Speaker 1: Coo Zone Media.
Speaker 2: On Friday, June sixth, twenty twenty five, ICE agents descended
Speaker 2: on Los Angeles, California. The agents carried out immigration raids
Speaker 2: at three separate locations, including a home depot in Westlake.
Speaker 2: Dozens of men were snatched by masked armed agents. Ordinary
Speaker 2: people bystanders and shoppers tried to intervene. They tried to
Speaker 2: rescue the agent's targets, tried to pull them from the
Speaker 2: grasp of the masked men. They put their bodies in
Speaker 2: front of the unmarked SUVs. The detainees were shoved into.
Speaker 2: Dozens of people were taken. As words spread, more crowds
Speaker 2: began to gather. Protests sprang up organically. The people of
Speaker 2: Los Angeles demanded an end to the immigration raids and
Speaker 2: the unchecked violence by the ICE agents. Over one hundred
Speaker 2: people were arrested that first night, including California SCIU President
Speaker 2: David Huerta, but the raids continued, and so did the protests.
Speaker 2: Nearly a weekend for the ongoing protests, on June eleventh,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis appeared on The
Speaker 2: Reuben Report, a right wing political talk show hosted by
Speaker 2: failed comedian turned YouTube commentator Dave Rubin. The pair were
Speaker 2: discussing the situation in California, kind of DeSantis mostly used
Speaker 2: the opportunity to brag about his commitment to preventing people
Speaker 2: from freely exercising their civil rights, promising that anyone who
Speaker 2: stepped out of line in Florida would be arrested. But
Speaker 2: it's not just the police that protesters in Florida should
Speaker 2: worry about.
Speaker 3: And we also have a policy that if you you're
Speaker 3: driving on one of those streets and a mob comes
Speaker 3: and surrounds your vehicle and threatens you, you have a
Speaker 3: right to flee for your safety. And so if you
Speaker 3: drive off and you hit one of these people, that's
Speaker 3: their fault for impinging on you. You don't have to
Speaker 3: sit there and just be a sitting duck and let
Speaker 3: the mob grab you out of your car and drag
Speaker 3: you through the streets. You have a right to defend
Speaker 3: yourself in Florida.
Speaker 2: A day later, on June twelfth, Brivard County, Florida Sheriff
Speaker 2: Wayne Ivy held a press conference. He echoed many of
Speaker 2: the governor's warnings that protesters will face violence from both police.
Speaker 4: And civilians if you try to mob rule a car
Speaker 4: in Brevard County, gathering around it, refusing to let the
Speaker 4: driver leave. In our county, you're most likely going to
Speaker 4: get run over and dragged across the street.
Speaker 2: Desantiss comments came just a day after a hit and
Speaker 2: run at a protest in Chicago injured sixty six year
Speaker 2: old woman. In the days that followed, there were vehicular
Speaker 2: attacks on protests in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Riverside, California,
Speaker 2: and Culpeper, Virginia. By the time you hear this, there
Speaker 2: may well have been more. This kind of attack isn't new,
Speaker 2: and it isn't rare. It's become frighteningly common in recent
Speaker 2: years and is now being openly encouraged by right wing
Speaker 2: commentators and legislators alike. There are too many stories about
Speaker 2: angry drivers using a car as a weapon because they're
Speaker 2: unhappy with a protest. But there is one in particular
Speaker 2: that I know all too well. I'm Molly Conger, and
Speaker 2: this is weird. Little guys. This is the story of
Speaker 2: James Alex Fields Junior. I wish it weren't. I wish
Speaker 2: his story was irrelevant, that it was over and he
Speaker 2: didn't have to tell it again. On August twelfth, twenty seventeen,
Speaker 2: James alex Fields Junior drove his Dodge Challenger into a
Speaker 2: crowd of people on Fourth Street in downtown Charlottesville. The
Speaker 2: attack took place two hours after police declared an unlawful
Speaker 2: assembly and dispersed the crowd at nearby Market Street Park.
Speaker 2: Both the white supremacist who were gathered there to attend
Speaker 2: the United the Right rally and the counter protesters who'd
Speaker 2: shown up to oppose them were cleared from the area.
Speaker 2: The day was over. The group of people on Fourth
Speaker 2: Street that afternoon were marching to celebrate the Nazis were gone,
Speaker 2: the city was safe again. They were singing, enchanting. They
Speaker 2: were peaceful, they were joyful. The street they were on
Speaker 2: was closed to traffic that day. They had every reason
Speaker 2: to believe they were safe. He accelerated as he approached them.
Speaker 2: He injured dozens of people, he murdered one of them,
Speaker 2: and he will be in prison for the rest of
Speaker 2: his life. And because this is the story of James
Speaker 2: Alexfield Junior, that's where I'll focus. This is the story
Speaker 2: of a young man who loved Hitler and hated almost
Speaker 2: everyone else. He hated black people, he hated Jewish people,
Speaker 2: he hated anyone who wasn't white, and he hated white
Speaker 2: people who didn't share the hate that fueled him. It
Speaker 2: was hate that drove him as he drove his car
Speaker 2: into a crowd of people one hot August afternoon, eight
Speaker 2: years ago. That's what we're talking about. We won't talk
Speaker 2: too much about his victims, the dozens of people who
Speaker 2: are badly injured and survived. Many of them are very
Speaker 2: private people out of necessity, They've endured years of harassment
Speaker 2: from the supporters of the man who tried to kill them.
Speaker 2: For those who try to downplay the violence of what
Speaker 2: happens in this story, fix your hearts. It's been nearly
Speaker 2: seven years since Fields's trial, but the testimony of those
Speaker 2: victims is seared into my soul. There are pages of
Speaker 2: my notes where the ink is smeared from tears I
Speaker 2: couldn't wipe away fast enough as I hunched over the
Speaker 2: notebook in my lap in that courtroom. So I won't
Speaker 2: tell you how many surgical screws are in their bones,
Speaker 2: how many of them still can't run or jump, or
Speaker 2: lift their children into their arms, or make a closed
Speaker 2: fist with hands once shattered to dust. Of them still
Speaker 2: have nightmares and panic attacks and can't bear to look
Speaker 2: in the mirror because the sight of their scars sounds
Speaker 2: like screeching tires. Now isn't the time for that. And
Speaker 2: we won't talk about Heather Higher, not really that was
Speaker 2: her name, the woman that he murdered. I didn't know Heather.
Speaker 2: I wasn't there when she died. But I've met her mother,
Speaker 2: and I've seen the pain in her eyes when she
Speaker 2: talks about burying her daughter in secret in an unmarked grave,
Speaker 2: because conspiracy theorists think she was a crisis actor and
Speaker 2: neo Nazis talk openly about how they'd love to desecrate
Speaker 2: her final resting place. And I've seen her smile with
Speaker 2: tears in her eyes, remembering that one of the last
Speaker 2: things they said to each other was I love you.
