The Silly Bastards Behind the Modern Fascist Movement

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
M hey, everybody, Robert Evans here, I just wanted to
explain that we're we've got kind of a weird week
going on. As you notice, we'll be dropping three episodes
this week, uh last week, two weeks ago by the
time you hear this. I went to unite the Right
two point oh the Nazi gathering in d C and

(00:21):
counter protested it with a bunch of people, um, other activists,
And so rather than hosting this with a guest comedian,
I'm I'm hosting it with another house stuff Works host
bridget Todd, who hosts afropunk solution sessions and stuff Mom
Never told You, And I'm I'm there with a couple
of different DC based activists who we all sort of

(00:42):
marched and unite the Right two point oh together and
yield at Nazis together. So that's who I'll be with.
It'll have a different feeld from a normal episode. So
we we included another normal episode this week so those
of you who just want the normal thing can get
the normal thing. And then we have this kind of
weird two parter about the modern fascist movement in the Marorca.
So hopefully you'll like all of it if you don't.

(01:02):
There should still be something for you here. Hey, everybody,
I'm Robert Evanson. This is Behind the Bastards, the show
where we tell you everything you don't know about the
very worst people in all of history. Now, normally we
record this story in a comfortable little recording studio in
Los Angeles, but this week I am in Washington, d C.
For Unite the Right two point oh, which has been
build a white civil rights rally by racists and a

(01:25):
fascist march on Washington, d C. By everybody else. I'm
here with a group of d C and and East
Coast in general locals, and we're all gonna be marching together.
Why don't you guys introduce yourselves. Hi, I'm Hanna Essenger.
I live in Roanoke, Virginia, and in my podcast is
The Kitchen Table Fault. And I'm here because I grew

(01:46):
up in this world and I'd like to fight against it.
My name is Nick Wood. I was a marine, and
I also grew up in very conservative circles, and uh
I likewise, I feel the need to fight back again
my old people. Um. I'm Bridget Todd. I'm the host
of two podcasts on this very network. Stuff I've never

(02:08):
told you in Afropunk Solution sessions. I live here in
d C. And DC is my home, and so when
Nazis come to my home, I have to show them
they're not welcome. Yeah, and I just don't like Nazis.
Uh So, so I've spent because I don't like Nazis,
I've spent most of the last two weeks reading everything
they've said to each other on the Internet. So there's

(02:28):
this group of journalism collective called Unicorn Riot, and over
the last couple of years they have gotten dozens of
leaks of like huge chunks of chat logs between all
of these different far right groups, the Traditional Workers Party
uh and and anti comm and like groups that are
essentially Nazi groups. Um. So that's what this podcast is about.
We've taken all of their conversations. I've read them, I've

(02:50):
I've analyzed them. Uh And, so we're gonna be talking
today about the first post two thousand sixteen wave of
American fascist activists. Uh So, Yeah, I'm just gonna get
into it. Um. I'd like to give a start by
giving an overthrow view of the folks were talking about. So,
the Traditional Workers Party or t w P, was a
far right group that was profiled in that New York

(03:10):
Times article A Voice of Hate in America's Heartland. Um,
that's the article that got widely panned for the New
York Times, basically giving a Nazi a big platform to
talk about being a Nazi. We've never done that before. Um.
And the the t WP, like most of these groups,
claims not to support racism, but they also sold swatsticka
arm bands on their website, so you know, you can

(03:31):
make that judgment for yourself. They dissolved earlier this year,
not because the government rated them, but because their leader
was caught having sex with his spokesman's wife and his
spokesman was also his father in law. Uh. And so
the spokesman deleted their website. Uh. And yeah, but some
of these guys are still active. Yeah. I love that.
Even though they're these like Nazis, they still have messy

(03:54):
personal and we'll be getting into that a little later.
They all got messy, messy personal stuff, um the master. Yeah.
So Anti comm is another one of these groups, and
they're big source of a lot of the conversations I read.
They were billed as a right wing counter to Antifa.
I'm going to read a quote from their spokesman that
shows sort of how they marketed themselves to the world.

