Islam for any of these guys. The New
Speaker 2: York City March against Sharia was organized by a man
Speaker 2: named Pax Hart, a staff writer at the Proud Boys magazine.
Speaker 2: Speeches were given by Heart, as well as Proud Boy's
Speaker 2: founder Kevin McGinnis and Proud Boys Magazine creative director Paul Basil.
Speaker 2: Frank Morgenthaler, the vice president of the New York chapter
Speaker 2: of the Oathkeepers, had only barely finished his speech when
Speaker 2: he collapsed, apparently having a massive heart attack. The oath
Speaker 2: Keeper's New York chapter would later tell reporters that Morgenthaler
Speaker 2: was in the hospital in stable condition. I tried to
Speaker 2: cut a clip of Laura Loomer's speech, but it's just
Speaker 2: not worth it. She has no charisma and she never has.
Speaker 2: It's just kind of sad and just a position you
Speaker 2: in the timeline of embarrassing Laura lumer stunts. This was
Speaker 2: after she tried to do voter fraud as a prank,
Speaker 2: showing up at a polling location in a burka and
Speaker 2: pretending to be Huma Aberdeen, but before she handcuffed herself
Speaker 2: to the front door at Twitter, but only to one
Speaker 2: side of a double door, so people were just coming
Speaker 2: and going through the other side of the doors. Oddly,
Speaker 2: I think it was Gavin McGinnis who gave the most
Speaker 2: honest speech that day, because a lot of speakers at
Speaker 2: these rallies in various cities pretended that their concern was
Speaker 2: for women's rights, for gay rights, for freedom and liberty,
Speaker 2: despite the fact.
Speaker 1: That these people absolutely.
Speaker 2: Do not believe in women's rights or gay rights. And
Speaker 2: when Gavin McGinnis took the mic after being introduced by
Speaker 2: Pax Hart, an openly gay brown boy, he started with
Speaker 2: what I assume we're supposed to be jokes.
Speaker 3: I like that guy.
Speaker 8: I like Paxton, but uh, let's cut the shit.
Speaker 1: He's a homo.
Speaker 8: And I was talking to this guy.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you went to.
Speaker 8: Columbia, but this guy aka Medina Jahd, he was saying
Speaker 8: that in Iran there's no homos, and that sounds like
Speaker 8: my kind of place, you know.
Speaker 1: So I'm not gonna be.
Speaker 8: Your average speaker up here today because I've been kind
Speaker 8: of looking Indushuriyah and I kind of liked a lot
Speaker 8: of it.
Speaker 2: Of all the speeches I was able to dig up
Speaker 2: from that day from rallies all over the country, these
Speaker 2: jokes are the closest anyone came to telling the truth.
Speaker 2: They don't care about women, they hate gay people, they
Speaker 2: just don't like Muslims, and they don't think that any
Speaker 2: immigrant can never really be American. Over in Denver at
Speaker 2: the March against Sharia, neo Nazi Will Planer was briefly
Speaker 2: detained by police after brandishing a knife. He had not
Speaker 2: yet at that time been convicted for beating a woman
Speaker 2: unconscious with a flagpole at a Nazi rally in California
Speaker 2: a year earlier. In Richardson, Texas, just outside of Dallas.
Speaker 2: Both Keeper's leader Stuart Rhodes was in attendance. Jason Lee
Speaker 2: van Dyke, who now works as an attorney for Patriot Front,
Speaker 2: was there hanging out with the Proud Boys, a group
Speaker 2: he claims he was never a member of, but did
Speaker 2: work for and hang out with all the time. And
Speaker 2: unlike rallies in state capitol plazas or near random intersections,
Speaker 2: that rally in Richardson, Texas was held right outside of
Speaker 2: a mosque.
Speaker 1: So as children were.
Speaker 2: Arriving for their weekend classes in Arabic Muslim heritage and
Speaker 2: Quran recitation, there were armed men standing across the street
Speaker 2: shouting at them to go back to their own country.
Speaker 2: In Indianapolis, the Indiana Director for Identity Europa gave a speech.
Speaker 2: I can't find any video of his speech, but a
Speaker 2: reporter for the Indie Star quoted him saying, we're here
Speaker 2: to support the march against Sharia, but we're here to
Speaker 2: take it a bit further. Apparently, this man gave his
Speaker 2: name to the reporter as John Richardson, and I suppose
Speaker 2: the reporter from the Indie Star had no way of
Speaker 2: knowing that was a lie, because there's a picture in
Speaker 2: that article, and I recognized that man who said his
Speaker 2: name was John Richardson. That's Allison Richard Pierce, the fourth
Speaker 2: Jack to his friends, a Jax to his fellow Nazis.