Speaker 2: She's grateful for that. And I've heard her friends talk
Speaker 2: about who she was. She was outspoken and compassionate, and
Speaker 2: she was very much not a mourning person. She loved
Speaker 2: her chihuahua violet, and her favorite color was purple. She
Speaker 2: was loved. But this is a story about the man
Speaker 2: who took her life. And now with vehicular attacks on
Speaker 2: protesters on the rise. The story of Heather's murder bears
Speaker 2: remembering not just because these attacks bear frightening similarities to
Speaker 2: the one that took her life, but because the discourse
Speaker 2: surrounding them is full of lies about her death, lies
Speaker 2: used to justify more attacks and to call for the
Speaker 2: release of her killer. On August twelfth, twenty seventeen, white
Speaker 2: supremacists filled the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia. The event they'd
Speaker 2: all come to town for is one I've discussed several
Speaker 2: times already on this show, the Unite the Right Rally.
Speaker 2: James Alex Fields Junior was just one of thousands of
Speaker 2: people who traveled here that weekend to hear speeches from
Speaker 2: prominent neo Nazi and white supremacist activists. They never got
Speaker 2: to hear those speeches. The violence in the streets started
Speaker 2: hours before the event was scheduled to actually begin, and
Speaker 2: an unlawful assembly was declared. By eleven thirty a m.
Speaker 2: State police and riot gear pushed the rally goers out
Speaker 2: of the park and into the streets, where violent altercations
Speaker 2: with counter protesters continued. Maryland clansman Richard Preston had been
Speaker 2: threatening to shoot people all morning, and as he exited
Speaker 2: the park shortly before noon, he drew his gun, shouted
Speaker 2: die nward, and fired a single shot into the dirt
Speaker 2: at the feet of a young black man. As the
Speaker 2: white supremacist begrudgingly began making the two mile trek back
Speaker 2: to where they'd parked their cars, they encountered more counter
Speaker 2: protesters walking down Market Street. Alex Ramos, Daniel Borden, Tyler Watkins,
Speaker 2: and Jacob Goodwin were all eventually convicted for the brutal
Speaker 2: beating of another young black man. It was a vicious
Speaker 2: assault that took place directly outside of the Charlesville Police station.
Speaker 2: At least three other men who participated in the attack
Speaker 2: were never arrested. Two of them have never been identified.
Speaker 2: The third uncharged attackers identity is known, but he can't
Speaker 2: be charged. I identified him myself, but I was a
Speaker 2: little too late. It's a strange and terrible coincidence that
Speaker 2: I was going back through the video of that assault
Speaker 2: in February of twenty twenty three and I finally identified
Speaker 2: Teddy von Neuwcomb as one of the attackers just two
Speaker 2: weeks after he died. Teddy von Neucomb shot himself in
Speaker 2: the heart the morning he was scheduled to go on
Speaker 2: trial for fentanyl trafficking. But back to the morning of
Speaker 2: August twelfth. People got hurt that morning. The neo Nazi
Speaker 2: street fighting gang the Rise Above Movement, punched, shoved, and
Speaker 2: choked counter protesters standing on the sidewalk outside the park.
Speaker 2: A feyalanx of uniformed fascists carrying home made shields shoved
Speaker 2: their way through a line of peaceful counterdemonstrators. Members of
Speaker 2: the clergy were assaulted by Nazis. The air was thick
Speaker 2: with mace and screams. But that was the morning. By noon,
Speaker 2: they were all retreating to their cars. They were disappointed,
Speaker 2: They were hot and tired and frustrated. They were angry,
Speaker 2: but they were leaving. James Alex Fields hadn't actually parked
Speaker 2: his car at McIntyre Park. Most people had, but many
Speaker 2: of them had come with a group of some kind.
Speaker 2: Fields came alone. He left his home in Maumi, Ohio
Speaker 2: on the evening of Friday, August eleventh. He hadn't been
Speaker 2: sure he'd be able to attend. He only secured the
Speaker 2: weekend off from work a few days earlier, but he'd
Speaker 2: known about the rally for months. On Twitter, he followed
Speaker 2: rally organizers Richard Spencer and Augustus and Victus, as well
Speaker 2: as other prominent white supremacists like David Duke and Brad Griffin.
Speaker 2: He replied frequently to Richard Spencer's posts, though there's no
Speaker 2: indication Spencer ever took any notice of him. In July,
Speaker 2: Fields retweeted a post containing a flyer for the rally.
Speaker 2: All summer, he enthusiastically posted, retweeted, and commented on posts
Speaker 2: about violence at right wing rallies and other cities. He
Speaker 2: seemed particularly thrilled by images of the violence at rallies
Speaker 2: in California, pictures of members of the Rise Above movement
Speaker 2: beating a man in Huntington Beach, a gift of Nathan
Speaker 2: Dimigo punching a woman at Berkeley. He tweeted often at
Speaker 2: Baked Alaska, write Internet celebrity. On one occasion, he tagged
Speaker 2: Baked Alaska in a post that contained just fourteen words,
Speaker 2: A very specific fourteen words. We must secure the existence
Speaker 2: of our people and a future for white children. The
Speaker 2: white supremacist slogan first penned by David Lane while he
Speaker 2: was in prison, for his role in the murder of
Speaker 2: Jewish talk radio host Alan Berg. Fields posted pictures of
Speaker 2: Nazis marching in nineteen forties Germany, captioning it hashtag Tuesday motivation.
Speaker 2: He posted often about his belief that black people were
Speaker 2: genetically inferior, had low IQs, were predisposed to crime, and
Speaker 2: were more eighth than human. He self identified as a
Speaker 2: nationalist and expressed a willingness to kill anyone deemed to
Speaker 2: be a threat, writing things like violence is our only
Speaker 2: hope for survival as a people, and violence is the
Speaker 2: only solution. Many of the men who attended the United
Speaker 2: Stas Right rally would later claim that they'd only been
Speaker 2: there because they love Confederate statues. Protesting the removal of
Speaker 2: the statue of Robert E. Lee was allegedly the purpose
Speaker 2: of the event. But Fields is not an outlier here.
Speaker 2: He was not alone in the months that he spent
Speaker 2: watching the violence at other rallies that summer months, posting
Speaker 2: violent fantasies of killing for the white race. He was
Speaker 2: here because he was a Nazi, as were many of
Speaker 2: the men in the park that day. On Friday afternoon,
Speaker 2: he dropped his cat Buddy off at his mother's house
Speaker 2: for the weekend, and he texted her to let her know.
Speaker 2: She replied, as mothers do, be careful. He texted her
Speaker 2: back a picture of Adolf Hitler. Along with the image,
Speaker 2: he typed, we are not the ones who need to
Speaker 2: be careful. He didn't get here in time for the
Speaker 2: Torch March that night. He drove through the night, arriving
Speaker 2: in Charlottesville around two or three AM. Sitting alone in
Speaker 2: his car in McDonald's parking lot, he scrolled through social media.
