Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media. Hello listeners, Molly Conger here, I've got
Speaker 1: something a little different for you this week, something a
Speaker 1: little lighter. I will finally wrap up the South Africa
Speaker 1: story arc next week, and that story will end the
Speaker 1: way it began, with the President of the United States
Speaker 1: peddling conspiracy theories about why genocide. But I'm going to
Speaker 1: level with you, I just wasn't in the mood this
Speaker 1: week to cut clips from audio of Jordan Peterson interviewing
Speaker 1: a guy trying to sell real estate in a planned
Speaker 1: Ethno state. That shit sucks, And I still haven't made
Speaker 1: the seating chart for my wedding next week. I mentioned,
Speaker 1: probably a month ago at this point now that I
Speaker 1: was thinking about doing a listener Q and a episode
Speaker 1: sometime soon, and then I promptly got lost down an
Speaker 1: infinite series of bottomless side quests. I'm still lost down there,
Speaker 1: but my attention has been pretty divided lately, and I
Speaker 1: felt like this was the right week to try and
Speaker 1: answer some of your questions. I combed through the questions
Speaker 1: you all submitted on the Weird Little Guys subreddit, and
Speaker 1: they seem to fall into a few main categories. There
Speaker 1: are questions about me questions about my research and writing methodology,
Speaker 1: about how the show gets made, and questions about the
Speaker 1: lives of the Weird Little Guys. And I can answer
Speaker 1: some of those for sure, but by far the most
Speaker 1: common questions, both from you all on the subreddit and
Speaker 1: from the groups of university students I've had the opportunity
Speaker 1: to speak with in the last few months, are ones
Speaker 1: I don't really have good answers for. They aren't questions
Speaker 1: of fact. The answers aren't in a newspaper archive, they
Speaker 1: aren't something I can dig up in the court records.
Speaker 1: They're questions of the soul. I've been invited to speak
Speaker 1: to students at the University of Richmond and the University
Speaker 1: of Virginia a few times this semester, and every time,
Speaker 1: regardless of what the subject of the class or of
Speaker 1: the event is, no matter what I have prepared or
Speaker 1: how the professor prompts the group, people always ask me
Speaker 1: one question, in particular, Can people change? Can you bring
Speaker 1: someone back once they've become the kind of guy who
Speaker 1: might end up on an episode of Weird Little Guys.
Speaker 1: The short answer is yes, Yes, of course they can.
Speaker 1: There's always always hope. I believe that because I have to.
Speaker 1: If I didn't, I don't think I could do this.
Speaker 1: Maybe I shouldn't have started this with the hardest question,
Speaker 1: especially if.
Speaker 2: I'm not even going to answer it.
Speaker 1: But I wanted to address it because I know it's
Speaker 1: one A lot of you have asked yourselves as you
Speaker 1: listen to the show, And like I said, I don't
Speaker 1: have the answer, not really. I'm not a philosopher or
Speaker 1: an ethicist or a theologian, not a psychologist or a sociologist,
Speaker 1: and I don't have any direct experience in deradicalization, the
Speaker 1: work of engaging with people who want to leave the
Speaker 1: movement and supporting them in that process. But I think
Speaker 1: the lack of a definitive answer to this question is
Speaker 1: ultimately a good thing. If the question remains open, you
Speaker 1: have to constantly revisit it, reassess it. I spend so
Speaker 1: much of my time wading through the evidence that evil exists.
Speaker 1: I should constantly re evaluate what I think that means.
Speaker 1: And I've seen a lot of monstrous things. I've watched
Speaker 1: live streamed mass murders and red manifestos. I've sat in
Speaker 1: little courtrooms just feet away from men with massive stockpiles
Speaker 1: of weapons who were planning mass casualty events and assassinations.
Speaker 1: I've watched men who proudly call themselves Nazis, men who
Speaker 1: worship Hitler laugh in the faces of their own victims,
Speaker 1: fed a casual chat in a public park with a
Speaker 1: member of rape Waffen. So maybe you don't expect me
Speaker 1: to say this, but I absolutely still believe that every
Speaker 1: single one of them is still human. They're still reachable.
Speaker 1: There is still the possibility, however remote, that they could
Speaker 1: wake up one day and realize they were wrong, that
Speaker 1: they took a wrong turn and wound up down a
Speaker 1: dead end following an ideology that hurts everyone, including themselves.
Speaker 1: The catches they have to want to, and they rarely do.
Speaker 1: Redemption isn't something that just happens to a guy. It's
Speaker 1: something that's hard fought for and not always one and
Speaker 1: if they're doing it right, you'll probably never know about it.
Speaker 1: There are real life stories of people in the movement
Speaker 1: who made one black friend or one Jewish friend, one
Speaker 1: gay friend, whatever, and then realize that those kinds of
Speaker 1: people are human and that led them to question and
Speaker 1: then renounce their beliefs.
Speaker 2: It happens, but.
Speaker 1: That's a lot to ask of marginalized people. I'm not
Speaker 1: telling you to go out there and love a Nazi
Speaker 1: until he.
Speaker 2: Loves you back.
Speaker 1: It doesn't usually work, and it doesn't sound like a
Speaker 1: fulfilling way to spend your time. And there are some
Speaker 1: splashy news stories every now and again about a former
Speaker 1: neo Nazi on a redemption arc, but the real work
Speaker 1: of making amends is quiet and boring and perhaps quite rare.
Speaker 2: I think, in.
