WEBVTT - (Maybe Don't) Read Siege - (It Could Happen Here Bonus) 0:00:01.680 --> 0:00:07.720 Coll Zone Media. 0:00:09.080 --> 0:00:12.920 Hey, everybody, Molly here. I know it's not Thursday. This 0:00:13.039 --> 0:00:16.000 isn't a new episode of Weird Little Guys, but I 0:00:16.040 --> 0:00:19.360 think it is something you might enjoy. There's a book 0:00:19.400 --> 0:00:22.160 that comes up a lot on this show, a book 0:00:22.160 --> 0:00:26.479 called Siege by James Mason. It's a foundational text for 0:00:26.560 --> 0:00:30.120 the modern neo Nazi terrorist. It was required reading for 0:00:30.240 --> 0:00:33.920 members of the Neo Nazi terrorist organization Adam Woffin, and 0:00:34.000 --> 0:00:37.239 it was written by a guy whose life was absolutely 0:00:37.280 --> 0:00:40.280 weird enough for his own series of episodes. One of 0:00:40.320 --> 0:00:43.720 these days, this is an interview with the author of 0:00:43.800 --> 0:00:47.080 a book about that book, and I had a great 0:00:47.120 --> 0:00:50.280 time talking with Spencer Sunshine about his book Neo Nazi 0:00:50.360 --> 0:00:54.520 Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism, The Origins and Afterlife of James 0:00:54.560 --> 0:00:59.800 Mason's Siege. I don't actually recommend reading Siege, but if 0:00:59.840 --> 0:01:03.120 you're interested in that text, you should definitely check out 0:01:03.160 --> 0:01:06.640 Spencer's book about it. The interview went up earlier this 0:01:06.680 --> 0:01:09.080 week as an episode of it could happen here another 0:01:09.120 --> 0:01:11.720 show on the Cool Zone Media network. But I know 0:01:11.760 --> 0:01:13.959 now everybody subscribes to all the shows on the network, 0:01:14.160 --> 0:01:16.840 even if you should, and I thought you all might 0:01:16.920 --> 0:01:19.959 enjoy this too. It provides a little more context for 0:01:20.040 --> 0:01:23.800 that weird Nazi book I keep bringing up. So if 0:01:23.840 --> 0:01:26.640 you haven't already heard this episode on another feed, I 0:01:26.680 --> 0:01:27.600 hope you'll give it a listener. 0:01:30.760 --> 0:01:32.920 Hello, and welcome back to it could happen here. 0:01:33.160 --> 0:01:35.680 I am once again your occasional host, Molly Conker, and 0:01:35.720 --> 0:01:38.480 I am joined today by Spencer Sunshine, the author of 0:01:38.640 --> 0:01:43.360 Neo Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism, The Origins and Afterlife 0:01:43.400 --> 0:01:48.120 of James Mason's Siege. It's available now in paperback. I 0:01:48.160 --> 0:01:52.360 have my paperback copy from Ritledge Press. So Spencer, I 0:01:52.360 --> 0:01:53.680 guess let's get right into it. 0:01:53.720 --> 0:01:56.600 What is Siege and why should we still be talking 0:01:56.640 --> 0:01:57.040 about it? 0:01:57.600 --> 0:01:59.760 Well, unfortunately, we should still be talking about it because 0:01:59.800 --> 0:02:03.600 it's still influential. It was a book originally published in 0:02:03.680 --> 0:02:06.560 nineteen ninety three, but that is an edited version of 0:02:06.640 --> 0:02:10.440 newsletters published in the eighties by a fellow named James Mason, 0:02:10.600 --> 0:02:13.880 who is a lifelong neo Nazi. He joined the American 0:02:13.960 --> 0:02:17.040 Nazi Party at age fourteen in nineteen sixty six. He 0:02:17.160 --> 0:02:22.359 is still an active ideological believer in national socialism. It's 0:02:22.400 --> 0:02:25.560 a book that in it he makes the argument that 0:02:25.760 --> 0:02:30.679 any kind of normal legal political activity was pointless for 0:02:30.800 --> 0:02:35.280 neo Nazis to engage in and like forming organizations, holding marches, 0:02:35.639 --> 0:02:38.920 making the traditional propaganda, trying to build up parties, even 0:02:38.919 --> 0:02:41.240 guerrilla warfare. At the end of it, he becomes very 0:02:41.240 --> 0:02:46.000 cynical about and he says, through what are essentially dramatic 0:02:46.680 --> 0:02:50.079 random acts of violence, of terrorism or murder. He even 0:02:50.120 --> 0:02:54.320 goes into praising serial killers like Joseph Paul Franklin, we 0:02:54.400 --> 0:02:58.760 can destabilize the government and society and after this neo 0:02:58.840 --> 0:03:02.560 Nazis can come to pay. This has become a very 0:03:02.560 --> 0:03:05.639 influential idea. More recently he was rediscovered. It was a 0:03:05.639 --> 0:03:08.760 pretty obscure The newsletters were very unpopular that he never 0:03:08.800 --> 0:03:12.040 made more than one hundred copies. The original book had 0:03:12.080 --> 0:03:14.960 a print run of one thousand, so it was a 0:03:15.080 --> 0:03:19.200 sort of obscure text. It was known amongst neo Nazi 0:03:19.200 --> 0:03:22.640 circles for some unusual reasons. It became mixed up with 0:03:22.680 --> 0:03:25.680 some countercultural figures and that was actually what made it 0:03:25.720 --> 0:03:28.640 more well known. But it was revived in twenty fifteen. 0:03:28.680 --> 0:03:32.280 It was found by these younger aspiring terrorists, let's say 0:03:32.280 --> 0:03:35.160 at the time around a message board called Iron March. 0:03:35.680 --> 0:03:39.240 It became the bible of the Adam Offin Division, this 0:03:39.560 --> 0:03:43.160 neo Nazi group that its members and associates killed five people, 0:03:43.680 --> 0:03:46.040 and out of that everyone in the Adam off And 0:03:46.080 --> 0:03:49.760 Division had to read Siege, which became the hashtag. And 0:03:49.840 --> 0:03:52.960 out of that grew this whole sort of network, first 0:03:53.040 --> 0:03:57.520 of groups and now really totally decentralized like propaganda channels 0:03:57.520 --> 0:04:01.560 on Telegram, dub Terogram promoting these same ideas, and so 0:04:01.720 --> 0:04:04.640 it's become very influential today. It gets named in like 0:04:04.760 --> 0:04:09.640 terrorist manifestos. The school shooter, I think it was in Nashville, 0:04:09.880 --> 0:04:14.240 Tennessee that just happened. He makes a reference to people 0:04:14.240 --> 0:04:17.919 who are into siege in his writings, and more and 0:04:17.920 --> 0:04:20.880 more I've documented before him at least twelve murders that 0:04:20.920 --> 0:04:24.279 are either by the Adam Waffin Division, by people inspired 0:04:24.279 --> 0:04:27.080 by Siege culture, or by people directly linked to Terogram. 0:04:27.520 --> 0:04:29.920 So if we want to look at the main text 0:04:30.000 --> 0:04:33.200 animating neo Nazi terrorism today, which has now spread around 0:04:33.240 --> 0:04:35.200 the globe, of this groups in Latin America, there's groups 0:04:35.200 --> 0:04:37.640 in eastern Western Europe. It's even influencing groups in the 0:04:37.680 --> 0:04:41.400 Middle East. Or people in the Middle East. They're called accelerationists. 0:04:41.400 --> 0:04:44.520 They want to accelerate the collapse of things. And if 0:04:44.560 --> 0:04:47.600 there's a single ideological text today that's influential on the scene, 0:04:47.680 --> 0:04:50.320 it is by easily James Mason Siege. 0:04:50.800 --> 0:04:53.520 And what I particularly am enjoying about the book, I 0:04:53.560 --> 0:04:54.760 just told you before we started recording. 0:04:54.800 --> 0:04:55.760 I haven't finished it yet. 0:04:56.200 --> 0:04:58.479 What I'm enjoying about this book is so you know, 0:04:58.520 --> 0:05:01.720 you were saying that Sames Mason started writing this in 0:05:01.760 --> 0:05:04.880 the eighties, right, but nobody was reading it. It was 0:05:04.960 --> 0:05:07.159 very sort of niche. It wasn't popular, even within its 0:05:07.200 --> 0:05:09.640 own niche. He was not a popular man. He had 0:05:10.040 --> 0:05:11.680 a lot of beefs with other leaders in the movement. 0:05:12.040 --> 0:05:15.080 It's rediscovered in the twenty tens. It's big on Iron March. 0:05:15.080 --> 0:05:17.480 It's the animating force behind Adam Waffin. And so all 0:05:17.520 --> 0:05:20.520 of a sudden in the last ten years, people like us, 0:05:20.640 --> 0:05:23.120 you know, researchers of the far right, mainstream journalists, people 0:05:23.120 --> 0:05:27.240 are talking about Siege, they're talking about Mason. But this, 0:05:27.920 --> 0:05:30.160 I think, correct me if I'm wrong, is the only 0:05:30.320 --> 0:05:33.799 book sort of tracing it back to its root. James 0:05:33.839 --> 0:05:36.840 Mason did not come into existence in twenty fifteen on 0:05:36.880 --> 0:05:39.480 the pages of Iron March. Right, they sort of dug 0:05:39.600 --> 0:05:42.760 back up this writing that was at that point thirty 0:05:42.839 --> 0:05:45.160 years old. But this book, I mean, it's an incredible 0:05:45.200 --> 0:05:48.039 work of research, but it's also sort of a picuresque, right. 0:05:48.680 --> 0:05:53.480 It follows James Mason through decades of Nazi history. 0:05:53.560 --> 0:05:53.720 Right. 0:05:53.760 --> 0:05:55.800 He wasn't just a guy who wrote a newsletter. He 0:05:55.920 --> 0:05:57.680 was a guy who was in a lot of rooms. 0:05:58.160 --> 0:05:59.920 He knew a lot of people. So through the leg 0:06:00.279 --> 0:06:04.479 of James Mason's life, you can follow the origins of 0:06:04.480 --> 0:06:06.960 the modern neo Nazi movement back to the sort of 0:06:07.040 --> 0:06:11.760 splinters and sects and rival personalities of the seventies. Right 0:06:11.800 --> 0:06:16.240 that you can't understand modern neo Nazi organizing if you 0:06:16.400 --> 0:06:18.520 don't know the history that goes back to the sixties 0:06:18.560 --> 0:06:19.680 and seventies. 