Speaker 2: He saw a tweet from David Duke with pictures of
Speaker 2: the Torch March. Duke wrote, our people on the march,
Speaker 2: will you be at Unite the Right tomorrow? Field saved
Speaker 2: the pictures onto his phone and then he texted them
Speaker 2: to his mother. He also asked about his cap. He
Speaker 2: knacked a little bit in his car in the McDonald's
Speaker 2: parking lot, drove to waffle House to eat breakfast alone,
Speaker 2: and then returned to that McDonald's parking lot downtown early
Speaker 2: Saturday morning, as other attendees gathered in McIntyre Park, nearly
Speaker 2: two miles from the location of the rally, he was
Speaker 2: already downtown, just a few blocks from his destination. I know,
Speaker 2: that's a lot of seemingly extreme raeous information about where
Speaker 2: people were parking their cars, and it probably means nothing
Speaker 2: to you unless you live here and you can picture
Speaker 2: in your mind how close the McDonald's on Ridge Street
Speaker 2: is to that park downtown. But getting back to various
Speaker 2: parked cars becomes a key piece of this timeline, I promise.
Speaker 2: So Fields's car is downtown at the McDonald's, but most
Speaker 2: of the attendees have parked their cars at a different park,
Speaker 2: one that was far away from the park where the
Speaker 2: rally would be. Fields had probably planned to sit there
Speaker 2: in his car until closer to noon, when the rally
Speaker 2: was scheduled to begin, but from where he was parked,
Speaker 2: he could see that people were starting to walk in
Speaker 2: that direction, so he joined them. By around nine am,
Speaker 2: he was among the first attendees to arrive at Market
Speaker 2: Street Park. Photos taken that morning show Field standing with
Speaker 2: members of Vanguard America. That's a now defunct neo Nazi
Speaker 2: group that later that year would morph into what we
Speaker 2: now know as Patriot Front. There had been an ongoing
Speaker 2: power struggle within Vanguard America that summer, and the group's
Speaker 2: official leader, Dylan Hopper didn't actually attend the event. In
Speaker 2: Hopper's absence, the group was commanded on the ground that
Speaker 2: day by the man who was trying to wrest control
Speaker 2: of it from Dylan Hopper. It was an eighteen year
Speaker 2: old whose name you might already know was a young
Speaker 2: Thomas Rousseau, the current leader of Patriot Front. Everyone involved
Speaker 2: has always maintained that James Alex Fields was not a
Speaker 2: member of Vanguard America. They claimed they'd never met him before,
Speaker 2: but there he was, marching in their ranks, dressed identically
Speaker 2: to their members and holding a round wooden shield with
Speaker 2: their logo on it. According to deposition testimony from Dylan Hopper,
Speaker 2: it was Thomas Rousseau himself who handed Fields the shield.
Speaker 5: Morning.
Speaker 2: From his deposition, he told me that he let James
Speaker 2: Fields into Vanguard America's formation at Charlottesville when nobody knew
Speaker 2: who he was. He didn't come with anybody, and they
Speaker 2: just gave him a shield and said, hey, march with us.
Speaker 2: And Thomas Rousseau's reasoning was to make Vanguard look like
Speaker 2: a larger organization in front of the news media. Vanguard
Speaker 2: America's official position was that James Alex Field was not
Speaker 2: a member of their organization, but they also claimed that
Speaker 2: they didn't actually have any kind of list of their
Speaker 2: members that they could show that didn't have his name
Speaker 2: on it, because there was no list. The organization was
Speaker 2: one of many named defendants in a lawsuit filed by
Speaker 2: people who were hurt that day, and over the years
Speaker 2: of litigation in that suit, Vanguard America never produced a
Speaker 2: single document. They expect us to believe that they didn't
Speaker 2: have a single text message, email, organizational communication, or internal
Speaker 2: document that was responsive to the discovery request. Hopper claimed
Speaker 2: they kept no records of any kind and he didn't
Speaker 2: even know the real names of most of the group's members.
Speaker 2: So they're able to swear under oath that they know
Speaker 2: for sure that Fields wasn't a member, but they couldn't
Speaker 2: actually tell you who was. For what it's worth, I
Speaker 2: do think it's pretty plausible that a teenage Thomas Russo
Speaker 2: was foolish enough to hand a shield to a stranger.
Speaker 2: He really to make himself look more important, so that
Speaker 2: it looked like he was commanding a larger group of
Speaker 2: Nazis in front of a TV camera. Videos show Field
Speaker 2: standing with the Vanguard America shield wall at the perimeter
Speaker 2: of the park. He's joining in racist, sexist, homophobic, and
Speaker 2: anti Semitic chants, and he seems to be having a
Speaker 2: pretty good time. When the police cleared the park at
Speaker 2: eleven thirty, Field's left with everyone else. There was some
Speaker 2: hope that the rally would regroup back at McIntyre Park
Speaker 2: and they could still hear the scheduled speeches, So even
Speaker 2: though he was so close to his parked car, which
Speaker 2: again was downtown, he walked with the crowd back to
Speaker 2: McIntyre Park two miles away. At trial, an FBI analyst
Speaker 2: testified about the geolocation data extracted from Peels's cell phone.
Speaker 2: This shouldn't matter. This is tedious, and it's boring, and
Speaker 2: it's nitpicky, and it shouldn't matter. It shouldn't matter where
Speaker 2: he was from minute to minute between eleven thirty am
Speaker 2: and one forty pm. It should be enough for me
Speaker 2: to tell you that he left the park around eleven
Speaker 2: thirty and by one forty pm he was committing a murder.
Speaker 2: But two hours in between are just a long hot walk.
Speaker 2: Why does it matter? But unfortunately it matters a great deal.
Speaker 2: A conspiracy theory has broken containment and I feel compelled
Speaker 2: to try again to set the record straight. When people
Speaker 2: like Rond De Santis or Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivy
Speaker 2: encourage people to run protesters over, they claim they're talking
Speaker 2: about self defense, but the self defense that exists in
Speaker 2: their imaginations doesn't really have any relationship with reality. It's
Speaker 2: the same self defense that James Alex Fields would claim
Speaker 2: after his crime, the same self defense his supporters have
Speaker 2: cooked up elaborate imaginary scenarios to justify what Fields did
Speaker 2: was not self defense. He was convicted by a jury.
Speaker 2: He eventually pled guilty to similar charges in a federal court.
Speaker 2: But the recent popular enthusiasm for murdering protesters has broken
Speaker 2: free from the confines of hardcore violent extremist chat rooms.