Speaker 1: Most cases, the best we can hope for it as
Speaker 1: a half asked version. Guys who quit the movement and
Speaker 1: just stop hurting other people. They don't really interrogate their
Speaker 1: own past actions. They don't try to undo the harm
Speaker 1: they did. They don't apologize, They just stop actively becoming worse.
Speaker 1: And that's much more common. I think that happens all
Speaker 1: the time. But there's no news story when a guy
Speaker 1: gets bored of posting race war memes and drops out
Speaker 1: of the terrorism planning chat. And I want to be clear,
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about absolution.
Speaker 2: I don't mean that.
Speaker 1: I believe every mass shooter has within him the possibility
Speaker 1: of becoming the kind of guy you'd enjoy hanging out
Speaker 1: with or trust with your children. It doesn't mean anyone
Speaker 1: has to forgive him. I don't mean that their crimes
Speaker 1: should go unpunished if they take back all the stuff
Speaker 1: they said about Hitler, but I think we have to
Speaker 1: leave the door open. The question one of you posted
Speaker 1: on the subreddit reads, do you think there is a
Speaker 1: point of no why turn for a person when former
Speaker 1: friends and family have to give up trying to bring
Speaker 1: a person back on the right track? And if so,
Speaker 1: what defines that point? And this is a question you
Speaker 1: have to answer for yourselves individually.
Speaker 2: I don't think there.
Speaker 1: Exists a specific, definitive goalpost here, a point of no return.
Speaker 2: But if there is someone.
Speaker 1: Like this in your life, this question is yours to answer,
Speaker 1: because there may come a point where you don't feel
Speaker 1: safe continuing to engage with a friend or a loved
Speaker 1: one who has turned towards extremism, And that's valid, But
Speaker 1: I don't think that means that person is lost forever.
Speaker 1: This is an opinion of mine that makes people pretty
Speaker 1: mad sometimes, and that's okay. I won't tell you what
Speaker 1: should be in your heart. I will never ask you
Speaker 1: to forgive any of these men. Hell I don't, but
Speaker 1: I do try to approach my work with hard eyes
Speaker 1: and a soft heart. And what I mean by that
Speaker 1: is I want to look clearly at the harm a
Speaker 1: man has done, but hope for the day that he
Speaker 1: sees that harm too. And with that out of the way,
Speaker 1: let's get to some questions.
Speaker 2: I do have answers for.
Speaker 1: One of you asked, do you ever find information about
Speaker 1: how the families of weird little guys feel about or
Speaker 1: react to their actions? Do more of these guys get
Speaker 1: cut off or willingly cut off ties with their relatives?
Speaker 1: Or is it more of a family affair, like driving
Speaker 1: your uncle to the insurrection? And this is a question
Speaker 1: with a lot of answers. It sort of reminds me
Speaker 1: of the opening line of Anna Karenna. Right, all happy
Speaker 1: families are alike. Each unhappy family is unhappy in its
Speaker 1: own way, and every Nazis family deals with the problem.
Speaker 2: In their own way.
Speaker 1: But there are some broad categories here. You've got movement families,
Speaker 1: families where the weird little guy was raised in an
Speaker 1: environment where his beliefs were normal and encouraged. There are
Speaker 1: families in denial where the parents don't believe it's that serious,
Speaker 1: they don't want to acknowledge it, or they claim to
Speaker 1: have had no idea what was going on. And then
Speaker 1: there are the families that do cut ties or make
Speaker 1: public disavowals of their relatives beliefs and actions. For listeners
Speaker 1: who may have missed the episode, the question asker is
Speaker 1: referring to their driving your uncle to the insurrection is
Speaker 1: a reference to Matthew and Dale Huddle, the subjects of
Speaker 1: the episode A short lived pardon from back in February.
Speaker 1: Matthew Huddle was the recently pardoned January sixth defendant who
Speaker 1: was killed by a police officer during a traffic stop
Speaker 1: earlier this year. He wasn't really a true believer in anything,
Speaker 1: but he went to the US capital on January sixth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one with his uncle Dale, and Dale Huddle
Speaker 1: was a man who had some pretty strong beliefs about
Speaker 1: the government.
Speaker 2: His case is a bit of.
Speaker 1: An outlier within that first category, though, because I wouldn't
Speaker 1: call the Huddles a movement family. Matthew just sort of
Speaker 1: went along for the ride. But movement families are a
Speaker 1: very real thing. There are plenty of people who didn't
Speaker 1: need four Chan or telegram to get radicalized because it's
Speaker 1: just how they were raised. I'm sure plenty of parents
Speaker 1: were surprised when they saw photos of their sons on
Speaker 1: the news after the Unite the Right rally, but not
Speaker 1: all of them. Jacob Goodwin, one of the men convicted
Speaker 1: for the brutal beating of a counter protester, got a
Speaker 1: ride to the rally from his mother. After his arrest,
Speaker 1: she went on a Nazi podcast to talk about his case,
Speaker 1: and she said that during her last visit with him
Speaker 1: in prison, she told him, quote, don't you ever tell
Speaker 1: Mama you're sorry for being a good, honorable man. A
Speaker 1: lot of the movement families I can think of off
Speaker 1: the top of my head are ones that deserve their
Speaker 1: own episodes. I know at least one listener on the
Speaker 1: subreddit is absolutely dying for me to finally do an
Speaker 1: episode about the Arkansas based neo Nazi Billy Roper. He
Speaker 1: was raised in a clan family and now he's trying
Speaker 1: to start a white separatist community for other movement families.