0:06:19.600 --> 0:06:22.159 Well thank you forgetting that. I had someone write a 0:06:22.200 --> 0:06:24.280 review and it was an interesting view from the viewpoint 0:06:24.279 --> 0:06:26.160 of literary criticism, and he's like, well, this is one 0:06:26.160 --> 0:06:28.719 of these books about a book it's not And I'm like, yeah, 0:06:28.720 --> 0:06:31.359 it kind of is, but it's really And I started 0:06:31.440 --> 0:06:34.320 after I started writing this which has an unusual origin 0:06:34.960 --> 0:06:37.040 or just maybe it is a usual origin. Like the 0:06:37.040 --> 0:06:40.200 first half is about Neo Nazism in the nineteen seventies, 0:06:40.200 --> 0:06:43.839 which is incredibly undocumented. There's a huge problem with a 0:06:43.920 --> 0:06:47.600 documentation about the far right in general before twenty fifteen. 0:06:48.040 --> 0:06:50.040 Probably more books have come out in the last ten 0:06:50.120 --> 0:06:52.920 years about the far right in the US before twenty 0:06:53.000 --> 0:06:56.479 fifteen than came out before, and certainly about neo Nazis, 0:06:56.480 --> 0:07:00.520 who are almost always when they are written about American 0:07:00.560 --> 0:07:02.880 neo Nazis, it's usually in a history of the white 0:07:02.920 --> 0:07:06.760 supremacist movement, and there's no differentiation made between them, and 0:07:06.839 --> 0:07:09.400 I would say the National Socialists are quite different from 0:07:09.440 --> 0:07:13.160 other white supremacists for a variety of different reasons. So 0:07:13.200 --> 0:07:15.920 there is no book about Neo Nazism in the nineteen 0:07:15.960 --> 0:07:18.560 seventies in the US at all. There are only two 0:07:18.600 --> 0:07:21.400 documents I can really name, and they're both written by 0:07:21.600 --> 0:07:25.520 National Socialists actually, one in Australia and one the head 0:07:25.560 --> 0:07:27.680 of the New Order which used to be the American 0:07:27.760 --> 0:07:29.880 Nazi Party. It's actually not bad. It's an eight part 0:07:29.960 --> 0:07:32.520 series by Martin Kirk. So the first half is really 0:07:32.560 --> 0:07:35.840 reconstructing what happened in the nineteen seventies because this is 0:07:35.840 --> 0:07:38.360 what Siege is coming out of. This Siege is an 0:07:38.400 --> 0:07:41.520 answer to the questions that faced neo Nazis in the 0:07:41.560 --> 0:07:43.960 nineteen seventies. And then the second half of the book 0:07:44.080 --> 0:07:46.040 is even I would say less about Mason. It's about 0:07:46.040 --> 0:07:50.400 these four countercultural figures who discover Mason, help publish him, 0:07:50.440 --> 0:07:54.680 and eventually published and disseminated Siege itself. And part of 0:07:54.720 --> 0:07:57.360 that is I was just around the scene these people 0:07:57.360 --> 0:07:59.600 were part of in the nineteen nineties. Like I saw 0:07:59.640 --> 0:08:02.679 one of them, boyd Rice play. I had many mutual 0:08:02.760 --> 0:08:05.800 friends with another, the publisher Adam Parfrey of Farrell House. 0:08:05.880 --> 0:08:08.840 So like, I was like right around what these people 0:08:08.840 --> 0:08:11.600 were doing as part of the nineties counterculture. So I 0:08:11.680 --> 0:08:14.280 became very interested in that because these people always denied 0:08:14.280 --> 0:08:18.080 their background, you know, or s left it off or something. 0:08:18.120 --> 0:08:20.600 And I found just so many smoking guns in this 0:08:20.800 --> 0:08:23.840 And so I will say how this started is right 0:08:23.880 --> 0:08:27.320 after Charlottesville. They unite the Right rally at Charlottesville. Always 0:08:27.480 --> 0:08:29.880 you say these things and just you give the name 0:08:29.920 --> 0:08:31.400 of the thing, and people are like, wait a minute, 0:08:31.400 --> 0:08:34.520 that's like where I live. You know, we're more than that, 0:08:35.000 --> 0:08:36.280 you know. I was in Seattle. I was like, oh, 0:08:36.320 --> 0:08:39.400 I was at Seattle, referring to this nineteen ninety nine demonstration, 0:08:39.520 --> 0:08:42.760 and I'm like, people are here, weren't even necessarily born then, 0:08:42.840 --> 0:08:46.600 and just saying at Seattle doesn't mean anything. So after 0:08:46.880 --> 0:08:49.160 Unite the Right, there was a spike in popularity in 0:08:49.240 --> 0:08:52.160 Siege and the hashtag read siege because it looked like 0:08:52.280 --> 0:08:55.320 the rally followed what he said, and he said, no 0:08:55.360 --> 0:08:58.640 one in American society will allow neo Nazis to succeed. 0:08:59.280 --> 0:09:00.880 And a lot of people don't know this, but what 0:09:01.000 --> 0:09:04.480 happened at the initial rally is that it wasn't the 0:09:04.600 --> 0:09:07.600 street fighting people might be familiar with, even that's fading 0:09:07.640 --> 0:09:10.320 from memory. Was before it was supposed to start, And 0:09:10.360 --> 0:09:12.120 when it was supposed to start at noon, the police, 0:09:12.160 --> 0:09:14.840 who had been standing a block away and letting everything unfold, 0:09:15.120 --> 0:09:18.640 marched in and forced everyone out, meaning the rally never happened. 0:09:18.640 --> 0:09:19.720 Nobody ever gave a speech. 0:09:20.640 --> 0:09:23.320 Nobody gave a speech. As we know, the car attack 0:09:23.400 --> 0:09:25.600 happened like an hour or two later. I got to 0:09:25.600 --> 0:09:29.560 look at a timeline, it's all like garbled now right, Yeah, 0:09:29.640 --> 0:09:32.600 that sounds right. And the book is co dedicated to 0:09:32.600 --> 0:09:35.439 Heather hair I just want to point out. So it 0:09:35.559 --> 0:09:37.960 seemed to coincide with what Mason said. He's like, you 0:09:38.000 --> 0:09:40.760 can't do legal work, you have to do a terrorism right, 0:09:41.080 --> 0:09:43.200 And so there was a spike and interest in it, 0:09:43.360 --> 0:09:45.920 and Adam Offfen had been doing more and more. Adam 0:09:45.920 --> 0:09:49.520 often people are committing murders, strange murders. They're all very 0:09:49.559 --> 0:09:51.960 strange murders, which I think speaks to a lot of 0:09:51.960 --> 0:09:55.640 the personalities who are involved in this and other forms 0:09:55.679 --> 0:09:59.320 of violence. Even in more structured political movements. I think 0:09:59.360 --> 0:10:02.199 it does a tends to attract fringe people, except at 0:10:02.200 --> 0:10:04.360 certain times where people are intentionally using it as a 0:10:04.400 --> 0:10:06.600 strategy as part of a bigger mass movement. Anyway, these 0:10:06.640 --> 0:10:09.400 are questions for terrorism studies, and so there was a 0:10:09.440 --> 0:10:10.920 spike of interest in it. So I was going to 0:10:10.960 --> 0:10:13.800 write a short article for a think tank I used 0:10:13.840 --> 0:10:16.160 to be associated with, which I will not name because 0:10:16.160 --> 0:10:18.480 I had such a bad experience with them, and it 0:10:18.480 --> 0:10:19.960 was going to be an article. I couldn't get the 0:10:20.000 --> 0:10:23.640 facts to line up. As I said, there's terrible scholarship 0:10:23.640 --> 0:10:28.360 about this period, and so I used this very sophisticated 0:10:28.400 --> 0:10:32.200 research tool called Google, and through that I found that 0:10:32.200 --> 0:10:35.040 Mason's papers. There was a huge collection of Mason's papers 0:10:35.080 --> 0:10:37.600 at the University of Kansas and Lawrence, Kansas, so I 0:10:37.679 --> 0:10:39.959 decided I'd go there. I thought I'd just straighten these 0:10:39.960 --> 0:10:42.640 things out. There were some documents I needed, some very 0:10:42.640 --> 0:10:45.400 obscure fanzines and stuff. That'd be the end of the day. 0:10:46.000 --> 0:10:47.880 I got through. Well, first I discovered it's not easy 0:10:47.880 --> 0:10:49.760 to get to Lawrence, Kansas. You have to fly into 0:10:49.760 --> 0:10:51.640 an airport, and then I think I took an uber 0:10:51.679 --> 0:10:53.959 for like an hour. There was like one bus a 0:10:54.040 --> 0:10:57.679 day or something. Anyway, I got there and started poking 0:10:57.720 --> 0:11:00.800 at the papers. It was sixty boxes of his core respondents. 0:11:00.920 --> 0:11:04.640 He had letters incoming and outgoing since the early nineteen sixties. 0:11:04.679 --> 0:11:06.520 As you mentioned, he was an insider to the neo 0:11:06.600 --> 0:11:09.080 Nazi movement, so it was with all these people he 0:11:09.120 --> 0:11:11.800 had kept carving copies of his outgoing letters. Was a 0:11:11.880 --> 0:11:14.840 unique slice of national socialist life in the United States. 0:11:15.040 --> 0:11:17.440 Never seen an archive like it. People didn't keep their 0:11:17.440 --> 0:11:20.199 papers because they were doing illegal activities. The government sees 0:11:20.240 --> 0:11:22.480 them and has them in a warehouse somewhere or whatever. 0:11:23.360 --> 0:11:25.120 This is even in the pre Internet. I can only 0:11:25.120 --> 0:11:27.120 do this because it was pre Internet, and there were 0:11:27.160 --> 0:11:30.120 paper copies of stuff and of the age where I 0:11:30.200 --> 0:11:33.680 grew up doing all research on paper and in archives. 0:11:34.080 --> 0:11:36.360 And I quickly found out what I had. And there 0:11:36.360 --> 0:11:38.360 were two things. One, as I said, was that there 0:11:38.400 --> 0:11:41.880 was this whole story of American neo Nazism, of when 0:11:41.880 --> 0:11:45.120 the American Nazi Party splinters then called the National Socialist 0:11:45.120 --> 0:11:48.120 White People's Party in the nineteen seventies, and all these 0:11:48.120 --> 0:11:49.920 groups come out of it, many of which we know 0:11:50.080 --> 0:11:53.160 parts of, like William Peters who wrote the Turner Diaries 0:11:53.200 --> 0:11:56.079 and the Skoky incident which is parodied in The Blues Brothers. 0:11:56.320 --> 0:11:58.959 Some people don't know this, just so Paul Franklin shooting 0:11:59.000 --> 0:12:02.200 and paralyzing the publisher Larry Flint, and some other things. 0:12:02.640 --> 0:12:04.440 And I was like, Oh, these are all people who 0:12:04.559 --> 0:12:06.720 came out of one thing, a splintering of the party. 