Speaker 2: It's gone mainstream, and the conspiracy theories about Fields's crime
Speaker 2: are spreading now too. And I want to give you
Speaker 2: the facts you might need to combat those lies if
Speaker 2: you encounter them out there in the world. Some of
Speaker 2: those lies are easy to debunk quickly. There are people
Speaker 2: who will tell you that Heather Higher didn't even get
Speaker 2: hit by the car, that her death was from a
Speaker 2: heart attack. To that, I offer you the testimony of
Speaker 2: a DNA analyst from the Virginia Department of Forensic Science.
Speaker 2: She performed testing that confirmed that a piece of human
Speaker 2: flesh that was embedded in the car's broken windshield was
Speaker 2: a DNA match to Heather. Higher testing performed on bloodstains
Speaker 2: found on the vehicle showed at least ten distinct profiles.
Speaker 2: Ten people's blood was on that car, including Heather's. The
Speaker 2: medical examiner who performed Heather's autopsy showed the jury X
Speaker 2: rays of a displaced fracture to Heather's right femur, broken ribs,
Speaker 2: cut her lungs, and her liver. Her aorda was completely transsected.
Speaker 2: The doctor's exact words, according to my notes, were, it
Speaker 2: was snapped in half. The aorda is the largest artery
Speaker 2: in the human body, taking blood directly from the heart
Speaker 2: out into the body. Completely severing the aorda is not
Speaker 2: a survivable injury. She bled to death internally very quickly.
Speaker 2: The official cause of death was blunt force trauma to
Speaker 2: the Torso anyone who was stuck arguing that the car
Speaker 2: never struck her, or that she died of anything other
Speaker 2: than being struck by that car is willfully ignorant.
Speaker 1: These facts are quite concrete.
Speaker 2: The other persistent lie is a little more complicated. I
Speaker 2: mean the facts are there. I don't mean there's actually
Speaker 2: any lingering confusion. It's just a more convoluted narrative, and
Speaker 2: the average conspiracy theorist isn't going to sit quietly long
Speaker 2: enough to have it explained to them. The story goes
Speaker 2: like this, He had to do it. Fields was terrified
Speaker 2: of Antifa. He didn't want to hurt those people. He
Speaker 2: was trying to escape from a man who was threatening
Speaker 2: him with a rifle. He was afraid for his life.
Speaker 2: That people who repeat this story often don't know or
Speaker 2: don't care to know, any more than that the specifics
Speaker 2: aren't important, only the feeling. They feel it must be
Speaker 2: true because it affirms their existing belief that left wing
Speaker 2: protesters are violent and that right wing white men are persecuted.
Speaker 2: The problem is this never happened. This was a lie
Speaker 2: born by accident. A leftist counter demonstrator made an understandable mistake.
Speaker 2: You see, there were members of left wing groups in
Speaker 2: Charlottesville that day who carried guns. This is Virginia. It's
Speaker 2: legal to open carry a rifle in public, regardless of
Speaker 2: how you feel about that. In terms of God laws
Speaker 2: in general, protest tactics specifically, whatever, that's just the situation.
Speaker 2: It is legal for people to open carry a rifle
Speaker 2: in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Members of an anarchist gun
Speaker 2: club were in a different downtown park, Court Square Park,
Speaker 2: which is about two blocks from the Market Street Park
Speaker 2: where the rally was held. In the days after that rally,
Speaker 2: one of those counter demonstrators, who had been legally carrying
Speaker 2: his rifle that day, posted online that he'd seen Fields
Speaker 2: that afternoon before the attack. He wrote, I used this
Speaker 2: rifle to chase off James Fields from our block of
Speaker 2: Fourth Street before he attacked the marchers to the south.
Speaker 2: And when he posted that he believed it to be true,
Speaker 2: he was traumatized. He had survivor's guilt. He truly believed
Speaker 2: that he had seen James Fields driving around hunting for
Speaker 2: victims and the hour before the attack happened, but he
Speaker 2: was wrong. After his Facebook post, a Charlesville police detective
Speaker 2: drove to his home to interview him, and I've obtained
Speaker 2: a copy of that police interview. He said that around
Speaker 2: one pm that afternoon, he saw a dark gray muscle
Speaker 2: car with very dark tinted windows circling Court Square Park.
Speaker 2: The car was driving slowly, as though the driver were
Speaker 2: trying to observe the people in the park. The third
Speaker 2: time the card drove past, it came to a complete stop,
Speaker 2: level with where he was standing inside the park, and
Speaker 2: at that point, he says, he stepped down off the curb,
Speaker 2: standing between two parked cars, so not all the way
Speaker 2: out into the road, but off the curb, and he
Speaker 2: yelled at the car something like get out of here.
Speaker 2: And he says the interaction was brief. The driver did
Speaker 2: not roll down the window. They didn't exchange words. His
Speaker 2: rifle remained slung across his body, muzzle pointing at the ground,
Speaker 2: and he never put his hand on the pistol grip.
Speaker 2: He did not raise his weapon, he didn't step all
Speaker 2: the way out into the road, and he was the
Speaker 2: only person who moved in the direction of the car
Speaker 2: at all. There was no mob, there was no threat,
Speaker 2: there was no rifle pointing, but more importantly, there was
Speaker 2: no James Alex Fields. He was mistaken. After the attack,
Speaker 2: he saw photos of Fields's dark gray Dodge Challenger, and
Speaker 2: he believed it was the same car he'd seen earlier
Speaker 2: that day, but it absolutely could not have been. It
Speaker 2: is not possible. At the time of the attack one
Speaker 2: forty pm, this man was in the middle of an
Speaker 2: interview with a reporter. The reporter took photographs of him
Speaker 2: for the story, and those photographs are timestamped at one
Speaker 2: thirty pm. He estimates they'd been talking for about fifteen
Speaker 2: minutes before they started taking the pictures, and the incident
Speaker 2: with the mysterious car had occurred a little bit prior
Speaker 2: to this, So if he's been talking to a reporter
Speaker 2: since one fifteen, his best guess is that he saw
Speaker 2: this car sometime between twelve forty five and one fifteen.
Speaker 2: It couldn't have been any later than one fifteen. And
Speaker 2: we know exactly where James Alex Fields was at one
Speaker 2: thirteen PM because there a security footage from a Shell
Speaker 2: gas station showing him purchasing a blue power aid. Fields
Speaker 2: left his car in the McDonald's parking lot around nine
Speaker 2: am and he didn't return to it again until around
Speaker 2: one twenty pm. Neither Fields nor his car were anywhere
Speaker 2: near Court Square Park when this man saw a dark
Speaker 2: gray muscle car slowly circling the park. The police have
Speaker 2: never weighed in on this. I wish they would, because
Speaker 2: I think they know the answer. I think they could
Speaker 2: put this to bed if they felt like it. It
Speaker 2: is my very firmly held belief that the car that
Speaker 2: man saw that day was an unmarked police car. The
Speaker 2: Charlstol Police Department did have an unmarked dark gray Dodge
Speaker 2: charger with dark tinted windows. Mistaking a charger for a
Speaker 2: challenger is a hard to believe if you saw it
Speaker 2: only briefly, and it's very easy to imagine why a
Speaker 2: cop might make several laps around the park to try
Speaker 2: to get a better look at the guys with the guns.