Speaker 1: And there are families like the Bellogs. Alan Bellog was
Speaker 1: a member of the American Nazi Party in the seventies,
Speaker 1: and he joined National Alliance in its very earliest days.
Speaker 1: He worked for David Duke's campaign in nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 1: and he was the Pennsylvania unit leader for National Alliance
Speaker 1: in the eighties. National Alliance founder William Luther Pearce told
Speaker 1: his biographer quote Bellog would do things like staple Alliance
Speaker 1: blackards to telephone polls, and he would punch out anybody
Speaker 1: who gave him a bad time while he was doing it.
Speaker 1: Sometimes this would result in legal difficulties, and one time,
Speaker 1: when Bellog got fined five hundred dollars, I took up
Speaker 1: a collection at one of our national conventions to pay
Speaker 1: us fine. Alan Bellog's son, Warren was raised in the moment.
Speaker 1: The father and son duo were in recent years founding
Speaker 1: members of the now defunct neo Nazi group the National
Speaker 1: Justice Party. When National Justice Party collapsed in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: the current leader of National Alliance, Will Williams, wrote, Alan
Speaker 1: Bellog had been a dedicated Alliance member for years and
Speaker 1: as a good man, I met him and his son,
Speaker 1: Warren when Warren was twelve years old. The Alliance will
Speaker 1: leave the door cracked for good men like the Belllogs
Speaker 1: to rejoin. The Belllogs attended the twenty seventeen Unite the
Speaker 1: right rally here in Charlottesville together, but only Warren signed
Speaker 1: his name to a federal lawsuit against the city for
Speaker 1: failing to proactively facilitate the Nazi rally. His case was
Speaker 1: dismissed by the Western District of Virginia, and that decision
Speaker 1: was upheld by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals last year.
Speaker 1: It's a very silly little lawsuit with no legal merit,
Speaker 1: so I don't expect his recent petition to have it
Speaker 1: heard by the Supreme Court. We'll go anywhere, but the
Speaker 1: complaint itself is so laughable that maybe I'll do a
Speaker 1: minisode on it. I think most families fall into the
Speaker 1: second category, the ones who neither share nor denounce the
Speaker 1: views of their family member. They either didn't know, didn't understand,
Speaker 1: didn't think it was serious, didn't think he meant it,
Speaker 1: or they just didn't want to see it. Some of
Speaker 1: them are embarrassed by it, but others are indignant. They
Speaker 1: don't understand why everyone is making such a big deal
Speaker 1: out of this thing that they'd convince themselves was just
Speaker 1: a harmless quirk of their otherwise very wonderful son.
Speaker 2: I see this most often in the.
Speaker 1: Letters that mothers write to the judge after their son
Speaker 1: is convicted of something horrible, but before he's sentenced. A
Speaker 1: lot of these letters avoid this subject altogether, and they're
Speaker 1: just sort of a list of his positive qualities. He's
Speaker 1: a boy scout, he had a black best friend in
Speaker 1: middle school. He moses grandmother's lawn, he's a good boy.
Speaker 1: I can think of two cases actually where a defendant's
Speaker 1: parent told the court that their son isn't actually a Nazi,
Speaker 1: it's just that he's autistic and this is his special interest.
Speaker 1: It's such a profoundly weird thing to say, and it's
Speaker 1: wild that I've seen it twice. For the record, I
Speaker 1: do know some people whose special interest is Nazi stuff,
Speaker 1: but they aren't out there being Nazis. They're some of
Speaker 1: the best anti fascist researchers. I think the most satisfying
Speaker 1: part of this answer for the listener is going to
Speaker 1: be the third category, families who publicly disavow their Nazi relative.
Speaker 1: I'm sure there are plenty of families who disown a relative,
Speaker 1: but a lot of that happens quietly. It's ugly business,
Speaker 1: and most people don't air this kind of dirty laundry.
Speaker 1: One of these stories made national news. Back in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: on the Monday morning after the deadly Nazi rally here
Speaker 1: in Charlottesville, a newspaper in Fargo, North Dakota published an
Speaker 1: open letter from a father. The letter begins, my name
Speaker 1: is Pierce Teft, and I am writing to all with
Speaker 1: regards to my youngest son, Peter Teft, an avowed white nationalist.
Speaker 1: He doesn't mince words, writing, I, along with all of
Speaker 1: his siblings and his entire family, wish to loudly repudiate
Speaker 1: my son's vile, hateful and racist rhetoric in actions. We
Speaker 1: do not know specifically where he learned these beliefs. He
Speaker 1: did not learn them at home. It's a pretty striking letter.
Speaker 1: Like I said, most families stay quiet about this sort
Speaker 1: of thing, but Teff's father felt it was his responsibility
Speaker 1: to denounce his son, writing we have been silent up
Speaker 1: until now, but we see now this was a mistake.
Speaker 1: It was the silence of good people that allowed the
Speaker 1: Nazis to flourish the first time around, and it is
Speaker 1: the silence of good people that is allowing them to
Speaker 1: flourish now. Peter Teft, my son is not welcome at
Speaker 1: our family gatherings.
Speaker 2: Any longer.