0:12:07.160 --> 0:12:09.560 And I realized that there basically was a terrorist wing 0:12:09.679 --> 0:12:12.760 that came out of the splintering. And people knew Mason 0:12:12.800 --> 0:12:15.240 and people knew Pierce, but there was like a couple 0:12:15.280 --> 0:12:18.439 other groups or people, but people didn't put it together 0:12:18.559 --> 0:12:21.600 that they were all like the most radical wing of 0:12:21.640 --> 0:12:23.880 these splinter groups. So there was that story and then, 0:12:23.920 --> 0:12:25.760 as I mentioned, there was a second story about these 0:12:25.800 --> 0:12:29.400 kuntercultural people who had always denied that they were involved 0:12:29.400 --> 0:12:31.800 in national socialism or the level of it. It was 0:12:31.880 --> 0:12:34.080 just a joke, all these things that we hear today, 0:12:34.120 --> 0:12:36.360 almost word for word. And so I found all their 0:12:36.400 --> 0:12:39.520 letters to James Mason, and they're adorned with swastikas and 0:12:39.600 --> 0:12:42.600 eight aids, and they're helping him. Had they reveal the 0:12:42.640 --> 0:12:45.200 extent that they helped him? And the funny thing is 0:12:45.240 --> 0:12:47.840 a lot of this stuff was actually available and out 0:12:47.880 --> 0:12:49.680 in the open. It was published books, but it was 0:12:49.720 --> 0:12:53.240 like little pieces of flakes of gold scattered around everything, 0:12:53.280 --> 0:12:55.559 and I started picking them up because I realized you 0:12:55.600 --> 0:12:58.480 could put them together. And so one article turned out 0:12:58.520 --> 0:13:00.400 was supposed to be one article, and then it turns 0:13:00.480 --> 0:13:02.520 two articles. And I sat down to write it and 0:13:02.559 --> 0:13:04.960 turned into a book. And then five years later I 0:13:05.040 --> 0:13:07.560 finally had the manuscript done. Then took another year at 0:13:07.600 --> 0:13:10.720 the publishers, and then it came out last year. So 0:13:10.880 --> 0:13:13.880 it's been seven years of work, and I've been going 0:13:13.880 --> 0:13:16.920 around doing talks. I did seventeen talks and supported the 0:13:16.920 --> 0:13:19.360 book and as many podcasts and stuff. So I'm still 0:13:19.440 --> 0:13:21.760 The book is still part of my life, as much 0:13:21.800 --> 0:13:24.080 as I would like to sort of put it down. 0:13:24.200 --> 0:13:25.959 But thank you for remedy on the podcast. This is 0:13:26.040 --> 0:13:28.560 not great they have me on the podcast. Not against 0:13:28.559 --> 0:13:31.400 no diss against you, no shade, no shade no. 0:13:31.480 --> 0:13:34.320 And I'm so I'm so jealous of your trip to 0:13:34.360 --> 0:13:37.960 Kansas to see the archives. I only recently a year 0:13:38.040 --> 0:13:41.280 or two, discovered that his papers existed in those archives, 0:13:41.320 --> 0:13:43.240 and so I wrote to the archivist and I said, like, 0:13:43.280 --> 0:13:45.440 you know, are any of these digitized? I would love 0:13:45.480 --> 0:13:46.880 to see them. And there's like, you know, we've only 0:13:46.920 --> 0:13:48.920 digitized like one box. And they sent me a couple 0:13:48.960 --> 0:13:51.280 of a couple of scans, but most of it has 0:13:51.320 --> 0:13:53.840 not been digitized. So you have to go to Kansas 0:13:53.960 --> 0:13:57.800 if you want to read this old pedophile Nazis letters 0:13:57.840 --> 0:13:58.800 to Charles Manson. 0:13:59.080 --> 0:14:01.800 Well, I do have thousands of pictures I took of 0:14:01.840 --> 0:14:05.360 this correspondence. So yeah, if you request digital copies, they 0:14:05.360 --> 0:14:08.480 won't tell you what they've digitized. And so it's it's 0:14:08.559 --> 0:14:11.640 like you know, trying to like randomly throw darts or something. 0:14:11.640 --> 0:14:13.440 If you get the right file, they have them. 0:14:13.559 --> 0:14:15.560 And I was like, I was begging and pleading, I 0:14:15.640 --> 0:14:17.520 was like, please, just like any letters you have with 0:14:17.559 --> 0:14:20.080 Bob Heyke, I just I just want the Bob Hike letters. 0:14:20.680 --> 0:14:23.040 But I can give you the Bob Hyke letters. 0:14:23.120 --> 0:14:23.880 I would love those. 0:14:24.000 --> 0:14:27.240 I think they'll they'll digitize stuff for a price. 0:14:26.960 --> 0:14:29.560 Though, I'm sure. I'm sure if I pay for it, 0:14:29.560 --> 0:14:30.720 they would do me the favor. 0:14:30.760 --> 0:14:34.280 But that's the thing, is that there's so much interconnection 0:14:34.360 --> 0:14:38.040 here because these stories always get told episodically, right, like 0:14:38.160 --> 0:14:41.160 the story of James Mason and Adam Woffen, the story 0:14:41.160 --> 0:14:43.360 of William Luther Peers, the story of the founding of 0:14:43.360 --> 0:14:46.800 the National Socialist Movement. But nobody takes those pieces and 0:14:46.840 --> 0:14:51.680 slots them together because they interlock. They all interlock, right, 0:14:51.720 --> 0:14:53.720 And so this idea of the lone wolf, I mean, 0:14:53.760 --> 0:14:57.520 I guess James Mason's life's work is to perpetuate and 0:14:57.640 --> 0:15:00.600 motivate the lone wolf. But is it really a lone 0:15:00.600 --> 0:15:02.480 wolf if he's training them. 0:15:02.280 --> 0:15:05.280 Well, the lone wolf question is is a long question. 0:15:05.560 --> 0:15:07.440 A lot of people know Metzger moved to the lone 0:15:07.480 --> 0:15:10.840 wolf strategy after a war was sued by the SPLC 0:15:11.040 --> 0:15:14.320 and collapse, but Mason was advocating this beforehand and was 0:15:14.600 --> 0:15:18.120 very tight with Metzger. So there is actually a book 0:15:18.240 --> 0:15:21.000 describing what you've said, putting the pieces together, and it's 0:15:21.000 --> 0:15:24.560 called Neo Nazi Terrorism and Counterculturals exactly. It's the I 0:15:24.560 --> 0:15:25.920 think which you can buy today. 0:15:26.560 --> 0:15:28.120 I mean, like I said, it is the only book 0:15:28.120 --> 0:15:31.400 that I know of that fits these pieces together. 0:15:31.760 --> 0:15:33.680 No, it is the only book. Actually, I've been in 0:15:33.760 --> 0:15:36.800 contact with James Mason, and he said when radio interview, 0:15:36.880 --> 0:15:38.800 it's not the first of its kind, but it's the 0:15:38.800 --> 0:15:39.800 best of its kind. 0:15:40.480 --> 0:15:55.200 A high praise from the book's Nazi pedophile subject. Why 0:15:55.240 --> 0:15:57.480 did he donate his papers to the library, because, like 0:15:57.520 --> 0:15:59.960 you said, most people are not not only not per 0:16:00.000 --> 0:16:02.080 deserving these items where they're not preserving them at all 0:16:02.120 --> 0:16:04.600 because they know what they've done is illegal or embarrassing 0:16:04.640 --> 0:16:08.680 to everyone involved, and they're intentionally destroying the evidence of 0:16:08.720 --> 0:16:11.360 these kinds of communications. But he not only saved them, 0:16:11.920 --> 0:16:14.120 but he wanted to make sure we could read them. 0:16:14.800 --> 0:16:16.240 Did you talk to him at all about why he 0:16:16.280 --> 0:16:16.560 did that? 0:16:16.840 --> 0:16:19.520 Well, he sold them. He was a wheeler dealer in 0:16:20.080 --> 0:16:24.520 especially American Nazi Party memorabilia. You know, he sold furniture 0:16:24.840 --> 0:16:28.520 on the side like antiques. He'd go antiquing, and he 0:16:29.000 --> 0:16:31.120 if you've seen pictures of his apartment, it's filled with 0:16:31.200 --> 0:16:33.840 Nazi nickknacks. Right, he's got a knife collection. 0:16:34.280 --> 0:16:36.680 I mean, it looks like it looks like the Area 0:16:36.760 --> 0:16:38.440 Nation's booth at the Tulsa Gun Show. 0:16:38.880 --> 0:16:41.280 It looks like my apartment, but like the in the 0:16:41.320 --> 0:16:47.400 inverse and fewer plants. So he was a collector, so 0:16:47.440 --> 0:16:49.960 he was already on. My understanding is he was already 0:16:49.960 --> 0:16:53.920 selling George Lincoln Rockwell memoryabilia or whatever, papers and such. 0:16:54.000 --> 0:16:57.400 Two Kansas. They have this collection there called the Wilcox 0:16:57.520 --> 0:17:00.840 Collection of anti Extremist stuff. This guy, Lair Wilcox, had 0:17:00.840 --> 0:17:04.200 been in early students for Democratic Society before they took 0:17:04.240 --> 0:17:07.160 the like Marxist turn, and then decided that the left 0:17:07.200 --> 0:17:09.920 and the right were the same, like in the seventies 0:17:10.040 --> 0:17:12.520 or something, and started collecting all this material. So they 0:17:12.800 --> 0:17:15.360 were one of the they're probably the biggest collection of far 0:17:15.440 --> 0:17:18.159 right material. And as I said, at the time, libraries 0:17:18.280 --> 0:17:20.480 weren't collecting it and people weren't writing about it. They 0:17:20.480 --> 0:17:22.400 were like, oh, these are just a bunch of kooks 0:17:22.440 --> 0:17:25.520 and wing nuts. They're not important. And some of this 0:17:25.680 --> 0:17:27.159 is because, like as I say in the book, the 0:17:27.200 --> 0:17:30.560 first neo Nazi mass murder wasn't until the late seventies, 0:17:30.760 --> 0:17:34.040 like it was what we know as neo Nazism today 0:17:34.160 --> 0:17:37.120 really only emerged in the seventies, is when my arguments 0:17:37.119 --> 0:17:39.560 in the book. So the papers were there because he 0:17:39.600 --> 0:17:43.119 sold them. The second thing is he is unique, I 0:17:43.200 --> 0:17:46.960 think not unique, but very uncommon because he is an 0:17:47.040 --> 0:17:50.400 unabashed neo Nazi. He does not try to hide it. 0:17:50.480 --> 0:17:53.119 He is not like the NSM, which is actually a 0:17:53.119 --> 0:17:57.120 party he co founded shockingly but left over it as 0:17:57.160 --> 0:17:59.760 they turned because originally it was to promote violence, and 0:17:59.800 --> 0:18:02.520 then as it turned to a more traditional Hollywood Nazi party, 0:18:02.560 --> 0:18:04.880 he left. But it's the same one that was at Charlottesville, 0:18:04.880 --> 0:18:07.199 and Jeff's Scoop was the head of I actually taught 0:18:07.359 --> 0:18:09.919 Jeff Scoop about how the party was founded. That was 0:18:10.040 --> 0:18:11.879 very interesting. I interviewed him for the book. 0:18:12.080 --> 0:18:14.200 Another one of those dishonest actors. 