Speaker 2: He was Richard Spencer's head of security for the weekend
Speaker 2: of the Unite the Right rally, and he served as
Speaker 2: the point of contact for the rallies organizers with the
Speaker 2: Charles Police Department.
Speaker 1: Like Augustus and Victus, he too.
Speaker 2: Had spent most of that summer in the car, driving
Speaker 2: halfway across the country multiple times just to stand behind
Speaker 2: Richard Spencer at Nazi rallies on the East Coast. At
Speaker 2: the March against Sharia in Roseville, California, Identity Europa founder
Speaker 2: Nathan Dimigo gave a speech. I really wish I could
Speaker 2: have dug up video of this speech. In particular, I
Speaker 2: would have liked to know how Nathan Dimigo presented himself
Speaker 2: to that crowd. In a live stream the day after
Speaker 2: the event, he admitted to his own followers that he
Speaker 2: knows there's no actual threat of Sharia law in America,
Speaker 2: but he felt it had been worthwhile to dispatch members
Speaker 2: of Identity Europa to those events across the country.
Speaker 10: We had IE as a nationwide network Identity Europa. We
Speaker 10: had members go to this thing across the country just
Speaker 10: kind of support a little bit, but also to get
Speaker 10: a chance to talk to people who were there and
Speaker 10: normalize ourselves in their eyes.
Speaker 2: Dimigo's Nazis didn't wear swastika armbands. They wore khaki.
Speaker 1: Pants and white polos.
Speaker 2: They were clean cut, with fresh haircuts and professionally printed
Speaker 2: banners and signs. And he recognized the value in showing
Speaker 2: up to things like this to shift the conversation in
Speaker 2: their direction, which is why I'm.
Speaker 1: Curious how he chose to address that crowd.
Speaker 2: I'm sure they didn't know that he'd been discharged from
Speaker 2: the Marine Corps in two thousand and seven after he
Speaker 2: drunkenly pulled a gun on an Arab American taxi driver
Speaker 2: because he quote looked Iraqi. Dimigo has claimed that he
Speaker 2: had his political awakening after reading David Duke's autobiography in prison.
Speaker 2: I wonder if he knows that David paid a pedophile.
Speaker 2: The ghostwrite that probably not, but that's neither here nor there.
Speaker 2: Photos of the March against Sharia and San Bernardino, California
Speaker 2: show physical confrontations between the rallies attendees, and anti fascist
Speaker 2: counter protesters. And again I don't even need to look
Speaker 2: at the captions. I recognize the men at the center
Speaker 2: of the violence. One of them captured by the photographer
Speaker 2: in the moment where his fist is drawn back readying
Speaker 2: himself to punch a woman is a man I've spent
Speaker 2: hours picking out of crowd shots at Nazi rallies. That's
Speaker 2: Benjamin Daley from the Nazi fight Club the Rise Above movement.
Speaker 1: In Atlanta.
Speaker 2: Georgia's three percent Security Force militia claimed that they had
Speaker 2: been asked by Act for America to provide security for
Speaker 2: the event. A year earlier, that march had held armed
Speaker 2: demonstrations at a construction site for a mosque outside of Atlanta.
Speaker 2: Georgia State Senator and gubernatorial candidate Michael Williams gave a
Speaker 2: speech at the march against Sharia and then posed for
Speaker 2: photos with the militia. One photo of Williams with that
Speaker 2: militia shows yet another man that I can't help but recognize.
Speaker 2: Militia member Alex Ramos attended the Unite the Right rally
Speaker 2: later that summer, and after that rally, he proudly posted
Speaker 2: a video on Facebook of his participation in a brutal
Speaker 2: beating of a young black man, and.
Speaker 1: He wrote, we stomped ass.
Speaker 2: I didn't really want CNN showing this, but getting some
Speaker 2: was fucking fun. I've spent a lot of time in
Speaker 2: a courtroom listening to that judge, in particular, the one
Speaker 2: who sentenced Alex Ramos to six years in prison for
Speaker 2: that assault. And I don't even have to check my
Speaker 2: notes to pull this quote from that hearing. It was
Speaker 2: six and a half years ago, but it was such
Speaker 2: a jarring thing to hear him say that. I'll never
Speaker 2: forget it. As he pronounced Ramos's sentence for that beating,
Speaker 2: Judge Moore told him, you could spend the rest of
Speaker 2: your life thinking about this. It's just evil. It's beyond me.