Speaker 1: I pray my prodigal son will renounce his hateful beliefs
Speaker 1: and return home then and only then, while I lay
Speaker 1: out the feast. His hateful opinions are bringing hateful rhetoric
Speaker 1: to his siblings, cousins, nieces, and nephews, as well as
Speaker 1: his parents. Why must we be guilty by association? Again,
Speaker 1: none of his beliefs were learned at home. We do not,
Speaker 1: never have, and never will accept his twisted worldview. He
Speaker 1: once joked, the thing about us fascists is it's not
Speaker 1: that we don't believe in freedom of speech. You can
Speaker 1: say whatever you want. We'll just throw you in an oven, Peter,
Speaker 1: you will have to shovel our bodies into.
Speaker 2: The oven too.
Speaker 1: Please, Son, renounce the hate, accept in love all. And
Speaker 1: that's kind of what I was getting at earlier about
Speaker 1: leaving the door open. His family isn't saying they hate him,
Speaker 1: just that they can't love him while he's busy hating
Speaker 1: everyone else.
Speaker 2: The door is open. It's his choice. As C. S.
Speaker 1: Lewis said, the doors of hell are locked from the inside.
Speaker 1: And in the years since his father wrote that letter,
Speaker 1: Peter Teft has continued to choose white nationalism over his family.
Speaker 2: Most of the white.
Speaker 1: Supremacists I can think of whose families have publicly spoken
Speaker 1: out against them are movement leaders. That's obviously because there
Speaker 1: just aren't news stories about random racists getting disowned. It's
Speaker 1: only in the news if the Nazi is newsworthy, and
Speaker 1: most families wouldn't make a public announcement about it unless
Speaker 1: the situation was already public against their will. So the
Speaker 1: examples that come most readily to mind are people like
Speaker 1: Don Black, William Luther Peers, and Jared Taylor. I will
Speaker 1: at some point have to do some episodes about Don Black,
Speaker 1: the klansman who founded the neo Nazi forum Stormfront. That's
Speaker 1: going to be a whole ordeal. It's a very long story.
Speaker 1: But when it comes to public disavowals of a racist parent,
Speaker 1: it's hard to beat the story of Adrianne Black. Her
Speaker 1: recent book, The Klansman's Son is a fascinating read, and
Speaker 1: I'll have to save the details for another day. But
Speaker 1: she was as raised in the movement as it is
Speaker 1: possible to be. Don Black was a movement leader, and
Speaker 1: he was raising his son to be his successor. As
Speaker 1: a child, Adrianne Black learned to code so she could
Speaker 1: run the children's section of her father's Nazi website. She
Speaker 1: attended conferences and rallies, and co hosted a Nazi radio
Speaker 1: show with her father. She was a true believer until
Speaker 1: she wasn't. She went away to college and met people
Speaker 1: out in the real world that led her to question
Speaker 1: the beliefs she'd been raised with, and then she publicly
Speaker 1: denounced those beliefs in twenty thirteen in an open letter
Speaker 1: published by the Southern Poverty Law Center. If you're looking
Speaker 1: for her book, The Klansman's Son, it's published under her
Speaker 1: former name R.
Speaker 2: Derrick Black.
Speaker 1: The book was her public coming out as a transwoman.
Speaker 1: William Luther Pierce, the founder of National Alliance and the
Speaker 1: author of the Turner Diaries, had twin sons. One of
Speaker 1: them is very private, but one of them, Kelvin Pierce,
Speaker 1: published a memoir in twenty twenty called Sins of My Father,
Speaker 1: and it is very much a personal memoir. It's about
Speaker 1: his childhood and his recollection and the way he perceived
Speaker 1: his father as a child. But it is a very
Speaker 1: clear picture a terrible man. Interesting that both Kelvin Pierce
Speaker 1: and Adrianne Black pivoted from private reflection on their fathers
Speaker 1: to loud public denunciation at around the same time. They
Speaker 1: both point to the Unite the Right rally in twenty
Speaker 1: seventeen and the election of Donald Trump in twenty sixteen
Speaker 1: as turning points. Helen Pierce wrote in his book quote
Speaker 1: the swastikas and flaming torches brought back so many memories,
Speaker 1: such visceral feelings that I knew I had to speak
Speaker 1: out about the racism still so deeply rooted in our society.
Speaker 1: In a New York Times opinion piece published right after
Speaker 1: the twenty sixteen election, Adrian Black wrote that after hearing
Speaker 1: Trump's campaign launch speech, in which he called Mexican immigrants
Speaker 1: rapists quote, I spent the rest of the election wondering
Speaker 1: how much my movement had set the stage for his.
Speaker 1: Now I see the anger I was raised with rocking
Speaker 1: the nation. And then there's Jared Taylor. I've mentioned him
Speaker 1: a handful of times in passing. He's the white supremacist
Speaker 1: writer behind American Renaissance. His father's disavowal of his son's
Speaker 1: beliefs was less public than entire memoirs written by Kelvin
Speaker 1: Pears from Adrian Black, but it's worth mentioning. Jared Taylor's
Speaker 1: parents were Presbyterian missionaries. His mother's described in an old
Speaker 1: newspaper article as a diehard liberal. His father, Reverend Archibald Taylor,
Speaker 1: told a newspaper in nineteen ninety six that he could
Speaker 1: no longer discuss politics with his son, and the reverend
Speaker 1: attempted to set up meetings between his son and black
Speaker 1: civil rights leaders like Reverend Louis Coleman in the hopes
Speaker 1: of changing his son's mind. That article from nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: six doesn't say if that meeting actually took place, but
Speaker 1: if it did, I don't think Jared Taylor learned anything
Speaker 1: from it. Another chunk of the questions you all sent
Speaker 1: in we're about the process. How do I pick a
Speaker 1: weird little guy? Where do I start? How do I
Speaker 1: organize my notes? The answer to this is embarrassing. I
Speaker 1: mean to other people have a good answer for this.