0:18:13.840 --> 0:18:15.879 Well, the guy who had made him the head of 0:18:15.920 --> 0:18:19.479 the party, who was actually the second head, Harrington, cliff Harrington. 0:18:19.560 --> 0:18:22.639 Clifford Harrington did not give him the truthful account of 0:18:22.680 --> 0:18:25.720 the parties founding. Harrington claimed he was a co founder 0:18:25.760 --> 0:18:27.879 and he wasn't he claimed a different date. This is 0:18:27.920 --> 0:18:30.320 one reason I spent so much time on stuff. Also 0:18:30.359 --> 0:18:32.200 that I found all these things that had been printed 0:18:32.240 --> 0:18:35.120 that were wrong. The bi scholars and others that were 0:18:35.400 --> 0:18:37.080 and it wasn't their fault. They were taken. It was 0:18:37.119 --> 0:18:39.400 hard to get these harder to get these documents, especially 0:18:39.400 --> 0:18:41.960 when a group is moving. And so Harrington claimed he 0:18:42.000 --> 0:18:44.520 had been a co founder in nineteen seventy four or whatever, 0:18:44.560 --> 0:18:48.040 but he was lying. Mason was one of the co 0:18:48.119 --> 0:18:51.560 founders and not him. He only became the head in 0:18:51.680 --> 0:18:55.439 the eighties. So this is some of this stuff I found. Anyway, 0:18:55.440 --> 0:18:56.840 I was going to say the NSM at one point 0:18:56.920 --> 0:18:59.520 go where not Neo Nazis were National Socialists. 0:19:00.240 --> 0:19:02.560 I was like, get the fuck out of here, like really, 0:19:02.760 --> 0:19:07.240 like come all, your flag is a swastikonic ah. I mean, 0:19:07.280 --> 0:19:10.960 this is absurd, but people will do that, right, It's 0:19:10.960 --> 0:19:13.120 like the Dead Parrots skit in Monty Python. 0:19:13.200 --> 0:19:16.040 If people know this and so. But Mason stands out 0:19:16.040 --> 0:19:18.560 because he's always been very upfront about his views. He's 0:19:18.640 --> 0:19:21.360 very proud of them. He's not ashamed, and if it's 0:19:21.359 --> 0:19:23.840 embarrassed other people, they didn't belong. He's as he told 0:19:23.840 --> 0:19:26.000 to me they didn't believe in the One True religion. 0:19:26.800 --> 0:19:29.399 So I asked him about these counterculture figures who have 0:19:29.560 --> 0:19:32.080 denied they were ever involved in this stuff. At the time, 0:19:32.119 --> 0:19:35.760 he was convinced they were National socialists, and he was like, well, 0:19:35.760 --> 0:19:38.359 they believed in something else other than the One True Faith. 0:19:38.440 --> 0:19:41.159 I think that's the word he used. So yeah, he 0:19:41.240 --> 0:19:43.880 is nothing to hide. He's very open about it, very 0:19:43.920 --> 0:19:46.960 open about promoting terrorism, as you know, and maybe some 0:19:47.040 --> 0:19:49.320 of the listeners do. Young neo Nazis go to his 0:19:49.400 --> 0:19:52.320 apartment and he tutors them. They take pictures with him. 0:19:52.600 --> 0:19:56.920 This included Sam Woodward, who murdered a young gay Jewish man, 0:19:56.960 --> 0:19:59.640 Blaze Bernstein recently sent his to life in prison. There's 0:19:59.680 --> 0:20:03.480 picture is a Woodword in Mason's apartment. So yeah, I 0:20:03.480 --> 0:20:05.879 mean he wants is He's proud of his lineage and 0:20:05.960 --> 0:20:08.040 he wants it documented. And I know I did him 0:20:08.040 --> 0:20:11.080 a favor by writing a book about his movement. I mean, 0:20:11.440 --> 0:20:14.399 they don't have the intellectuals and the resources to in 0:20:14.440 --> 0:20:17.760 the train people to write historical books, and I did 0:20:17.760 --> 0:20:19.879 it a pretty straight up book. Even Mason was like, 0:20:19.920 --> 0:20:22.240 I kept waiting to read the smear I kept waiting 0:20:22.240 --> 0:20:24.400 for the smear. There was no smear. I was like, yeah, 0:20:24.440 --> 0:20:26.639 I just wrote it as a history book, and so 0:20:26.960 --> 0:20:30.000 in a way I've given them an insight into their 0:20:30.119 --> 0:20:33.040 history which wouldn't exist otherwise. So this stuff is always 0:20:33.040 --> 0:20:35.440 a double edged sword when you cover as you know, 0:20:35.520 --> 0:20:38.680 when you cover fascist groups, they want the publicity, by 0:20:38.720 --> 0:20:42.520 and large. I was told sometimes at the SPLC, like 0:20:42.560 --> 0:20:45.040 groups contact them and they're like, cover us, give us. 0:20:44.960 --> 0:20:46.920 Coverage, sending them their press releases. 0:20:47.040 --> 0:20:48.600 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. 0:20:48.640 --> 0:20:50.800 But I mean, I think someone like Mason, I guess 0:20:50.800 --> 0:20:52.600 he doesn't see this smear because, like you said, he's 0:20:52.640 --> 0:20:55.240 proud of himself. So this is I think is an 0:20:55.280 --> 0:20:59.680 honest appraisal of his legacy, and most people would see 0:20:59.680 --> 0:21:01.040 that as a but he's proud of it. 0:21:01.400 --> 0:21:03.120 Well, it's not a smear. I don't need to say 0:21:03.160 --> 0:21:07.359 anything bad about him. He's there promoting Nazi terrorism. What's 0:21:07.400 --> 0:21:11.560 the point of, like, you know, denouncing this or something. 0:21:11.840 --> 0:21:15.359 I mean, Whereas I think someone like Pierce, I think 0:21:15.400 --> 0:21:18.119 sometimes when people write honestly about Pierre, obviously he's been 0:21:18.160 --> 0:21:22.600 dead for twenty five years, but he resisted the characterization 0:21:22.840 --> 0:21:25.760 that he was inciting terrorism, even though he like Mason 0:21:25.880 --> 0:21:26.600 very much, was. 0:21:27.160 --> 0:21:29.520 Oh well, Pierce is just a liar. I mean, all 0:21:29.560 --> 0:21:30.920 these guys exactly. 0:21:30.560 --> 0:21:31.120 That's what I mean. 0:21:31.400 --> 0:21:33.480 But I think a book like this about Pierce, I 0:21:33.480 --> 0:21:36.359 think he would not have enjoyed, whereas Mason is at 0:21:36.440 --> 0:21:37.880 least honest about his legacy. 0:21:38.440 --> 0:21:40.640 You know, there is a terrible book about Pierce by 0:21:40.640 --> 0:21:44.000 one of the sycophants who is a professor actually Griffin. 0:21:44.240 --> 0:21:48.600 Yeah, and that again, that is one of those dishonest histories. 0:21:48.600 --> 0:21:50.359 I think we were talking before we started recording that 0:21:50.400 --> 0:21:54.159 the problem with archival research trying to write a history 0:21:54.200 --> 0:21:57.240 of these movements is they are dishonest actors. 0:21:57.280 --> 0:21:59.639 And so Robert S. Griffin, he wrote, what is it 0:21:59.640 --> 0:22:01.800 the fame of a dead Man's Deeds? Is that what 0:22:01.800 --> 0:22:02.200 it's called? 0:22:02.920 --> 0:22:04.920 He went into it, you know, saying like, I'm going 0:22:04.920 --> 0:22:08.280 to write this neutral appraisal of this figure of the movement, 0:22:08.280 --> 0:22:10.760 about William Luther Pierce. And over the weeks that he 0:22:10.840 --> 0:22:13.400 spent on the compound to write it, and he spent 0:22:13.480 --> 0:22:17.800 time with Peers on the compound in Hillsborough, became radicalized 0:22:17.840 --> 0:22:20.679 and is a Nazi. Now are he still alive? I mean, 0:22:20.720 --> 0:22:22.920 he could take issue with that characterization if he wants. 0:22:22.960 --> 0:22:26.000 But I'm sure you've read the book. 0:22:26.480 --> 0:22:29.359 It's not neutral. It's a has giography of Peers. 0:22:29.520 --> 0:22:32.880 Yeah. There's actually a book by Pierce's son too, which 0:22:32.920 --> 0:22:33.359 is interesting. 0:22:33.440 --> 0:22:34.560 I've read that. It's quite good. 0:22:34.800 --> 0:22:37.240 Well, unfortunately a lot of it's copy pasta. 0:22:37.040 --> 0:22:37.200 But. 0:22:38.640 --> 0:22:41.800 I think his insight into his relationship with his father 0:22:41.960 --> 0:22:44.439 is very unique. It is called The Sins of My 0:22:44.480 --> 0:22:47.080 Father by Kelvin Pearce. I mean, that's a window you 0:22:47.080 --> 0:22:49.160 don't often get, although I guess now we do also 0:22:49.200 --> 0:22:53.120 have the Klansman's Son by Don Black's daughter. 0:22:53.000 --> 0:22:54.320 Black's daughter or son. 0:22:54.680 --> 0:22:55.560 She has transitions. 0:22:55.600 --> 0:22:58.920 Oh, I did not know that, well, Mazeltov. Yeah, yeah, 0:22:58.960 --> 0:23:02.440 I remember reading their work before Trump, and they actually 0:23:02.480 --> 0:23:06.160 wrote one of the most moving resignations from the movement 0:23:06.240 --> 0:23:09.240 that I've read, very much taking you know, being accountable, 0:23:09.240 --> 0:23:11.159 even though they were raised in it. And I feel like 0:23:11.240 --> 0:23:13.879 children raised in this are not like as accountable as 0:23:13.920 --> 0:23:17.239 adults are, right, especially like they were in college at 0:23:17.240 --> 0:23:20.240 the time. But it was like a true interesting working 0:23:20.320 --> 0:23:23.520 through it, and I felt like heartfelt apology for it. 0:23:23.680 --> 0:23:26.399 And yeah, actually this is a fun fact. You may 0:23:26.440 --> 0:23:31.960 know a member of the Aryan Nationalist Action A and A. 0:23:32.280 --> 0:23:35.120 This terrorist is a bank robbing group from the eighties, 0:23:35.160 --> 0:23:39.879 I think became the first person to transition gender. 0:23:40.520 --> 0:23:41.440 From Donald Lanyan. 0:23:41.480 --> 0:23:44.560 Donna Langen was known as pretty Boy Pedro when she 0:23:44.640 --> 0:23:47.120 was the head of the Argan Republican Armies, a bank 0:23:47.200 --> 0:23:49.879 robbery gang out of Ellaheim City. Yeah, she was the 0:23:49.880 --> 0:23:52.919 first person to win a battle with the federal government 0:23:52.920 --> 0:23:54.200 to transition in federal. 0:23:53.960 --> 0:23:55.440 Prison to get surgery. 