Speaker 2: I don't think we'll ever get an answer to the
Speaker 2: question of who exactly it was driving around the park
Speaker 2: at one pm, but I can promise you it was
Speaker 2: not James Alex Fields. Field's left downtown around eleven thirty
Speaker 2: am with the other rally attendees. Again, they all kind
Speaker 2: of hoped that maybe the rally wasn't a total wash
Speaker 2: and they'd still be able to hear some speeches back
Speaker 2: at McIntyre Park, so he joined in the crowd walking
Speaker 2: back that way. According to GPS data from his cell phone,
Speaker 2: Fields was in McIntyre Park shortly afternoon. He milled around
Speaker 2: a little, but it quickly became clear that nothing was
Speaker 2: going to happen there. He needed to walk back downtown
Speaker 2: to get to his car, but he didn't really want
Speaker 2: to walk there alone. He met another man in the
Speaker 2: same situation, Joshua Matthews. The pair soon met Sarah Bolstad
Speaker 2: and her boyfriend Hayden Calhoun, two other rally attendees who
Speaker 2: needed to get back downtown, and they all decided to
Speaker 2: walk there together. Fields's cell phone pings show a minute
Speaker 2: by minute progression of this walk, and at one thirteen
Speaker 2: p m. He's on camera buying that power aid. Joshua
Speaker 2: Matthews testify that he bought a bottle of wine at
Speaker 2: the gas station to celebrate getting through the day safely.
Speaker 2: It took another five minutes from there to walk back
Speaker 2: to Fields's car at the mc donald's. All four of
Speaker 2: them got into his car and he drove Bolstad and
Speaker 2: Calhoun to their car, which turned out to be right
Speaker 2: across the street. Matthews had parked in the garage downtown,
Speaker 2: which was another couple of minutes away by car. By
Speaker 2: one thirty five p m. James Alex Fields is alone
Speaker 2: in his car after dropping off his last passenger at
Speaker 2: the Market Street parking garage, typed Mammy Ohio into the
Speaker 2: search bar on the maps app on his phone to
Speaker 2: get directions home. The streets were empty at that point.
Speaker 2: Everyone had gone home, even the police. There were extensive
Speaker 2: road closures downtown that day for the scheduled rally, and
Speaker 2: officers had been stationed in the intersections around the roadblocks.
Speaker 2: The officers were gone now, but the streets were still
Speaker 2: blocked off. In hindsight, maybe they should have closed the
Speaker 2: Market Street parking garage too. That part of downtown has
Speaker 2: a lot of narrow one way streets and it can
Speaker 2: be confusing for out of towners even without the added
Speaker 2: complication of the roadblocks. But there are a lot of
Speaker 2: things I think the city would have done differently with
Speaker 2: the benefit of hindsight, and even locals were a little
Speaker 2: bit puzzled about how to navigate this situation. Two other
Speaker 2: drivers had run into the same problem, ending up on
Speaker 2: Fourth Street just before Fields did. The first driver was
Speaker 2: a woman I'll just call l She was driving home
Speaker 2: from running an errand and she got mixed up with
Speaker 2: the roadblocks. Fourth Street was technically closed to traffic two
Speaker 2: but the tiny wooden sawhorse still standing in the road
Speaker 2: didn't block it completely, so she turned down that street.
Speaker 2: At the intersection of Fourth and Water Street, there was
Speaker 2: a stop sign, and as she stopped at the bottom
Speaker 2: of Fourth Street, the crowd of marchers is coming up
Speaker 2: Water towards that intersection. They're chanting and singing, and they're
Speaker 2: joyfully reclaiming their city streets from the Nazi invasion. And
Speaker 2: as they approached the intersection, they turned left up Fourth
Speaker 2: Street towards the pedestrian mall. They were singing, they were laughing.
Speaker 2: She said. The crowd just felt so positive, so happy
Speaker 2: that she got out of her car. I wanted to
Speaker 2: get that on film, she testified at Feels' trial. This
Speaker 2: was a moment in history. One of the marchers recognized
Speaker 2: her and ran over to say hi and smile for
Speaker 2: the Snapchat video she was recording. It's a joyful moment.
Speaker 2: As this is happening, A second car pulled in behind
Speaker 2: Elle's van as she stopped at this intersection. This car,
Speaker 2: driven by a woman I'll just call Tea, stopped too.
Speaker 2: She hadn't attended any of the protests that morning, but
Speaker 2: when she heard that everything was over, she left her
Speaker 2: house to go visit a friend who lived near downtown.
Speaker 2: She was on her way home when she got caught
Speaker 2: up trying to navigate the roadblocks. Tea testified that as
Speaker 2: she wound her way around downtown trying to figure out
Speaker 2: which streets weren't closed, there was another car behind her
Speaker 2: the entire time. He seemed to be in the same boat.
Speaker 2: He followed her at a safe distance, driving calmly and safely,
Speaker 2: making the same turns she made, and stopping behind her
Speaker 2: at a red light. Like L. She drove past the
Speaker 2: little saw Horse on Fourth Street, and the gray dodged
Speaker 2: challenger was still right behind her. She saw the crowd
Speaker 2: at the end of the street as she approached, so
Speaker 2: she was driving really slowly, and she came to a
Speaker 2: stop behind L's van. It was amazing, she said, I've
Speaker 2: never seen so many people standing up for black people,
Speaker 2: so many people of another color standing up for us.
Speaker 2: She testified that a passing marcher leaned in toward her
Speaker 2: open car window and thanked her for being so patient.
Speaker 2: As the group moved up the street around her idling car,
Speaker 2: the challenger was still behind her. In her rearview mirror,
Speaker 2: she saw the car start to back up. That made
Speaker 2: sense to her. D saw the crowd and changed his mind.
Speaker 2: Maybe he didn't want to wait down there at the
Speaker 2: bottom of Fourth Street for the crowd to pass. Who
Speaker 2: knows how long it might take, so he's probably going
Speaker 2: to back all the way back out onto Market Street
Speaker 2: and try a different path. She remembered, thinking she might
Speaker 2: be there for a while, but there was no way
Speaker 2: she would be able to maneuver her car all the
Speaker 2: way back out to Market Street and reverse, so she
Speaker 2: stayed put. If you're not familiar with downtown Charlottesville, we
Speaker 2: have a pedestrian mall. It's just an outdoor area a
Speaker 2: few blocks of shops and restaurants, and it's just for pedestrians.