Speaker 2: So that's who benefited from the March against Sharia Identity Europa.
Speaker 2: The Proud Boys, the Oathkeepers, Vanguard America, the Traditionalist Worker Party,
Speaker 2: the Georgia three Percent Security Force. Those events provided ideological
Speaker 2: cover for these groups to seek violent confrontations with counterprotesters
Speaker 2: and to spread their ideas to conservatives who hated Muslims
Speaker 2: enough to show up.
Speaker 1: But weren't quite red pilled.
Speaker 2: Act for America did not disavow these organizers, speakers, attendees,
Speaker 2: or security teams. In a column from Breitbart shortly after
Speaker 2: the Rallies Act, founder Burgique Gabriel wrote, America.
Speaker 1: Is a divided nation.
Speaker 2: Countless political issues fragment our nation, while race, gender, and
Speaker 2: religious identification enhanced division even further. But there is one
Speaker 2: issue that has brought Americans of all backgrounds together in
Speaker 2: opposition to it, the barbarism of sharia law. Issues such
Speaker 2: as gay marriage, affirmative action, medicinal marijuana, and others may
Speaker 2: bring out our differences, but sharia law is an enemy
Speaker 2: that all rational citizens unify against.
Speaker 1: And in the.
Speaker 2: Column, she lists off some of these speakers at the rallies.
Speaker 2: Some of them were gay, some of them were Jewish,
Speaker 2: some of them used to be Muslim. So many kinds
Speaker 2: of people, and they all agree with her about Islam.
Speaker 1: Isn't that beautiful?
Speaker 2: She fails to mention the involvement of any neo Nazi groups,
Speaker 2: and she says group like the Council on American Islamic
Speaker 2: Relations and Antifa thugs staged repulsive counter protests, and she
Speaker 2: repeats the claim that someone had been splashed with urine
Speaker 2: at the rally in New York. She does mention that
Speaker 2: the rally attendee in question who was maybe splashed with
Speaker 2: piss was Lauren Southern, but she doesn't mention that Lauren
Speaker 2: Southern had very recently been detained by the Italian Coastguard.
Speaker 2: Just a month before she arrived in New York for
Speaker 2: the March against Sharia. Lauren Southern was with the French
Speaker 2: neo fascist organization Generation Identity as they attempted to block
Speaker 2: a search and rescue mission for shipwrecked refugees in the
Speaker 2: Mediterranean Sea. I don't know if Lauren Southern really did
Speaker 2: get piss thrown on her in New York City. That's
Speaker 2: one of those things that I think is probably an
Speaker 2: urban legend. Fascists are constantly talking about this ongoing threat
Speaker 2: of Antifa throwing piss on them, but I've never actually
Speaker 2: heard anybody talking about preparing for a protest by storing
Speaker 2: their urine in gatorade bottles. I'm just not convinced that happens.
Speaker 2: But if this was the one time it really did happen,
Speaker 2: I can't say the woman who tried to drown refugees
Speaker 2: didn't deserve to get splashed. Gabriel ends her column about
Speaker 2: the march against Sharia by addressing the lies that the
Speaker 2: events had been anti Muslim or even white supremacist, common
Speaker 2: sense Americans see these allegations for how fantastically stupid they are.
Speaker 1: She wrote.
Speaker 2: The people at her rallies weren't white supremacists.
Speaker 1: They were just quote fed up with the.
Speaker 2: PC propagandists trying to bully and intimidate everyone into silence
Speaker 2: who doesn't go along with their suicidal open borders philosophy.
Speaker 2: Later that summer, Act for America announced they'd be putting
Speaker 2: on another nationwide series of rallies in September, but after
Speaker 2: the events of the Unite the Right rally, they called
Speaker 2: them off.
Speaker 1: In a press release, Gabriel wrote, Act for.
Speaker 2: America is deeply saddened that in today's divisive climate, citizens
Speaker 2: cannot peacefully express their opinions without risk of physical harm
Speaker 2: from terror groups domestic and international. In recent weeks, extremist
Speaker 2: and radical organizations in the United States and abroad have
Speaker 2: overrun peaceful events in order to advance their own agendas,
Speaker 2: and in many cases, violence has been the result. And
Speaker 2: this is just a staggering lack of self awareness. The
Speaker 2: picture accompanying the press release is of anti fascist counter protesters,
Speaker 2: implying that she means that the people who have overrun
Speaker 2: peaceful events causing violence have.
Speaker 1: Been the anti fascists.