0:23:55.640 --> 0:23:56.440 Yeah. 0:23:56.480 --> 0:23:59.399 And just recently, actually, there was a filing in her case. 0:23:59.440 --> 0:24:02.200 She's trying to get the way the case is titled 0:24:02.320 --> 0:24:05.120 in the court records is still Peter Langan, her dead name, 0:24:05.800 --> 0:24:09.200 and the judge denied her petition to retitle the case. 0:24:09.440 --> 0:24:12.240 But she has transitioned and is in a women's prison. 0:24:12.359 --> 0:24:13.240 Is she in Texas? 0:24:13.480 --> 0:24:15.640 Oh gosh, I could look up in the BOP where 0:24:15.680 --> 0:24:15.959 she is. 0:24:16.080 --> 0:24:18.760 Texas bans prisoners from changing their names. 0:24:19.040 --> 0:24:21.719 She is in FMC cars. 0:24:21.920 --> 0:24:25.919 Well, that isn't in Dallas, Texas. Yea, yeah, that's why. 0:24:26.480 --> 0:24:26.960 That's why. 0:24:27.760 --> 0:24:29.960 So she's still in the BOP system under her dead name, 0:24:30.000 --> 0:24:34.240 but she was allowed to physically transition. So that's again 0:24:34.359 --> 0:24:37.560 just a strange twist of history, right, that the person 0:24:37.560 --> 0:24:39.879 who won that legal model for us was a Nazi 0:24:39.880 --> 0:24:40.480 bank robber. 0:24:40.600 --> 0:24:44.800 Well, she has also long repudiated those politics. So I 0:24:44.800 --> 0:24:48.119 think she's been the only person to have surgery transperson 0:24:48.240 --> 0:24:51.200 has surgery who was in prisoned at the time, because 0:24:51.240 --> 0:24:54.240 I think that was recently and then everything, you know, 0:24:54.400 --> 0:24:57.879 everything they changed. They I know that they slowed down 0:24:58.840 --> 0:25:02.159 their transpower waiting to see the results of the election. 0:25:02.600 --> 0:25:04.960 So for a strange reason, I know, actually a bunch 0:25:04.960 --> 0:25:08.080 of the stuff about trans people in prison and so anyway. 0:25:07.760 --> 0:25:10.359 No, it's I mean, it's a remarkable, remarkable history. 0:25:10.440 --> 0:25:10.640 Yeah. 0:25:10.720 --> 0:25:14.840 Yeah, So you started writing this book after Unite the Right. 0:25:14.680 --> 0:25:16.800 Because there was this renewed interest in siege. 0:25:17.280 --> 0:25:19.520 I mean, because what has the experience been, like, you know, 0:25:19.520 --> 0:25:21.679 over the course of spending the last six years of 0:25:21.720 --> 0:25:25.440 your life working on this, realizing that it is only 0:25:25.520 --> 0:25:28.159 becoming more relevant and not less. 0:25:28.600 --> 0:25:31.760 Well, the problem is is like for people like us 0:25:31.800 --> 0:25:34.520 who watch the far right, like our work is only 0:25:34.840 --> 0:25:37.560 important or people are only interested in it when there 0:25:37.640 --> 0:25:40.000 is a big upswing, and then like that's when people 0:25:40.040 --> 0:25:42.439 are interested and that's when it is more important. So 0:25:42.840 --> 0:25:45.000 on one hand, it's good that I didn't spend five 0:25:45.080 --> 0:25:47.119 years and then no one remembered what siege was and 0:25:47.200 --> 0:25:49.199 it was just a blip. I mean, that's good for me, 0:25:49.240 --> 0:25:50.639 but I have to say what's good for me is 0:25:50.680 --> 0:25:52.480 bad for society. 0:25:51.960 --> 0:25:53.439 And so, I mean, I think it would have been 0:25:53.440 --> 0:25:55.880 an important work of history regardless. But I guess as 0:25:55.880 --> 0:25:58.240 you're working on it, realizing that the body count is 0:25:58.280 --> 0:25:59.280 only growing. 0:25:59.400 --> 0:26:04.399 Yeah, it's I don't know, I don't really you know, 0:26:04.480 --> 0:26:06.960 what do you say about that? I call these people 0:26:07.080 --> 0:26:11.400 empty people spreading emptiness. Like it's hard for me even 0:26:11.440 --> 0:26:15.040 to get mad at the more aggressive neo Nazis and 0:26:15.080 --> 0:26:18.800 white supremacists. Like often they're young, and I just see 0:26:18.840 --> 0:26:22.560 like sad young people who can't deal with their problems, 0:26:22.680 --> 0:26:26.359 engaged in like hurting other people who are often not 0:26:26.440 --> 0:26:28.600 so different than them, you know. I mean there's a 0:26:28.640 --> 0:26:31.919 trans man who was in Adam. Often, you know, like 0:26:32.480 --> 0:26:38.199 they're yeah, numerous stories of people being you know, of 0:26:38.520 --> 0:26:41.639 not white descent, either they're hiding that they're not, or 0:26:41.640 --> 0:26:43.840 they're a mixed race descent and they're sort of passing 0:26:43.840 --> 0:26:47.320 as wide of being Jewish and being queer, all this stuff. 0:26:47.320 --> 0:26:50.320 The movement's filled with these people. Sometimes it's the people 0:26:50.320 --> 0:26:52.400 are even like how many straight white men are there 0:26:52.440 --> 0:26:56.000 in the movement, Like and it's just sad. You're like, 0:26:56.359 --> 0:26:58.760 I see you're being attracted to this because you're so 0:26:58.960 --> 0:27:03.040 alienated or you were so your identity is so shaky 0:27:03.119 --> 0:27:05.359 that you are attracted to this idea of a firm, 0:27:05.440 --> 0:27:08.840 strong identity. And I mean sometimes people forget fascism in 0:27:08.880 --> 0:27:11.879 Italy and Germany arose and basically the last two countries 0:27:11.920 --> 0:27:15.480 that arose and solidified in Europe, Like those were countries 0:27:15.520 --> 0:27:17.920 that wasn't clear what Italy was going to be. There's 0:27:17.920 --> 0:27:21.119 such differences between the north and the south. There's no reason, 0:27:21.320 --> 0:27:23.600 Like it was unclear originally whether Germany was going to 0:27:23.640 --> 0:27:27.040 be Austria too, you know, and so they were. It's 0:27:27.080 --> 0:27:30.320 a way part of fascism is shoring up that national identity, 0:27:30.320 --> 0:27:33.760 which was very fragmented, and it works the same I 0:27:33.760 --> 0:27:36.199 think with people's identities. And one of the one of 0:27:36.240 --> 0:27:38.920 the things that attracts people to neo Nazism, I think 0:27:39.080 --> 0:27:41.960 is this strong affirmation of an identity, and people with 0:27:42.520 --> 0:27:46.320 mixed identities or conflicted about it or filled with self 0:27:46.359 --> 0:27:49.280 loathing are drawn to this for that reason. One of 0:27:49.280 --> 0:27:50.960 the many reasons. People get drawn. 0:27:50.720 --> 0:27:53.840 Into these things, and they recruit so young. 0:27:53.960 --> 0:27:55.679 I mean, I think in the book you're talking about this, 0:27:55.920 --> 0:27:58.120 you know, all the way back to James Mason's origins 0:27:58.119 --> 0:28:00.560 that he became interested in the Nazi Party is a 0:28:00.720 --> 0:28:02.040 fourteen year. 0:28:01.960 --> 0:28:04.320 Old joined it, joined it at fourteen. 0:28:04.440 --> 0:28:08.399 So he's a child, right getting into this movement, and 0:28:08.440 --> 0:28:10.760 now that he is an old man, he is in 0:28:10.760 --> 0:28:15.440 turn in doctrinating children. Right that Adam Woffen members are 0:28:15.960 --> 0:28:19.199 very young, I guess were Adam Woffin technically doesn't exist anymore, 0:28:19.200 --> 0:28:22.000 but most of the most of the young men who 0:28:22.359 --> 0:28:25.639 spilled blood for Adam Waffen were twenty years old, nineteen 0:28:25.680 --> 0:28:26.160 years old. 0:28:26.320 --> 0:28:28.840 And you know, someone pointed out the founder of the 0:28:28.880 --> 0:28:33.439 feuer Krieg Division when he founded it was twelve. He 0:28:33.560 --> 0:28:36.080 was arrested when he was thirteen or fourteen, but he 0:28:36.200 --> 0:28:37.760 founded it at twelve. 0:28:38.040 --> 0:28:43.640 And which tragic, obviously tragic, heartbreaking, disgusting. But imagine being 0:28:43.680 --> 0:28:46.400 one of the adults who is in that. 0:28:46.320 --> 0:28:49.040 Group and finding out that your fear was twelve. 0:28:49.480 --> 0:28:52.840 I grew up in the South in an extremely Protestant 0:28:52.880 --> 0:28:56.640 area at the height of that like eighties fundamentals Christian 0:28:57.040 --> 0:29:00.600 Christian right thing, and there were I knew about. These 0:29:00.600 --> 0:29:02.840 are kind of an older thing, child preachers. Have you 0:29:02.880 --> 0:29:05.120 ever heard of child preachers? This was a big thing 0:29:05.200 --> 0:29:05.480 during the. 0:29:06.240 --> 0:29:08.959 Yeah, they speak in tongues and they sort of parrot 0:29:09.080 --> 0:29:11.600 the cadence of the way adults speak. 0:29:11.680 --> 0:29:13.760 But if you listen carefully, they're not saying anything. 0:29:14.160 --> 0:29:18.360 If they've memorized the way that adults give these barn 0:29:18.480 --> 0:29:23.120 burning you know, adult Protestants Evangelicals give these barn burning sermons, 0:29:23.520 --> 0:29:27.920 but they don't necessarily understand what they're saying. And so, 0:29:28.640 --> 0:29:30.960 I mean, I think it's pretty common people adults will 0:29:30.960 --> 0:29:33.360 do this. They believe in what they're saying. Maybe they 0:29:33.440 --> 0:29:35.600 understand it a little better. I think there's a bunch 0:29:35.640 --> 0:29:38.640 of post structuralist academics who don't even understand what they're saying. 0:29:38.640 --> 0:29:42.720 But that could happen too, And so I think people like, well, 0:29:42.760 --> 0:29:44.520 I don't know, I was a pretty smart twelve year old. 0:29:44.520 --> 0:29:46.320 Maybe I would understand it better. But you just need 0:29:46.320 --> 0:29:49.800 somebody repeating it. It's the slogans and the narratives have 0:29:49.840 --> 0:29:53.720 already been formed by others. You're not necessarily innovating on it. 0:29:53.760 --> 0:29:56.880 As long as you can repeat the dogma. It doesn't 0:29:56.920 --> 0:29:59.760 really matter who's saying. It doesn't matter if you're at 0:29:59.800 --> 0:30:01.280 the person is gay or Jewish. 