Speaker 2: But for some ungodly stupid reason, there are two streets
Speaker 2: that intersect it. Our pedestrian only mall has two vehicular crossings,
Speaker 2: and Fourth Street is one of them. So these three
Speaker 2: cars turned onto Fourth Street from Market Street where it
Speaker 2: crosses the mall, and as you pass on to and
Speaker 2: then back off off of the pedestrian only area, as
Speaker 2: you proceed down Fourth Street, there are speed bumps. Security
Speaker 2: camera footage from a nearby business shows each car as
Speaker 2: it drove down Fourth Street. L's red van, then tes
Speaker 2: silver sedan, then the Challenger. The angle of this camera
Speaker 2: was only meant to capture the area just outside the
Speaker 2: restaurant's door, so it just catches a fleeting glimpse of
Speaker 2: each vehicle as they cross onto the pedestrian mall. One
Speaker 2: minute and ten seconds after it fields, his car first
Speaker 2: appear driving down Fourth Street. It reappears in frame driving
Speaker 2: in reverse, and then suddenly it accelerates forward. There was
Speaker 2: no one around him. The security camera footage shows that
Speaker 2: witnesses testified to that the state police helicopter hover overhead
Speaker 2: recording video of the entire scene clearly shows it. El
Speaker 2: and T had made the same mistake he did, turning
Speaker 2: down a closed road, and they were waiting patiently for
Speaker 2: the peaceful crowd to make their way onto the pedestrian mall,
Speaker 2: but he was behind them, idling alone watching. When T
Speaker 2: saw him start to reverse, she assumed he was leaving,
Speaker 2: but he was just giving himself more room to accelerate.
Speaker 2: A photojournalist from the local newspaper was on the mall
Speaker 2: that afternoon. He'd worked all morning taking pictures of the
Speaker 2: violent scenes on Market Street, but he'd come back out
Speaker 2: that afternoon, now that everything was over, to look around.
Speaker 2: It wasn't with the crowd, but he heard them and
Speaker 2: walked over to see. He saw the Great Challenger just
Speaker 2: as it started reversing, and he too assumed the car
Speaker 2: was trying to back out onto Market Street. But then
Speaker 2: he heard the engine revving. He raised his camera and
Speaker 2: captured seventy four frames, a rapid burst of photos, sort
Speaker 2: of a grisly flip book. Here, too, we can lay
Speaker 2: to rest another persistent lie. While the helicopter footage provides
Speaker 2: a clear view of the entire scene, it's a bird's
Speaker 2: eye view. You can only see the tops of things,
Speaker 2: only the top of the car. I've seen the video.
Speaker 2: It's clear enough to me that the driver was accelerating,
Speaker 2: that he made no attempt to slow down as he
Speaker 2: plowed into the crowd. But both his attorneys at trial
Speaker 2: and his supporters online will tell you that he hit
Speaker 2: the brakes he tried to slow down. These photos prove otherwise.
Speaker 2: On the stand, the photographer has shown his own pictures.
Speaker 2: In one frame, the brake lights are illuminated, indicating that
Speaker 2: the driver tapped his brakes. But this wasn't as he
Speaker 2: neared the crowd. It was the moment his car bottomed
Speaker 2: out over a speed bump. Several witnesses testified that they
Speaker 2: heard the car's undercarriage scrape the speed bump as he
Speaker 2: crossed the pedestrian mall. Several testified that it looked like
Speaker 2: the car was briefly airborne because it hit the speed
Speaker 2: bump so fast. But once he cleared that barrier, the
Speaker 2: brake lights never came on again. As he approached the crowd,
Speaker 2: he was accelerating. It sounded like a gunshot. I just
Speaker 2: remember screaming. I think I was saying, where are my kids?
Speaker 2: Where are my kids? I thought a bomb went off.
Speaker 2: I thought more cars might be coming. I tried to
Speaker 2: get out of the street, but I didn't know why.
Speaker 2: My legs wouldn't work. When I came to, my leg
Speaker 2: was broken and I couldn't find my child. The only
Speaker 2: thing I could think about was getting my wife out.
Speaker 5: Of the way.
Speaker 2: These are the words of the people whose bones he broke.
Speaker 2: He drove right through that crowd, ramming into the back
Speaker 2: of Tea's car, pushing it forward into L's van. L
Speaker 2: was actually hit by her own parked car. She'd gotten
Speaker 2: out to greet a friend in the crowd and was
Speaker 2: standing in front of the van when it was pushed
Speaker 2: forward in the crash. The street was too narrow for
Speaker 2: fields to continue on this path. The two cars he'd
Speaker 2: crashed into were blocking the intersection. And here again we
Speaker 2: have a moment in time that has become distorted in
Speaker 2: the retelling conspiracy. Theorists will tell you that the crowd
Speaker 2: attacked his car unprovoked, that the damage to his vehicle
Speaker 2: occurred before the attack, that he feared for his life
Speaker 2: because this mob attacked him, and there certainly was some
Speaker 2: damage to his car that wasn't from the crash, but
Speaker 2: that didn't happen until after the crash. Dozens of people
Speaker 2: relying on the ground, bleeding and broken. Many people ran,
Speaker 2: not knowing what horrors might come next. Was he going
Speaker 2: to get out of the car with a gun? And
Speaker 2: for every person who was lying injured on the pavement,
Speaker 2: half a dozen others stepped up to render aid, moving
Speaker 2: victims out of the street, tearing off their own clothes
Speaker 2: to try to stop bleeding, stabilizing possibly broken necks. But
Speaker 2: some people in that crowd identified a threat and they
Speaker 2: did what they felt was necessary, striking the vehicle and
Speaker 2: putting a few good dents in it. He had just
Speaker 2: killed someone. I think that's fair. With no path forward,
Speaker 2: Fields really was surrounded by an angry crowd. Now in
Speaker 2: the collective imaginations of aggrieved white supremacists, this angry crowd
Speaker 2: has existed throughout the story, but the evidence is clear
Speaker 2: no one had an issue with the gray Challenger until
Speaker 2: after it was a clear and present danger. He threw
Speaker 2: the car into reverse, hitting several more people in the process,
Speaker 2: and backed all the way back up Fourth Street, back
Speaker 2: onto Market Street, and he drove toward the highway. He
Speaker 2: still had the GPS directions for his trip back home
Speaker 2: pulled up on his phone. The footage captured by the
Speaker 2: state police helicopter tracked his flight from the scene. The
Speaker 2: officers who filmed it never actually testified they couldn't. A
Speaker 2: few hours later, miles from downtown, they lost control of
Speaker 2: their helicopter and both troopers died in the crash. Fields
Speaker 2: drove for a little over a mile, with an officer
Speaker 2: in pursuit for much of that drive, before surrendering just
Speaker 2: blocks from the on ramp to the interstate. The officer
Speaker 2: who pulled him over actually had no idea what Fields
Speaker 2: had done. He just happened to hear the radio call
Speaker 2: just as Fields was passing by where he was sitting
Speaker 2: in his parked car. So in Field saw the officer
Speaker 2: and asked, are the people okay? He didn't know the answer.