Speaker 1: Am I supposed to have a coherent process? There are
Speaker 1: a whole university courses on things like research methodology, so
Speaker 1: I guess there probably is a correct answer, But that's
Speaker 1: not how I do things. I dropped out of college
Speaker 1: because I'm not great at deadlines or following directions. So
Speaker 1: I'm sure I missed some vital instruction on best practices
Speaker 1: in research. No, I fear one of you hit on
Speaker 1: the truth in your question. Someone submitted the question what
Speaker 1: is the journey of finding a new weird little guy
Speaker 1: to putting out a new episode?
Speaker 2: Do you have a process or a flow chart.
Speaker 1: Of sorts that you follow or do you just go
Speaker 1: off vibes and end up with a finished product? It's vibes.
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry, but it is just vibes. When I
Speaker 1: was talking to those university students, I wanted so badly
Speaker 1: to be able to offer them some kind of useful
Speaker 1: advice for doing this kind of research.
Speaker 2: But I have absolutely no idea.
Speaker 1: How I could advise you to proceed with a similar
Speaker 1: project because I have no idea what I'm doing as
Speaker 1: far as topic selection. Months ago, when the show was
Speaker 1: still really new, I was a little worried that I
Speaker 1: might not be able to come up with a good
Speaker 1: idea every single week. I know there are plenty of
Speaker 1: weird little guys out there, sure, but how many of
Speaker 1: them would make a good story. So I made a
Speaker 1: list of potential episode ideas, and I've got fifty or
Speaker 1: sixty potential episode topics on that list, and some of
Speaker 1: them would definitely be multi episode arcs.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's probably two years.
Speaker 1: Worth of episodes on the list, and I've never once
Speaker 1: pulled a single idea off that list to actually do
Speaker 1: an episode about. I just sort of float down the
Speaker 1: river of my curiosity, and whatever little fragment of an
Speaker 1: idea I get stuck on ends up as the starting
Speaker 1: point for an episode. It's a little chaotic. Back in December,
Speaker 1: I was trying to do a couple of episodes about
Speaker 1: a group called the Order, a Nazi gang that hoped
Speaker 1: to finance the race war through armed robbery. But I
Speaker 1: never did because as I was putting together my notes
Speaker 1: on their ringleader, Robert Matthews, it got distracted.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's a whole.
Speaker 1: Story about the robberies, the murder of Alan Berg and Colorado,
Speaker 1: the informant who betrayed them, Robert Matthews burned to death
Speaker 1: during a standoff with federal agents. There were trials and appeals,
Speaker 1: there's David Lane's prison writings, and I'm going to circle
Speaker 1: back to all that because there's a lot there. But
Speaker 1: back in December, when I thought that's what I was
Speaker 1: going to write, I didn't write it at all. I
Speaker 1: asked myself one little question about whatever happened to all
Speaker 1: that money they.
Speaker 2: Stole, and then I had no choice.
Speaker 1: I floated down the river and landed on a different
Speaker 1: idea entirely that group, the Order, robbed a Brink's armored
Speaker 1: car in the summer of nineteen eighty four and made
Speaker 1: off with millions of dollars, and that money ended up
Speaker 1: in a lot of hands. Robert Matthews himself drove cross
Speaker 1: country handing out bags of cash to movement leaders, and
Speaker 1: one of those bags of cash ended up with Tom Metzger.
Speaker 1: And it was that bag of cash that knocked me
Speaker 1: off course for nearly two months. First I got curious
Speaker 1: about Metzger's public access TV show, and that made me
Speaker 1: curious about other Nazis doing public access TV shows in
Speaker 1: the eighties and nineties, and that led me to Herb Poinset,
Speaker 1: the Florida chiropractor who not only hosted his own racist
Speaker 1: public access TV show, but he was the shareholder representative
Speaker 1: for that neo Nazi group who tried to get eight
Speaker 1: ten and Tea to end its diversity programs in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty eight, and down that same rabbit hole was another
Speaker 1: racist cable access TV show, a single episode of a
Speaker 1: program called Clansas City Cable hosted by Dennis Mayhon.
Speaker 2: And then I got really lost.
Speaker 1: I spent five episodes tracking Dennis Mayhon's career as a
Speaker 1: professional racist, from his early days in the Klan to
Speaker 1: his relationship with an ATF informant who accused him of
Speaker 1: helping plan the Oklahoma City bombing, to his eventual conviction
Speaker 1: for sending a mailbomb to the diversity office of Scottsdale, Arizona.
Speaker 1: And then suddenly it's two months later and I never
Speaker 1: wrote the episode I started about Robert Matthews, and the
Speaker 1: same thing happened again. In February. I sat down to
Speaker 1: write an episode about Billy Roper. I really did. To
Speaker 1: the person who keeps asking me to write about Billy Roper,
Speaker 1: I really did start. I started my notes, I was
Speaker 1: mapping out the timeline of his life, and then I
Speaker 1: got hung up. I saw a picture of Billy at
Speaker 1: a rally in Arkansas in twenty twelve, and I thought
Speaker 1: I'd get a little background information about that rally and
Speaker 1: it would get a paragraph or two in the episode,
Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden, I'm six episodes deep
Speaker 1: into a story about terrorism and apartheid South Africa.