0:30:01.560 --> 0:30:03.800 And I mean the Estonian twelve year old was not 0:30:03.880 --> 0:30:04.440 a one off. 0:30:04.480 --> 0:30:04.640 You know. 0:30:04.880 --> 0:30:06.960 In the Ethan Melzer case a year or two ago, 0:30:07.280 --> 0:30:09.600 Ethan Melzer was a US Army private who was trying 0:30:09.640 --> 0:30:13.200 to set up his unit in Turkey to be attacked 0:30:13.240 --> 0:30:16.360 by Middle Eastern terrorist groups. And the person he was 0:30:16.360 --> 0:30:19.360 communicating with online sort of goading him into these acts 0:30:20.000 --> 0:30:20.600 was a child. 0:30:20.720 --> 0:30:21.400 It was a child. 0:30:21.520 --> 0:30:23.320 He was the Order of Nine Angles though right he 0:30:23.360 --> 0:30:26.520 was ONA. He wasn't a near Nazi, right. I always 0:30:26.520 --> 0:30:28.880 try to distinguish there's some nine A's who are not. 0:30:29.720 --> 0:30:32.560 He was at the bleed point of Adam Waffin splinter 0:30:32.640 --> 0:30:34.960 group and ONA. He was involved with rape Waffen A 0:30:35.240 --> 0:30:35.440 was he? 0:30:35.760 --> 0:30:38.680 Yeah. The lineage of these groups is so messy. 0:30:38.720 --> 0:30:41.360 I think some of them don't even understand the ideological 0:30:41.360 --> 0:30:45.480 lineage of the sect they've ended up in. But Melzer 0:30:45.480 --> 0:30:47.840 was at that sort of bleed point where Adam Woffen 0:30:48.040 --> 0:30:50.040 was becoming ONA. 0:30:50.600 --> 0:30:52.720 But I think what we're seeing now and definitely in 0:30:52.720 --> 0:30:55.080 these last two school shootings in the last month is 0:30:56.160 --> 0:30:59.320 a syncretic murder cull. The guy who just did the 0:30:59.400 --> 0:31:01.840 nasphoon one was black. But if you start looking at 0:31:01.840 --> 0:31:05.520 both of their manifestos, they're referring to all different kinds 0:31:05.560 --> 0:31:08.320 of things, some of whom are white supremacists and neo Nazis, 0:31:08.880 --> 0:31:12.479 many of whom aren't just other school shooters, and they 0:31:12.480 --> 0:31:15.800 don't seem to have a real ideological, necessarily connection to 0:31:15.840 --> 0:31:18.840 some of this the political stuff. It's not become an 0:31:18.920 --> 0:31:22.400 O nine A. They are founded by neo Nazi and 0:31:22.440 --> 0:31:24.000 many of them are Neo Nazis. And so I was 0:31:24.040 --> 0:31:25.720 going to say they're not. They don't have to be, 0:31:25.800 --> 0:31:27.840 and all the people aren't. And even if you were 0:31:27.880 --> 0:31:30.680 supposed to be they are, they aren't all. And so 0:31:30.800 --> 0:31:36.920 we're just getting through these various online forums on Telegram 0:31:36.920 --> 0:31:39.160 and elsewhere. Sometimes they just spread over all kinds of 0:31:39.160 --> 0:31:44.040 the different platforms. We're getting just this syncretic mix of 0:31:44.080 --> 0:31:47.080 these things. And this is one of the things that 0:31:47.160 --> 0:31:51.920 made nine A and Siege Culture are parallel Mason's ideas, 0:31:51.920 --> 0:31:54.400 because Mason's not a Satanist, and in fact, he's recently 0:31:54.400 --> 0:31:57.600 denounced Ordered nine Angles, and when he was around Satanists 0:31:57.880 --> 0:32:00.680 they were atheist Satanists around the Church of Saint that 0:32:00.760 --> 0:32:03.480 when you start saying, hey, we need to commit random 0:32:03.600 --> 0:32:07.240 murders in this goal of destroying the like suppose the 0:32:07.320 --> 0:32:11.120 Jewish controlled society, so there could be a white arian revolution. Like, 0:32:11.640 --> 0:32:14.200 it doesn't matter if you have a really political reason 0:32:14.280 --> 0:32:17.000 or if you're thinking that these heretical acts will destroy 0:32:17.120 --> 0:32:20.760 somehow the consensus. Reality, you're just trying to go people 0:32:20.840 --> 0:32:25.040 into these violent, random acts of terrorism and more random murders, right. 0:32:24.960 --> 0:32:27.040 And the end result is the same they're. 0:32:26.880 --> 0:32:29.160 Thinking is the same, and the end results is the same. 0:32:29.360 --> 0:32:31.760 So they start cross pollinating. And then what's the difference 0:32:31.760 --> 0:32:35.400 between the school shooter cults, you know, and now we 0:32:35.440 --> 0:32:39.680 have groups like the Maniac murder cull who are ostensibly political, 0:32:39.720 --> 0:32:42.360 ostensibly neo Nazi and Order of nine angle has been 0:32:42.360 --> 0:32:46.320 a reality or just like go attack old people from behind. 0:32:46.640 --> 0:32:49.640 I mean it's just pathetic stuff. Go, you know, beat 0:32:49.720 --> 0:32:52.920 up homeless people and stab them. It's like at some 0:32:52.960 --> 0:32:55.400 point often say this and my speeches, and it's become 0:32:55.560 --> 0:32:58.200 more and more real. Is like everything blends together in 0:32:58.320 --> 0:33:02.000 our society. I think, you know, you start with like 0:33:02.040 --> 0:33:04.800 school shooters and it's hard to distinguish them from like 0:33:04.880 --> 0:33:09.960 a political mass shooters and from political mass shooters. Right 0:33:10.040 --> 0:33:12.320 at one point, it just becomes this one thing that's 0:33:12.480 --> 0:33:15.560 like all mixed together because we're having in the United States, 0:33:15.760 --> 0:33:18.960 we're having these constant attacks and constant that often the 0:33:18.960 --> 0:33:22.160 body account is very high. Like what becomes the difference anymore? 0:33:22.400 --> 0:33:25.920 Does it really matter? Like the Allen, Texas guy who 0:33:26.000 --> 0:33:28.920 was a Latino neo Nazi who killed a bunch of 0:33:28.920 --> 0:33:31.280 people in an outlet mall, this is really a neo 0:33:31.400 --> 0:33:35.160 Nazi action, like he was, like clearly if you look 0:33:35.160 --> 0:33:37.520 at his stuff or an article called Nazis of Color 0:33:37.560 --> 0:33:41.560 about this dynamic. But was his action? How is his 0:33:41.600 --> 0:33:45.160 action necessarily any different than like a school shooting or whatever, 0:33:45.360 --> 0:33:47.400 or just like you know, it's just like he's going 0:33:47.400 --> 0:33:50.280 somewhere and killing random people, Like what is this about? 0:33:50.320 --> 0:33:54.280 So I think we're seeing this syncretic murdercal is really 0:33:54.520 --> 0:33:56.719 I know other people have different ways of posing this 0:33:56.880 --> 0:33:59.880 that is sprawling out on different online platforms and appealing 0:33:59.880 --> 0:34:05.480 to very young, alienated people, probably whose whole lives are online. 0:34:05.680 --> 0:34:09.120 I think, especially younger people who went through COVID zoomers, 0:34:09.280 --> 0:34:11.240 and I guess people younger than that would be Generation 0:34:11.360 --> 0:34:14.640 Alpha spend more time online than any other generation. Obviously 0:34:14.680 --> 0:34:17.359 they must, and this becomes especially when they're much younger 0:34:17.400 --> 0:34:20.360 the horizon of the world right, and if they're in 0:34:20.480 --> 0:34:22.560 cells and they're not really connected to other people and 0:34:22.600 --> 0:34:25.200 they're not connected to their family like it, it just 0:34:25.320 --> 0:34:28.520 drives these impulses more and more, and they don't have 0:34:28.560 --> 0:34:31.719 the maturity to look outside of it, or to think 0:34:31.719 --> 0:34:34.600 about the repercussions of it, or think of have the 0:34:34.640 --> 0:34:37.040 empathy to think about how it's going to affect other 0:34:37.040 --> 0:34:38.080 people in their families. 0:34:48.040 --> 0:34:50.239 And so when it comes to Siege, what would you 0:34:50.280 --> 0:34:55.040 say its current role in this sort of evolving syncretic 0:34:55.920 --> 0:35:00.680 murder culture that we have, is it is Siege's legacy 0:35:00.800 --> 0:35:04.799 now just that it's ideological lineage lives on in sort 0:35:04.840 --> 0:35:06.040 of the terogram milieu. 0:35:06.360 --> 0:35:08.520 Or is it still itself influential? 0:35:09.360 --> 0:35:12.200 Oh, some of this is a question of ideas. I 0:35:12.239 --> 0:35:17.520 think sometimes Siege acts as a symbol. People can gesture 0:35:17.560 --> 0:35:20.440 that their neo Nazis is a serious neo Nazi four 0:35:20.520 --> 0:35:22.000 hundred and fifty page tone. 0:35:22.120 --> 0:35:23.960 They didn't read it, they didn't all read it. 0:35:25.080 --> 0:35:26.680 Yeah, I know, read Siege just like, how many of 0:35:26.760 --> 0:35:29.560 you have read Siege? And I found out doing the 0:35:29.600 --> 0:35:32.160 work that there's like an edited one hundred page version, 0:35:32.680 --> 0:35:35.640 and then there's like a little pocket version, and then 0:35:35.680 --> 0:35:37.880 someone even made the ten Tenants of Siege. 0:35:38.080 --> 0:35:40.480 There's the spark notes murder called. 0:35:40.680 --> 0:35:43.720 Well Adam Waften Division apparently had a test on Siege 0:35:43.800 --> 0:35:45.400 to get in. And I'm like, I know these people 0:35:45.400 --> 0:35:49.200 didn't write. They're like a lot of very disturbed or 0:35:49.560 --> 0:35:51.640 you know, people who aren't going to like it's a 0:35:51.719 --> 0:35:54.399 boring text. I mean I read it twice in like, I've. 0:35:54.320 --> 0:35:56.480 Read portions, but I'm not going to sit here and 0:35:56.480 --> 0:35:57.640 say I read the whole book. 0:35:57.760 --> 0:35:58.919 It's four hundred and fifty page. 0:35:58.920 --> 0:36:01.200 Man, I read every news letter and the book and 0:36:01.280 --> 0:36:04.800 it's yes, no, oh. So it acts as the symbol 0:36:04.880 --> 0:36:07.000 to be like, look, we have a serious intellectual thing. 0:36:07.040 --> 0:36:09.319 How many Christians have read the Bible. Let's be really sorting. 