Speaker 2: It wasn't until he was sitting at the police station
Speaker 2: that an officer told him that someone had died. Based
Speaker 2: on the audio of this interview, sounds like he was
Speaker 2: having a panic attack. It is impossible to know which
Speaker 2: one of a man's lies he actually believes. As he
Speaker 2: was lying face down on the side of the road,
Speaker 2: he said, I didn't want to hurt people, but they
Speaker 2: were attacking me, And later at the magistrate's office, Fields
Speaker 2: can be heard on bodycam footage saying, I felt like
Speaker 2: the people behind me were trying to surround me, but
Speaker 2: that just isn't true. There were no people behind him,
Speaker 2: not until he drove over them. Anyway. The only time
Speaker 2: his car was ever surrounded by anyone was when he
Speaker 2: drove into them. He sat all alone for a minute
Speaker 2: and ten seconds, looking down that street at the crowd.
Speaker 2: He was obviously capable of backing all the way back
Speaker 2: up Fourth Street. He ended up doing just that after
Speaker 2: the murder, but he chose to accelerate forward instead. He
Speaker 2: chose that because he wanted to hurt them. He wanted
Speaker 2: to hurt black people and Jewish people and gay people
Speaker 2: and liberals and communists. He saw Black Lives Matter signs
Speaker 2: and rainbow flags and people in black bandannas, and he
Speaker 2: couldn't stand it. He had other options. He wasn't defending himself,
Speaker 2: and he knows that a few months after the attack,
Speaker 2: while he was awaiting trial in the local jail, he
Speaker 2: brought up the topic of heather Hire's mother in a
Speaker 2: phone call with his own mother.
Speaker 5: Was like going around one speeches and ship slander and
Speaker 5: me commies. I had unheard anything I'm going to do
Speaker 5: radiyat oh okay, No, I think I think was that
Speaker 5: she was on the news and one speeches and ship.
Speaker 5: She's one of those anti white communists. She lost it
Speaker 5: on her. You know, it doesn't matter. She's a communist.
Speaker 5: You need to stop talking. Nobody isn't She is a
Speaker 5: communist and anti white. Okay, it's not for questioning she is.
Speaker 5: She's the enemy, Nobody's mother.
Speaker 2: Her death doesn't fucking matter. Her mother's pain doesn't fucking matter.
Speaker 2: They're the enemy. They're anti white communists, and their lives
Speaker 2: are worthless and they don't fucking matter. That's what he believes.
Speaker 2: That's the truth. Not the self serving, self pitying tears
Speaker 2: and the mattressrate's office, not the lies that he told
Speaker 2: his lawyers that they repeated for him in court. None
Speaker 2: of that. This is the truth. Like I said, I
Speaker 2: didn't know Heather, but I've met her mother on a
Speaker 2: few occasions. We've never talked to politics, not really. We
Speaker 2: talked about her daughter, about the case, about the Nazi
Speaker 2: who said he was going to use her daughter's grave
Speaker 2: as a urinal. She always asks me how my little
Speaker 2: dogs are. But I'm willing to stake a claim here
Speaker 2: and say that neither Heather nor her mother would say
Speaker 2: that they're communists, because that word doesn't mean when you
Speaker 2: think it means. Here, he doesn't mean someone who identifies
Speaker 2: with the political ideology of communism. It means someone who
Speaker 2: doesn't want Nazis around. It means someone that white nationalists
Speaker 2: don't like. In another record of jail call, Fields explained
Speaker 2: to his mother that all liberals are communists who hate
Speaker 2: white people and want to destroy a white society. So
Speaker 2: when you see a white supremacist talking about his fervent
Speaker 2: desire to hurt or kill communists, just know he means
Speaker 2: you too. The murder was premeditated. He was convicted of
Speaker 2: first degree murder, which in Virginia requires premeditation, but that
Speaker 2: doesn't mean you have to make the plan far in advance.
Speaker 2: At trial, the prosecutor emphasized that they believed he formulated
Speaker 2: his intent during that one minute and ten seconds that
Speaker 2: he spent idling on Fourth Street, staring down at the crowd.
Speaker 2: And I think that's almost certainly the truth. I don't
Speaker 2: think that he drove here from Ohio intending to do this.
Speaker 2: I don't think he knew when he left his cat
Speaker 2: at his mother's house for the weekend that he would
Speaker 2: never come home again. The plan didn't form until the
Speaker 2: opportunity presented itself. But the plan was able to form
Speaker 2: so quickly because he'd thought about it before, and he
Speaker 2: wasn't the only one. I think I need to do
Speaker 2: a follow up episode about the history of vehicle attacks
Speaker 2: on protests. I'd intended to get into it here, but
Speaker 2: I sort of lost track of things. It was a
Speaker 2: subject of interest in certain circles and several similar attacks
Speaker 2: in the United States predate this one. In the discord
Speaker 2: server for Unite the Right rally attendees, the idea came
Speaker 2: up several times. I don't believe there's any evidence that
Speaker 2: Fields was ever an active participant in the chat, but
Speaker 2: it just goes to show how prevalent the fantasy was.
Speaker 2: A month before the rally, a user posting as Tyrone,
Speaker 2: said is it legal to run over protesters blocking roadways?
Speaker 2: I'm not just ship posting. I would like clarification. The
Speaker 2: same user posted a meme showing a large piece of
Speaker 2: John Deere farming equipment with the text introducing John Deere's
Speaker 2: new multi lane Protester digester Tyrone wrote, sure would be nice.
Speaker 2: A week earlier, another user posted what is it called
Speaker 2: when you run over a protester? Black lives splatter? Shane Duffy,
Speaker 2: a member of the neo Nazi group Traditionalist Worker Party,
Speaker 2: posted this will be us alongside an image from the
Speaker 2: two thousand and four movie Dawn of the Dead depicting
Speaker 2: a bus driving into a crowd of zombies. Two days
Speaker 2: before the rally, another user posted on the subject of
Speaker 2: counter protesters, writing, you're supposed to run them over with
Speaker 2: your car. These are jokes, probably kind of that's what
Speaker 2: they'd tell you, And none of those men actually did it,
Speaker 2: so maybe they were kidding. Think it's instructive here to
Speaker 2: quote from the style guide written by the editor of
Speaker 2: the neo Nazi website The Daily Stormer. It was intended
Speaker 2: to be an internal document for the site's authors, and
Speaker 2: the site was one that many of these men read daily.
Speaker 2: In the section about humor, the document's author Andrew Anglin wrote,
Speaker 2: the tone of the site should be light. Most people
Speaker 2: are not comfortable with material that comes across as vitriolic, raging,
Speaker 2: non ironic hatred. The undoctrinated should not be able to
Speaker 2: tell if we are joking or not. There should also
Speaker 2: be a conscious awareness of mocking stereotypes of hateful racists.