Speaker 2: But this announcement came in the aftermath of Unite the Right,
Speaker 2: where Nazis caused violence, the Nazis that had attended her
Speaker 2: rallies two months earlier.
Speaker 1: And I don't just.
Speaker 2: Mean the same kinds of people, I mean literally the
Speaker 2: same exact people. As I was going through photos of
Speaker 2: these march against Sharia rallies all over the country, I
Speaker 2: was shocked to see so many familiar faces. Scott Presler,
Speaker 2: the conservative influencer who failed so spectacularly at organizing those
Speaker 2: anti Muslim rallies in twenty seventeen, went on to be
Speaker 2: an early promoter of the QAnon conspiracy theory and was
Speaker 2: a major figure in the Stop the Steel movement leading
Speaker 2: up to the January sixth riot. In the hours after
Speaker 2: the riot of the Capitol, Presler posted a video of
Speaker 2: himself outside the Capitol, calling it quote the largest civil
Speaker 2: rights protest in American history, and to really bring things
Speaker 2: full circle. In twenty twenty three, Scott Presler started a
Speaker 2: political action committee called Early Vote Action in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 2: Laura Trump praised his efforts, calling him quote an amazing
Speaker 2: vote register. In the final months of the twenty twenty
Speaker 2: four presidential campaign, backed by a million dollar donation from
Speaker 2: Elon Musk, Scott Presler and his Early Vote Action Pack
Speaker 2: hired a team of field organizers to register Republican voters
Speaker 2: in Pennsylvania. There are those who credit Pressler for securing
Speaker 2: a Trump win in that swing state, and that brings
Speaker 2: us all the way back around to the photo We
Speaker 2: started with that regular maga Republican, a guy who just
Speaker 2: hated Muslims, the normal Republican amount who accidentally led a
Speaker 2: Nazi march to the Pennsylvania State Capitol in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: One of the field organizers on the page role at
Speaker 2: Pressler's political Action committee in twenty twenty four was the
Speaker 2: very same man, Benjamin Hornburger. And as for the rest
Speaker 2: of this cast of characters, Oh, I don't know. The
Speaker 2: Nazi who stabbed three men on the train is serving
Speaker 2: two life sentences for his conduct at the Nazi Torch
Speaker 2: march in twenty seventeen. Augustus and Victus was recently convicted
Speaker 2: of felony which at the time of this recording, he
Speaker 2: does not appear to have reported to the Florida State
Speaker 2: Bar Association. Nathan Dimigo declared bankruptcy to try to get
Speaker 2: out of a lawsuit filed by the victims harmed at
Speaker 2: the Unite the Right rally, and it remains to be
Speaker 2: seen whether a bankruptcy judge will discharge the millions of
Speaker 2: dollars he may be on the hook for. And a
Speaker 2: lot of far right extremists are celebrating the successful mainstreaming
Speaker 2: of their belief in the Republican Party platform. I don't
Speaker 2: have a tidy ending for this story, but I think
Speaker 2: there's something to mull over here. Act for America used
Speaker 2: crowds of neo Nazis to bulk up the numbers at
Speaker 2: those rallies. Rallies they staged to fake mass support for
Speaker 2: hateful lies. The way they talked about our Muslim neighbors
Speaker 2: wasn't grounded in reality, and their ideas were not actually popular.
Speaker 2: A small loud minority backed by money from a handful
Speaker 2: of right wing donors doesn't change reality. Muslims were never
Speaker 2: destroying America, and neither are your immigrant neighbors. Neither are
Speaker 2: transgender people diversity, doesn't cause plane crashes. Asylum seekers aren't
Speaker 2: to blame for violent crime. Don't fall for it, don't
Speaker 2: fall in line. Weird Little Guys is a production of
Speaker 2: Cool Zone Media and iHeartRadio. It's researched, written and recorded
Speaker 2: by me, Molly Conger. Our executive producers are Sophie Lettterman
Speaker 2: and Robert Evans. The show is edited by the wildly
Speaker 2: talented Rory Gagan. The theme music was composed by Brad Dickert.
Speaker 2: You can email me at Weird Little Guys podcast at
Speaker 2: gmail dot com. I will definitely read it, but I
Speaker 2: almost certainly will not answer it. It's nothing personal. I
Speaker 2: don't answer any of my emails. You can exchange conspiracy
Speaker 2: theories about the show with other listeners on the Weird
Speaker 2: Little Guys subreddit. Just don't post anything that's going to
Speaker 2: make you one of my Weird Little Guys