0:36:09.400 --> 0:36:11.799 I think, yeah, I think that's the right analogy, right, 0:36:11.840 --> 0:36:15.319 that it is a foundational text, but they're not all 0:36:15.360 --> 0:36:18.040 sitting down and digesting or even understanding it. Yeah. 0:36:18.040 --> 0:36:21.880 I mean, how many Communists have read Dos Capital, even 0:36:21.920 --> 0:36:24.000 just volume one, which I have. I would like to 0:36:24.040 --> 0:36:26.880 say I have, actually, is it more or less boring 0:36:26.920 --> 0:36:29.840 than siege? It's more intellectual and so there's that, and 0:36:29.880 --> 0:36:34.280 there's also like the conclusions are there, right, the whole 0:36:34.400 --> 0:36:37.440 argument is developed in siege. But you really just need 0:36:37.480 --> 0:36:41.160 to take the conclusions, which is, you can't do any 0:36:41.200 --> 0:36:44.680 political work. It's hopeless. You need to go out and 0:36:44.719 --> 0:36:49.440 commit dramatic acts of violence to help inspire people, and 0:36:49.480 --> 0:36:52.359 then you know, maybe afterwards there'll be some aryan blah 0:36:52.360 --> 0:36:54.759 blah blah. Frankly, that's all you need to know about it, 0:36:55.239 --> 0:36:58.160 because that's what it advocates. You just need the praxis 0:36:58.560 --> 0:37:02.520 that it concludes. And most actstivists aren't intellectuals. Like I 0:37:02.520 --> 0:37:06.040 always say, like a movement can have three slogans and 0:37:06.080 --> 0:37:07.799 what you need to do on the left, you need 0:37:07.840 --> 0:37:09.880 to make sure those are the right slogans pointing in 0:37:09.920 --> 0:37:13.239 the right direction, because somebody who flows into activism who's young, 0:37:13.239 --> 0:37:14.920 who it doesn't matter if they're young, doesn't have a 0:37:14.920 --> 0:37:17.960 background of politics, is going to take the thing seriously 0:37:18.000 --> 0:37:19.759 that you say. And you can only say so many 0:37:19.800 --> 0:37:22.719 things to people. Political movements are stupid. I mean, this 0:37:22.880 --> 0:37:25.240 is why we are. The ninety nine percent was great, 0:37:25.280 --> 0:37:27.920 it was great, it wasn't true. I mean half of 0:37:27.960 --> 0:37:31.400 Americans are like it, you know, support the Republicans, but like, 0:37:31.480 --> 0:37:33.399 it's like one thing, and then the person can think 0:37:33.400 --> 0:37:35.800 about those things. They're not going to have complicated ideas. 0:37:35.840 --> 0:37:38.239 So what is what are the slogans that come out 0:37:38.280 --> 0:37:40.160 of something? What are the basic what does it boil 0:37:40.239 --> 0:37:43.000 down to the things you're saying? And people have inherited 0:37:43.000 --> 0:37:46.160 that from Siege or inherited it secondhand, you know, because 0:37:46.280 --> 0:37:50.400 Terogram is very well versed in what Siege is about. 0:37:50.600 --> 0:37:52.560 I mean Adam often had to read it, so they 0:37:52.560 --> 0:37:55.640 were more I think, into it as a text. And 0:37:55.680 --> 0:37:59.080 then as it's gone out, you know, Tarogram people, the 0:37:59.120 --> 0:38:03.000 Tterogram collective certainly knew what was in it and stuff, 0:38:03.040 --> 0:38:05.560 and so people are being affected by it even if 0:38:05.600 --> 0:38:08.000 they don't know, even if they haven't read, or even 0:38:08.040 --> 0:38:10.320 if they don't know, that's the origin of those ideas. 0:38:10.560 --> 0:38:10.680 Right. 0:38:10.719 --> 0:38:13.480 So Terogram is directly downstream of Siege. Right. 0:38:13.480 --> 0:38:15.960 So Siege was a newsletter that became a book. People 0:38:15.960 --> 0:38:18.080 read the book, and the people who read that book 0:38:18.200 --> 0:38:21.120 turned it back into a zine. Right, So it's it's 0:38:21.160 --> 0:38:24.680 sort of oh to someone it's moving through its phases 0:38:24.719 --> 0:38:28.680 and now it's regressing back into sort of mimetic zine form. 0:38:29.000 --> 0:38:32.239 But people who join these movements who want something more intellectual, 0:38:32.360 --> 0:38:35.560 because everyone who joins a religious or political movement, some 0:38:35.600 --> 0:38:37.920 people want a more rigorous They're like, well, what's the 0:38:37.960 --> 0:38:39.800 reason for this? Well, I have these questions. How do 0:38:39.840 --> 0:38:41.640 you answer them? What is why are we doing this? 0:38:42.120 --> 0:38:45.680 Want more rigorous? Some people want a more rigorous background 0:38:45.800 --> 0:38:48.479 can turn to siege, and as they get older, will 0:38:48.480 --> 0:38:50.840 turn to siege or move out of it. And they're like, 0:38:50.880 --> 0:38:53.600 what were the ideas behind this? Why did we have 0:38:53.719 --> 0:38:56.520 these ideas? And I think that's it's normal. I mean, 0:38:56.520 --> 0:38:59.600 there are all kinds of weird intellectual groundings for white supremacists. 0:38:59.600 --> 0:39:02.800 A lot of it is theology, which is sort of curious. 0:39:02.840 --> 0:39:05.239 And I kind of concluded at some point that you 0:39:05.360 --> 0:39:08.880 just needed something complicated because they couldn't use race science anymore, 0:39:09.239 --> 0:39:12.239 and there weren't people who developed social science other than 0:39:12.239 --> 0:39:15.600 someone like Alndebenoist, who's saying something much more complicated than 0:39:15.600 --> 0:39:19.400 most white supremacs are. And so like theology just allowed 0:39:19.440 --> 0:39:22.440 something intellectual for people to chew on, you know what 0:39:22.440 --> 0:39:24.920 I mean, Like people are real smart who are very 0:39:24.960 --> 0:39:28.000 analytical want something to chew on with the ideas, whether 0:39:28.040 --> 0:39:30.359 it really changes their practice or not. And I think 0:39:30.840 --> 0:39:32.840 there has to be something that serves that need. 0:39:33.360 --> 0:39:36.320 And so I guess wrapping up, because we're supposed to 0:39:36.360 --> 0:39:39.080 keep these daily shows short. What is the takeaway that 0:39:39.320 --> 0:39:41.359 you want people to to come away from this book with? 0:39:41.400 --> 0:39:43.040 I guess, especially in this political moment. 0:39:43.600 --> 0:39:46.399 I think there's two things. The book has two things. One, 0:39:46.440 --> 0:39:49.959 I just want to have people have a better understanding 0:39:50.000 --> 0:39:52.680 of neo Nazism in the US and how it developed. 0:39:52.719 --> 0:39:55.480 It's just one big blur. It's part of other things, 0:39:55.560 --> 0:39:57.600 and I see it as a distinct strain. And I 0:39:57.680 --> 0:40:00.280 want people to have a just a better understan standing 0:40:00.320 --> 0:40:03.600 of that political movement's origins, which is maybe a more 0:40:03.719 --> 0:40:06.560 scholarly thing. And I am my next book, I hope 0:40:06.600 --> 0:40:08.120 if I can get a contract, is to write a 0:40:08.160 --> 0:40:10.920 history of national socialism in America, because again, there's not 0:40:10.960 --> 0:40:13.920 a single book that describes that, which is very strange. 0:40:13.960 --> 0:40:16.319 Certainly not a history post war, and there may be 0:40:16.320 --> 0:40:17.920 a pre war one, but not one that puts it 0:40:17.920 --> 0:40:20.840 all together. So there's a lot of ignorance about this movement. 0:40:21.360 --> 0:40:23.800 And the second part about the cultural actors is about 0:40:23.880 --> 0:40:26.600 the danger of taking a radical cultural movement and to 0:40:26.880 --> 0:40:32.080 use impulses like transgression and turn them into the very 0:40:32.120 --> 0:40:35.560 toxic politics, into terrorist politics. At the end of the day, 0:40:35.719 --> 0:40:38.320 I had a discussion on Blue Sky. It was amazing. 0:40:38.360 --> 0:40:40.680 You could see. It wasn't Twitter. I had a useful 0:40:40.719 --> 0:40:43.960 discussion on Blue Sky and where I learned something. It 0:40:44.080 --> 0:40:47.239 was just fabulous. And it was this woman posted that, 0:40:47.320 --> 0:40:49.920 which is like essentially in Matzau I read it. In 0:40:49.960 --> 0:40:54.520 the twentieth century, there was always this assumption that transgressive art, 0:40:54.560 --> 0:40:59.480 avant garde art was implicitly progressive. Sometimes it was ideological, 0:40:59.480 --> 0:41:02.080 but even and it wasn't even when it had some 0:41:02.160 --> 0:41:07.920 dodgy elements, the impulse of it led to progressive, left 0:41:08.000 --> 0:41:13.000 leaning politics, and it's very transgression was progressive. And I mean, 0:41:13.000 --> 0:41:14.759 these guys I'm looking at are and working in the 0:41:14.760 --> 0:41:17.040 eighties and you see it now. We've all seen it 0:41:17.040 --> 0:41:19.560 with four Chan like that was never that isn't true, 0:41:19.560 --> 0:41:22.279 and that was never true true, right. I mean, those 0:41:22.320 --> 0:41:23.640 of us in the punk scene in the eighties and 0:41:23.719 --> 0:41:26.759 nineties could see this, even if we certainly didn't put 0:41:26.760 --> 0:41:29.360 it that way. With like skinheads in particular. It was 0:41:29.440 --> 0:41:32.560 contested terrain where people were trying to take the subculture 0:41:32.600 --> 0:41:34.480 and pull it to the left and right right. There 0:41:34.480 --> 0:41:38.000 were so many Nazis, but there were anti fascist skinheads too, Sharps. 