Speaker 2: It just happens.
Speaker 1: So to the people asking if I think I might
Speaker 1: ever run out of episode ideas, no, absolutely not. I
Speaker 1: will never run out of episode ideas. The list of
Speaker 1: potential episodes is actually growing exponentially because every episode turns
Speaker 1: up a new side character, and I'm starting to realize
Speaker 1: every guy in these stories has his own entire weird
Speaker 1: situation going on, if you know how to dig deep.
Speaker 2: Enough to find it.
Speaker 1: I wanted to As for organizing my research, this is
Speaker 1: a similarly disappointing answer for anyone who thought I might
Speaker 1: have any useful advice. I take all my notes in
Speaker 1: Google Docs these days, and I don't know when they
Speaker 1: added this feature. I feel like it was kind of recently,
Speaker 1: but they let you add little tabs in the sidebar.
Speaker 1: So I'll have a tab where I toss in all
Speaker 1: the links to my sources, a tab where I just
Speaker 1: list the names of every guy I come across, so
Speaker 1: I can organize details about them as I see them
Speaker 1: come up. I'll put notes related to a particular significant
Speaker 1: incident or theme in the story in its own tab
Speaker 1: so I can keep track of it. But the most important.
Speaker 2: Tab is the timeline.
Speaker 1: I started doing this a few years ago when I
Speaker 1: was doing a particularly deep dive on an individual that
Speaker 1: I won't be doing an episode about until his story
Speaker 1: is over, and that might be a while, but it's
Speaker 1: become my go to starting point. I don't know what
Speaker 1: I'm looking for until I find it, So when I
Speaker 1: start building out a story about a guy, I just
Speaker 1: throw every detail into a timeline, just a bulleted list
Speaker 1: in chronological order, of every single piece of information that
Speaker 1: I can find about his life, no matter how insignificant.
Speaker 1: Sometimes there's huge gaps in the timeline, just large swaths
Speaker 1: of a man's life where he's just not on paper.
Speaker 1: But sometimes a guy has had enough contact with the
Speaker 1: system that you can damn near pen him down day
Speaker 1: by day for most of his adult life.
Speaker 2: I comb through.
Speaker 1: Newspaper archives, court records, genealogical records, social media accounts, forum posts,
Speaker 1: old blogs, anything and everything that I can get my
Speaker 1: hands on.
Speaker 2: I won't use most of it. I know that a
Speaker 2: lot of.
Speaker 1: Us useless, but I need the whole picture in front
Speaker 1: of me before anything comes into focus. I collect obituaries,
Speaker 1: of family members, childhood yearbook photos, every parking ticket he's
Speaker 1: ever gotten, things like a guy's mom's lawsuit against her
Speaker 1: local McDonald's after she slipped and fell on a wet floor,
Speaker 1: bankruptcy filings, filings in an ex wife's divorced from her
Speaker 1: second husband, disciplinary records from the board of nursing bar complaints,
Speaker 1: paperwork filed with the state for a small business, irs
Speaker 1: forms for a nonprofit. He was on the board of
Speaker 1: every donation made to any political candidate by everyone in
Speaker 1: his immediate family. Everything, every piece of paper with his
Speaker 1: name on it, from an old newspaper article about Frank
Speaker 1: Sweeney's childhood pet armadillo to Dennis Mayhon's brothers weird letters
Speaker 1: to the editor of their hometown newspaper. It all goes
Speaker 1: on the timeline, and usually by the time I've got
Speaker 1: five or ten pages of bullet points, I have a
Speaker 1: much clearer idea of what the story is. And it's
Speaker 1: rarely the story I thought I was writing. Come to
Speaker 1: think of it, I don't think I've ever written an
Speaker 1: episode that was even close to what I sat down
Speaker 1: expecting to write. I've gotten a lot of really generous
Speaker 1: offers from you, guys about wanting to help with the research.
Speaker 1: I mean, even my producer Sophie has offered several times
Speaker 1: to hire someone to help with the research.
Speaker 2: But I don't think it would help.
Speaker 1: I don't need someone to run down a particular set
Speaker 1: of facts or summarize a book. There isn't a specific
Speaker 1: concrete task I could even assign to someone. I mean,
Speaker 1: if I didn't waste half the week chasing down every
Speaker 1: loose end or writing page long biographies in my notes
Speaker 1: about every tertiary character in the story, I would miss
Speaker 1: a lot of what ends up being important. I mean,
Speaker 1: think about those German mercenaries and the Monica Huggett episodes.
Speaker 1: When I started flushing out the story, I knew those
Speaker 1: Germans got arrested in nineteen ninety four after a shootout
Speaker 1: with the police in South Africa, and that they'd been
Speaker 1: staying at Monica's house. And that was probably enough information
Speaker 1: for what ended up being a pretty brief moment in
Speaker 1: the story I sat down to write. But digging around
Speaker 1: in their lives took me in some incredible and very
Speaker 1: unexpected directions. One of those Germans, Horst Cleans, had been
Speaker 1: involved in a government backed terrorist organization in Namibia. Another
Speaker 1: one of them, Alexander Nydlin, is still involved in writing
Speaker 1: politics in Germany today, and I was able to find
Speaker 1: and embed in the episode audio of him attending a
Speaker 1: Nazi rally in Croatia in twenty seventeen. I wasn't looking
Speaker 1: for any of that. I couldn't have asked someone else
Speaker 1: to find it. I just had to go on my
Speaker 1: own adventure and collect everything along the way. The most
Speaker 1: important part of the process for me is doing the
Speaker 1: research myself, because I don't know what I'm lofing looking for.