Speaker 2: I usually think of this as self deprecating humor. I
Speaker 2: am a racist making fun of stereotypes of racists because
Speaker 2: I don't take myself super seriously. This is obviously a ploy,
Speaker 2: and I actually do want to gas antisemitic slur for
Speaker 2: Jewish people, but that's neither here nor there. Serious articles
Speaker 2: are fine and can be written and published with absolute seriousness. However,
Speaker 2: articles which take a serious tone should not include racial
Speaker 2: slurs or even rude language about other races. Another section
Speaker 2: with a heading violence reads it's illegal to promote violence
Speaker 2: on the Internet. At the same time, it's totally important
Speaker 2: to normalize the acceptance of violence as an eventuality slash inevitability.
Speaker 2: I'm extremely careful about never suggesting violence. I go beyond
Speaker 2: legal requirements in America. However, whenever someone does something violent,
Speaker 2: it should be made light of and laughed at. For example,
Speaker 2: Anders Bravic should be forever referred to as a heroic
Speaker 2: freedom fighter. This is great because people think you must
Speaker 2: be joking, but there is a part of their brain
Speaker 2: that doesn't think that. So this is partly an attempt
Speaker 2: at just plausible deniability. If someone's offended, it was just
Speaker 2: a joke, and you haven't lost face. If you get
Speaker 2: in trouble it was just a joke, maybe you won't
Speaker 2: be punished. But if it works, if you tell a
Speaker 2: racist joke or propose a violent act and it's well received,
Speaker 2: then you've made a connection. You've found a fellow traveler.
Speaker 2: But as they say themselves, it's also a recruitment and
Speaker 2: indoctrination strategy. You ease people into it you let them
Speaker 2: have an uneasy chuckle at your racist joke, give them
Speaker 2: the internal deniability that they need to hear something like
Speaker 2: that and not push back erode their boundaries. Get them
Speaker 2: comfortable with that kind of talk. Normalize it. A now
Speaker 2: deceased Daily Stormer writer said it himself. Here's Robert Ray,
Speaker 2: the Nazi who called himself Asthmador, greeting a fan. The
Speaker 2: audio is a little bit fuzzy, lot of background noise
Speaker 2: in this clip, and that's because it was recorded inside
Speaker 2: Market Street Park on the morning of August twelfth, twenty seventeen.
Speaker 5: You know, I checked that.
Speaker 3: Site every day that always laughed. It's you know, it's
Speaker 3: it's a humor like that's how I get to be
Speaker 3: a boy.
Speaker 5: I think it's.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's humor, but we mean it. Just moments before
Speaker 2: this segment of the clip, Asmador had just finished telling
Speaker 2: this man about how he'd assaulted several people the night before.
Speaker 2: He was laughing and smiling when he said it, but
Speaker 2: he meant it. Robert Ray died a fugitive. He was
Speaker 2: charged with a felony for pepper spraying counter protesters who
Speaker 2: were trapped by the ring of torch marchers. The night
Speaker 2: before this, and he never appeared in court. And while
Speaker 2: Fields may not have been in the discord, he posted
Speaker 2: some jokes of his own about murdering protesters. In May
Speaker 2: of twenty seventeen, three months before the attack, he posted
Speaker 2: a meme on Instagram. The image is strikingly similar to
Speaker 2: the photo taken of the moment his car hit the crowd.
Speaker 2: It looks just like it. The text on the image reads,
Speaker 2: you have a right to protest, but I'm late for work.
Speaker 2: When he posted that image in May, I don't think
Speaker 2: he was thinking to himself, I'm going to do this
Speaker 2: one day. I don't think he was even thinking about
Speaker 2: it on his drive here, but the idea lived in
Speaker 2: his head. It was a joke, but he meant it.
Speaker 2: It was normalized. It was normal to think of people
Speaker 2: who protest Nazi rallies as subhuman, as enemy combatants. It
Speaker 2: was normal to think about hurting them, shocking or upsetting
Speaker 2: was funny. It was just a joke, but they meant it,
Speaker 2: which is why I feel so sick Browsing the comments
Speaker 2: on posts made today by mainstream MAGA influencers, the rhetoric
Speaker 2: in these posts is as bad, sometimes worse than what
Speaker 2: was posted in the Nazi rally planning chats. That protester
Speaker 2: digestor meme, the one that Tyrone posted, and it ended
Speaker 2: up entered into evidence in federal court to demonstrate the
Speaker 2: casual attitude the rally goers had towards this kind of violence.
Speaker 2: That meme is now being posted by people who probably
Speaker 2: think of themselves as having pretty normal Republican politics, and
Speaker 2: I guess by today's standards they do. Accounts with hundreds
Speaker 2: of thousands of followers have posted it. People posting under
Speaker 2: their real names, are posting it. Tech executives, small business owners,
Speaker 2: federal employees. It's not just the radical fringe anymore. Average
Speaker 2: suburban conservatives are posting the kinds of things that I'm
Speaker 2: used to seeing with an exhibit number stamped on them.
Speaker 2: There is a lot more to be said about the
Speaker 2: rise in popularity among American right wingers of this very
Speaker 2: particular form of violence, and I think I'm going to
Speaker 2: have to revisit that history another day, because I think
Speaker 2: it's important. This is a relatively recent phenomenon spiking dramatically
Speaker 2: in frequency in the last ten years. Feels his crime
Speaker 2: is not an isolated one. He was acting on a
Speaker 2: fantasy that was common among his peers eight years ago.
Speaker 2: That peer group was small. It was just around the
Speaker 2: radical fringes of society where people felt comfortable talking about
Speaker 2: this so often that it started to feel acceptable. And
Speaker 2: now it's everywhere. Politicians, law enforcement officials are telling you
Speaker 2: it's allowed. They're damn near encouraging you to go out
Speaker 2: there and do it. And it's happened at least five
Speaker 2: times in the last week. Keep an eye out for
Speaker 2: each other out there. Don't ever assume that a driver
Speaker 2: is going to behave rationally, because I have a terrible
Speaker 2: feeling this is going to keep happening. Weird Little Guys.
Speaker 2: It's a production of Poolzone Media and iHeartRadio. It's research,
Speaker 2: written and recorded by me while I hunger. Our executive
Speaker 2: producers are Sophie Lichtermann and Robert Evans. The show is
Speaker 2: edited by the wildly talented Lorry Gagan. Theme music was
Speaker 2: composed by Brad Diggert. You can email me at Read
Speaker 2: the Guys podcast at gmail dot com. Definitely read it,
Speaker 2: but I probably won't answer it. It's nothing personal. You
Speaker 2: can exchange conspiracy theories about the show with other listeners
Speaker 2: on the Weird Lit the guys superad. It just don't
Speaker 2: post anything that's going to make you one of my
Speaker 2: rud of the guys.