0:41:38.400 --> 0:41:41.279 Sharps to some extent, Sharps were a lot of them 0:41:41.280 --> 0:41:44.799 are righting nationalists, they just weren't just Nazis. This is 0:41:45.040 --> 0:41:47.400 a common There was grips like rash Red and anarchist 0:41:47.440 --> 0:41:50.000 skinheads who still exist, but there was a contested terrain 0:41:50.040 --> 0:41:52.640 where people trying to pull it in different directions. This 0:41:52.680 --> 0:41:56.400 is still the case in neo folk and heathen religious circles, 0:41:56.960 --> 0:41:59.080 and that's sort of you. There's an implication which I 0:41:59.120 --> 0:42:01.799 don't think I can only like put it into words now, 0:42:01.840 --> 0:42:06.239 that like the transgressive elements of these subcultures didn't necessarily 0:42:06.280 --> 0:42:08.040 go one way or the other, and it was something 0:42:08.080 --> 0:42:10.360 you'd have to fight over, like they could go in 0:42:10.680 --> 0:42:13.319 any direction. And I think it was clear in four 0:42:13.400 --> 0:42:15.680 Chan early on. I once was mentioned very early on 0:42:15.680 --> 0:42:17.360 in four Chan and someone chimed in and they're like, 0:42:17.440 --> 0:42:20.000 leave him alone, he's my friend. And I'm like, which 0:42:20.000 --> 0:42:23.120 of my friends are on four Chan and defending me? 0:42:23.200 --> 0:42:24.920 But like four Chan didn't have to end up the 0:42:24.920 --> 0:42:28.680 way it did. You know, the earlier internet culture wasn't 0:42:28.800 --> 0:42:33.040 like this. It was progressive or libertarian, or a more 0:42:33.040 --> 0:42:37.400 decent libertarian for reading of libertarianism than we have now. 0:42:37.480 --> 0:42:39.960 So that's the second part. I mean, other than these guys, 0:42:39.960 --> 0:42:41.879 if you ever were in the industrial or neo folk 0:42:41.960 --> 0:42:44.400 scene and you heard about there's Nazis, I have all 0:42:44.440 --> 0:42:47.319 of the receipt in detail in the book. If that's 0:42:47.360 --> 0:42:48.160 of interest to you. 0:42:48.200 --> 0:42:50.600 Yeah, Boyd Rice will tell you he never meant it, 0:42:50.680 --> 0:42:53.560 but I've read some of the primary documents that lead 0:42:53.560 --> 0:42:54.640 me to believe otherwise. 0:42:54.880 --> 0:42:55.120 Yeah. 0:42:55.160 --> 0:42:57.400 And I even made a video of him creatively entitled 0:42:57.400 --> 0:43:00.440 Boyd Rice New Nazi Collaborator. And I know you're like Spencer, 0:43:00.480 --> 0:43:02.000 what are you really getting at here? And I show 0:43:02.080 --> 0:43:04.960 the letters and stuff, and just if you're not familiar 0:43:05.040 --> 0:43:06.640 with these figures, I know a lot of people there 0:43:06.640 --> 0:43:10.279 were very obscure movements at the time, and you know, 0:43:10.360 --> 0:43:12.680 people are not familiar with them, But I think are 0:43:12.719 --> 0:43:15.440 familiar enough with this idea of like a super radical 0:43:15.440 --> 0:43:19.040 cultural movement about step by step I show how it 0:43:19.080 --> 0:43:23.040 can move into fully politicized a transgressive movement can move 0:43:23.080 --> 0:43:27.360 into a fully politicized, super toxic neo Nazism that is 0:43:27.480 --> 0:43:30.400 espousing terrorism, and that that this is something that we 0:43:30.440 --> 0:43:32.680 always have to watch out for in our own religious 0:43:32.719 --> 0:43:36.040 movements and our own cultural movements and accult circles. I 0:43:36.120 --> 0:43:38.920 just did a podcast with some you know, a cult 0:43:39.600 --> 0:43:43.920 style esoteric podcast, and I'm talking about Satanists to become Nazis. 0:43:43.920 --> 0:43:46.319 Satanists are sort of i would say split these days, 0:43:46.360 --> 0:43:49.600 but there's definitely a Nazi, you know, peace in there 0:43:49.600 --> 0:43:52.000 are a very visible one. And so some of it's 0:43:52.080 --> 0:43:52.880 just about these things. 0:43:53.080 --> 0:43:56.560 That's an important takeaway too that you know, in any subculture, 0:43:56.600 --> 0:43:59.960 especially the sort of transgressive subcultures like you know, counterculture 0:44:00.400 --> 0:44:04.600 music and art, and you know, occult spaces have a 0:44:04.600 --> 0:44:06.920 magical practice that you engage in people who engage in, 0:44:06.960 --> 0:44:11.239 you know, practice pagan faiths in all these subcultures, you 0:44:11.320 --> 0:44:14.240 need to call out these bad actors early and often 0:44:14.600 --> 0:44:16.840 push back, don't let them bully you, and push them 0:44:16.880 --> 0:44:17.239 out of your. 0:44:17.200 --> 0:44:22.840 Spaces absolutely, and Nazis ruin everything. They intentionally go into 0:44:22.880 --> 0:44:25.680 all these spaces and sometimes don't intentionally. Actually this was 0:44:25.760 --> 0:44:28.920 a comment on Stormfront. I learned from talking about Nazis 0:44:28.960 --> 0:44:32.200 and the animal rights movement, and they're like, Spencer doesn't understand. 0:44:32.800 --> 0:44:37.880 We're not infiltrating these movements. We're just vegans. We're just 0:44:37.960 --> 0:44:42.520 also Nazis. Like, but we're not vegans because we're Nazis. 0:44:42.560 --> 0:44:44.920 We're not coming here from some other reason. 0:44:45.280 --> 0:44:46.919 Well, you can't let them sit with you either way. 0:44:48.000 --> 0:44:49.440 Well, this is a funny story. I don't know if 0:44:49.480 --> 0:44:51.680 you have tied, but I heard this story from a 0:44:51.680 --> 0:44:54.040 friend of mine that they were in a vegan group 0:44:54.080 --> 0:44:58.120 in southern California, I think, and they had a unofficial party, 0:44:58.200 --> 0:45:00.360 like a barbecue. It's people from the group, from the 0:45:00.360 --> 0:45:02.440 group doing it. People brought their partners. It wasn't an 0:45:02.440 --> 0:45:04.760 official group function. But this one member of the group 0:45:05.120 --> 0:45:09.319 brought her husband, who is Kevin McDonald. Oh, and they 0:45:09.360 --> 0:45:13.240 were vegetarians or vegans, and people were like holy fuck. 0:45:13.320 --> 0:45:15.439 And he was like, I mean, I feel a little 0:45:15.440 --> 0:45:17.200 sympathetic to him. He's like, hey, man, I don't know, 0:45:17.239 --> 0:45:20.080 I'm just I'm a I'm a vegetarian or whatever. I'm 0:45:20.120 --> 0:45:22.200 here with my wife. She's going to a party. 0:45:22.520 --> 0:45:24.400 Like, no, you're not allowed to have friends. You're not 0:45:24.440 --> 0:45:26.200 allowed to have friends you're not allowed to have hobbies, 0:45:26.239 --> 0:45:26.960 you can't be here. 0:45:27.840 --> 0:45:31.080 Yeah, but he's like, I'm not here to recruit anyone. 0:45:31.480 --> 0:45:32.600 I'm here, you know what I mean. 0:45:32.640 --> 0:45:36.319 It's the barbecue is over when the race scientist shows up. 0:45:36.400 --> 0:45:38.839 Well, this became a big discussion in the group about 0:45:38.840 --> 0:45:40.680 whether to push him out or not. But you have 0:45:40.719 --> 0:45:42.480 to do these things. And if you even if you 0:45:42.520 --> 0:45:46.120 don't want to, they're my friend or everyone's welcome or whatever. 0:45:46.280 --> 0:45:48.399 What is gonna end up happening if you don't push 0:45:48.440 --> 0:45:49.319 the Nazi. 0:45:49.000 --> 0:45:51.080 Out is that more Nazis show up. 0:45:51.200 --> 0:45:54.200 Well, if it's a single person, people are gonna start leaving. 0:45:54.320 --> 0:45:56.799 People of color are gonna leave, Jews are gonna leave, 0:45:57.040 --> 0:45:59.640 LGBTQ plus people are gonna leave, and you're gonna end 0:45:59.719 --> 0:46:02.719 up the one person losing many more So, even just 0:46:02.800 --> 0:46:05.840 on your own, you know, enlightened self interest if you 0:46:05.880 --> 0:46:07.600 want to keep your group together. And I've seen this 0:46:07.680 --> 0:46:09.879 again and again and again, and then they're like, you're 0:46:09.920 --> 0:46:12.920 defending a Nazi, so you're one too, So yeah, you 0:46:13.000 --> 0:46:16.160 got to kick these people out, even just for practical reasons. 0:46:16.400 --> 0:46:18.359 I have a very low bar for people these days, 0:46:18.360 --> 0:46:21.160 and I try to appeal I try to appeal to 0:46:21.200 --> 0:46:23.400 the baser reasons sometimes with people. 0:46:23.320 --> 0:46:24.759 You know well. 0:46:24.840 --> 0:46:27.040 If you would like to learn more about how a 0:46:27.080 --> 0:46:29.880 couple of guys in the counterculture movement in the eighties 0:46:29.960 --> 0:46:33.520 are responsible for the publication of the book that serves 0:46:33.560 --> 0:46:36.719 as the bible for modern Nazi terrorism, you can pick 0:46:36.800 --> 0:46:40.120 up a copy of Neo Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism, 0:46:40.239 --> 0:46:44.000 The Origins and Afterlife of James Mason's Siege by Spencer 0:46:44.040 --> 0:46:47.440 Sunshine from Routlige Press is available, I think wherever books 0:46:47.440 --> 0:46:49.759 are sold. I bought my copy directly from the publisher 0:46:49.960 --> 0:46:53.120 Routledge Press. I think it was only twenty seven dollars. 0:46:53.320 --> 0:46:56.719 You know, a bargain and a steal, So pick up 0:46:56.760 --> 0:46:59.279 a copy of that and where else can people find 0:46:59.320 --> 0:46:59.600 your work? 0:46:59.640 --> 0:47:02.000 Spencer, thank you for now that you mentioned that. I 0:47:02.040 --> 0:47:06.080 am on all of the socials usually at Transform sixty 0:47:06.040 --> 0:47:09.120 seven eight nine. Have a webpage if you want. If 0:47:09.120 --> 0:47:11.800 you have an RSS feed. If someone said this recently, 0:47:11.760 --> 0:47:13.520 they're like, it's actually one of the better ways to 0:47:13.600 --> 0:47:15.839 keep track of people, as like this is your follow 0:47:15.880 --> 0:47:19.400 rezillion people anyway, Spencersunshine dot com. Also, if you'd like 0:47:19.400 --> 0:47:22.040 to support anti fascist research and get a warm, fuzzy feeling. 0:47:22.080 --> 0:47:24.239 You should sign up for my Patreon for as little 0:47:24.239 --> 0:47:26.839 as two dollars a month. You can help me out 0:47:26.880 --> 0:47:30.719 with the rent and get some exclusive content. So yeah, 0:47:31.239 --> 0:47:31.680 hell yeah. 0:47:31.680 --> 0:47:33.080 Thank you so much for joining us today. 0:47:33.360 --> 0:47:35.279 Yeah, thanks for having me on the show. It's been great. 0:47:38.360 --> 0:47:40.840 It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media. 0:47:41.040 --> 0:47:44.080 For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website 0:47:44.160 --> 0:47:46.680 cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on me, 0:47:46.680 --> 0:47:49.799 the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever. 0:47:49.520 --> 0:47:50.799 You listen to podcasts. 0:47:51.120 --> 0:47:53.080 You can now find sources for It could Happen Here, 0:47:53.080 --> 0:47:56.080 listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.