Speaker 1: I spend most of the week just sort of browsing,
Speaker 1: casting a wide net and pulling in mostly garbage. But
Speaker 1: I have to collect everything and put it in order
Speaker 1: before the story presents itself to me. I don't know
Speaker 1: what the story is until I'm done finding it. I'm
Speaker 1: sure there are better ways of going about this, but
Speaker 1: this is how I have to do it. So if
Speaker 1: you were one of the people asking questions about my process,
Speaker 1: and you hope the answer would be some kind of
Speaker 1: usable advice, I'm sorry. It really is just a sort
Speaker 1: of relentless, aimless rooting around and vibes.
Speaker 2: It's mostly vibes.
Speaker 1: There were also some questions about what kinds of material
Speaker 1: I might recommend to people who are interested in these subjects, books, podcasts,
Speaker 1: other researchers whose work I enjoy. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of books on the subject of white nationalism, whit premacy,
Speaker 1: domestic extremism, what have you, and a lot of them
Speaker 1: are really bad. The topic got popular in recent years
Speaker 1: and it became marketable, and then a lot of people
Speaker 1: with no business writing about it sold books. So you
Speaker 1: can't just pick up any book off the shelf and
Speaker 1: expect it to be valuable to you. But if you
Speaker 1: want to read a book about the white power movement
Speaker 1: in America, you have to read Kathleen Blue's Bring the
Speaker 1: War Home. It's rare for rigorously researched academic writing to
Speaker 1: also be a thrill to read, so you're really doing
Speaker 1: yourself a disservice if you haven't read it. I've read
Speaker 1: it more than once, and I keep my copy on
Speaker 1: the floor next to the chair that I write in.
Speaker 1: There are probably half a dozen episodes where I've picked
Speaker 1: it up and flipped to the index.
Speaker 2: And found what I needed.
Speaker 1: And if you're really interested in the nitty gritty you
Speaker 1: can't go wrong with Leonard Zeskin's Blood and Politics. It's
Speaker 1: more of an encyclopedia than a beach read, but it's
Speaker 1: probably the most comprehensive text out there on the subject
Speaker 1: of American white nationalism. Zeskin was a giant in this space.
Speaker 1: He found at the Institute for Research and Education on
Speaker 1: Human Rights in nineteen eighty three. He was the US
Speaker 1: correspondent for Searchlight magazine. He was the research director at
Speaker 1: the Anti Clan Network, and he was an activist and
Speaker 1: a human rights advocate, and he really shaped the way
Speaker 1: that researchers think and write about the far right in
Speaker 1: the United States. I was deeply saddened to hear he'd
Speaker 1: passed away just a few days ago. And as long
Speaker 1: as I'm recommending books, if you missed the interview I
Speaker 1: did with Spencer Sunshine a few months back, do give
Speaker 1: it a listen. His book Neo Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural
Speaker 1: Fascism is the first real exploration of siege the Nazi
Speaker 1: Terrorism Handbook by James Mason. And I can't miss an
Speaker 1: opportunity to recommend my dear friend Talia Lavin's books Culture
Speaker 1: Warlords and Wild Faith. They both trace the ideological roots
Speaker 1: of different strains of American extremism. As far as podcasts go,
Speaker 1: there are so many podcasts. Everybody has one these days,
Speaker 1: even me, And there are a lot of really good
Speaker 1: ones out there, and so I hope everyone will forgive
Speaker 1: me if I only recommend one. I'm not snubbing everyone else.
Speaker 1: I just can't let myself ramble on about podcasts on
Speaker 1: a podcast.
Speaker 2: That's just too much.
Speaker 1: I like to have a little audio going in my
Speaker 1: headphones when I'm huttering around the house. So I listen
Speaker 1: to a lot of podcasts, but I never miss an
Speaker 1: episode of Knowledge Fight. If you've never listened to it,
Speaker 1: the premise might sound a little off putting. It's one
Speaker 1: guy telling another guy about episodes of Info Wars, just
Speaker 1: two comedians talking about Alex Jones. It's fun and funny,
Speaker 1: and it's so easy to listen to that you might
Speaker 1: not even notice it first that Dan Freesen has painstakingly
Speaker 1: researched every single lie that comes out of Jones's mouth,
Speaker 1: and he can not only tell you what isn't true,
Speaker 1: he breaks down why it isn't true and how that
Speaker 1: particular lie functions in the right wing narrative.
Speaker 2: That's being constructed.
Speaker 1: It's been going on for years at this point, and
Speaker 1: he's become probably the world's leading expert on Alex Jones,
Speaker 1: which is probably not a title he aspired to as
Speaker 1: a child.
Speaker 2: Oh and actually I lied.
Speaker 1: I also have to recommend cool people who did cool stuff.
Speaker 1: If you haven't heard Margaret kill Joy's show, imagine the
Speaker 1: opposite of weird Little Guys. Aside from the fact that
Speaker 1: it's just nice sometimes to hear a story about people
Speaker 1: who aren't monsters.
Speaker 2: As someone who spends.
Speaker 1: Way too much time researching, I know what it sounds
Speaker 1: like when someone really digs deep to get the context
Speaker 1: to bring a story to life. And I just love
Speaker 1: Margaret's passion for stories of people who struggle to build
Speaker 1: a better world. Okay, let's wrap things up with some
Speaker 1: fun ones. You guys are honestly really sweet. A lot
Speaker 1: of the questions on the reddit weren't even about researching races.
Speaker 1: They were things like what's your favorite flavor of ice cream?
Speaker 1: And I'll address that one head on. I like cookies
Speaker 1: and cream, but not from the store. You don't like
Speaker 1: to buy store brought cookies and cream. I like to
Speaker 1: get plain vanilla ice cream. And add the cookies myself.
Speaker 1: It's just better that way. Plus I have seliac disease,
Speaker 1: so it's much cheaper to buy gluten free oreos and
Speaker 1: add them to regular ice cream.
Speaker 2: There were several.
Speaker 1: Questions about sweet treats. Actually, so I'm gonna let you
Speaker 1: in on one of my most important life philosophies.
Speaker 2: I call it the little treat. It's very simple.
Speaker 1: If you have an opportunity for a little treat, something
Speaker 1: harmless and affordable that won't take a lot of time
Speaker 1: out of your day or a lot of money of
Speaker 1: your wallet, and won't inconvenience anyone, you have to have
Speaker 1: the little treat. Life is just too hard and overwhelming.
Speaker 1: Just have a little treat sometimes. And little treat can
Speaker 1: be anything. It doesn't have to be a sweet treat.
Speaker 1: It can be putting on a fuzzy sweater right out
Speaker 1: of the dryer, or going around the block just one
Speaker 1: more time because the dogs are really enjoying the sunshine.
Speaker 1: The important part of little treat philosophy is recognizing in
Speaker 1: the moment that you have chosen to enjoy a little treat.
Speaker 1: It's the only way to live.
Speaker 2: You have to do it.
Speaker 1: One of you wrote on the subreddit that a question
Speaker 1: you like to ask people is what scared you as
Speaker 1: a kid, and I love that. I bet you get
Speaker 1: a lot of really weird answers to that. I was
Speaker 1: never afraid of the monster in the closet. I actually
Speaker 1: loved hanging out in my bedroom closet as a kid.
Speaker 1: I made it into sort of a cozy, private cave
Speaker 1: where I liked to read.
Speaker 2: But I was.
Speaker 1: So, so unbelievably scared of Bloody Mary. Very specifically, I
Speaker 1: was traumatized at a very young age by the version
Speaker 1: of the Bloody Mary story in the children's book Scary
Speaker 1: Stories to Tell in the Dark.
Speaker 2: I think everyone my age.
Speaker 1: Was traumatized by that book in one way or another.
Speaker 1: But I couldn't keep a mirror in my bedroom until
Speaker 1: I was in like high school.
Speaker 2: I wish I was kidding.
Speaker 1: I still don't like to go in the bathroom with
Speaker 1: the lights off. I'm thirty five years old, and I
Speaker 1: have shrugged off very real death threats from guys in
Speaker 1: very real murder cults, but I am, in fact a
Speaker 1: little bit scared of going in the bathroom with the
Speaker 1: lights off. I don't know what to tell you, and
Speaker 1: of course several of you asked about my dogs. They
Speaker 1: are the most important employees on the show. I couldn't
Speaker 1: do it without them. I have two docs In's brothers,
Speaker 1: named Otto and Buck. They'll be nine this summer, which
Speaker 1: is kind of crazy because they're really just puppies. I
Speaker 1: don't know how they could be puppies for nine years.
Speaker 1: I post pictures of them from time to time on
Speaker 1: Blue Sky if you'd like to see their sweet little faces.
Speaker 1: There were so many questions I didn't get to. I'm
Speaker 1: sure I'll do another Q and A episode eventually, but
Speaker 1: I am thrilled to be wrapping this up before three am,
Speaker 1: which is something I have not managed to do in months.
Speaker 1: I've got to go see a man about some ponies
Speaker 1: first thing in the morning, and I need to.
Speaker 2: Start packing for my honeymoon.
Speaker 1: There will be a regular episode next week, but there'll
Speaker 1: be a couple of reruns after that.
Speaker 2: I am so sorry.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to put together a couple of minisodes, like
Speaker 1: little bite sized side stories that I'd like to get
Speaker 1: out while I'm gone. But as I have just revealed
Speaker 1: to you over the course of this Q and A,
Speaker 1: I have no idea where I'm going or where I'll
Speaker 1: end up, so it's hard to say what I'll end
Speaker 1: up writing. Either way, there are many more Weird Little Guys,
Speaker 1: and I will tell you about them eventually. Weird Little
Speaker 1: Guys is a production of Fool Zoe Media and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: It's research, written, and recorded by me, Polly Conker. Our
Speaker 1: executive producers are Sophie Litterman and Robert Evans. The show
Speaker 1: is edited by the wildly talented Rory Gagan. The theme
Speaker 1: music was composed by Brad Dickert. You can email me
Speaker 1: at Weird Little Guys Podcast at gmail dot com. I
Speaker 1: will definitely read it, but I probably won't answer it.
Speaker 1: It's nothing personal. You can exchange conspiracy theories about the
Speaker 1: show with other listeners on the Weird Little Guys separated
Speaker 1: it just don't post anything. It's going to make you
Speaker 1: one of my Weird Little guys.
Speaker 2: Mhm