(04:15):
Quote from the beginning, We've attempted to make it clear
that though we defend free speech, we do not have
and will never have, an official political platform. We accepted
members regardless of ethnicity or gender, provided that they agree
with the cause and can satisfy the physical requirements to join,
although the political and racial makeup of our members varies wildly.
We have Korean libertarians, gay and archo capitalists, Latino nationalists,

(04:37):
and even some liberals interests. Our common mission has prevented
us from splitting over such political lines. That's all lies,
because you can read what these people said to each
other in private on discord, and it's stuff like freedom
of speech is merely a tool used to be able
to persuade the masses. We want to destroy anti FA
because they're Marxists. In this message from a guy named
King Bobo Man, I'm all for no race mixing, even

(04:58):
if it is fascist in practice. So as we'll get
into anti com was part of like an attempt to
sort of rebrand the far right as an opposition to
communism rather than a nationalist racist group. Racist. We have
black friends, Yeah, we have we have black friends. Look
at this, Look at this one guy who's not white
that we brought to the rally. Like, see, we're fine. Um.

(05:20):
And a lot of them will admit behind closed doors
to being fascists, like this quote from February of two
seventeen from a user named Max and the Anti comm server.
I'm both and cap and a fascist. I think either
can work, so I'd be okay with either. Which if
you're in anarchic any kind of anarchist, you can't also
be a fascist. They don't work together, guys, But they're dumb.

(05:41):
These are all dumb. Um. Another big group of fascists
in our modern world, or the Oregon Nazis, they're not
one distinct group. Patriot Prayer is an Oregon based far right.
I would call them fascist group. They're the people who
were just active in the big Portland protest um. They
had a discord server called Cascadian Coffee Company that was
a general all of the fascists and Oregon uh talk

(06:01):
on this channel, so we'll be hearing a lot from
them today. Um, there are a lot of groups we
could get into. Vanguard America is one the Nazi who
killed Heather Hair at Charlottesville last year was a member
of Van Guard America. UM. They split up recently into
Patriot Front identity Europa is basically a Nazi group, couched
and we're just proud to be European, but we also
want all immigration to end. Um. They were at Charlottesville too.

(06:23):
There's the League of the South, There's there's a lot
of different groups of racists in Europe. Yes, Richard Spencer
just got stopped from going, i think, to the Netherlands
to try to give a speech. Yeah. Yeah, well Europe,
Europe seeing what happens if you let Nazis march. It
doesn't end well. Um. So this brings us to Jason Kessler.

(06:45):
He's the single person who best embodies the first wave
of modern American fascism. He graduated from the University of
Virginia in two thousand and nine with the BA and psychology.
He seems to have been at one point a Democrat
who voted for Barack Obama. He claims to have been
at Occupy Wall Street in two thousand eleven. And in
my time and pouring through archived Nazi chats, I found
that a lot of fascist activists have a similar background,
and one conversation from last May, a user named Yarbal's

(07:07):
talked about his time with Occupy and said, back then,
I just hated the banks in the Fiat system, not
the parentheses, parenthesis parentheses, banks in the parentheses parentheses parentheses,
Fiat system, which is Nazi. When they when they put
three uh those marks on either side, it means they're
talking about Jewish people, Like that's one of the coded
phrases they have. So one of the weird things about

(07:29):
these guys that they try to hide from the right
wing activists that they're trying to like cozy up to
because they're trying to pull a lot more of the
American conservatives their way. But these guys are all pretty
anti capitalist because they're they're actual Nazis, Like they they
believe in having a strong social welfare system just for
white people, like that's part of why they want to

(07:51):
kick everybody else out. But they try to hide that
because they know that the modern American right wing won't
get on board with it. I don't know. Yeah, they're
also anti Marxist. This makes no sense. I mean, yeah,
I guess we'll talk about how good they are at
it in a little bit. So most of these guys,

(08:12):
if you like, if you search through like the chats,
just search for the term red pilled um and it'll
you'll find a bunch of conversations where various Nazi activists
talk about how they first got radicalized, essentially, and almost
all of their journeys start on YouTube. Um. One of
the videos that I found a number of people commenting

(08:32):
on was called the Lion of Europe or Hitler the Lion,
and it gets removed a lot, but the video is essentially, uh,
it's edited like a movie trailer. It's like a little
four minute video and it starts with like a dramatic
voiceover and like clips from the movie three hundred and
clips from various World War two movies that show Nazis fighting,
interspersed with like Gears of War and video game clips,

(08:54):
and there's like this voiceover talking about Uh. It's basically
it's it's it's telling like a what's the one I'm
looking for here? It's a guy giving a story that's
supposed to be Yeah, it's a propaganda piece, but it's
framed as like an apocryphal story about like a lion
fighting jackals, and obviously the jackals are supposed to be

(09:15):
everybody that's not white people. Yeah, it's exactly. I've heard
lion imagery used using conjunction with Trump too. Yeah yeah,
and that's like the they're not they don't veil it
that much. Yeah. So it's like one of the things
that's interesting to me is that this video and a
couple of other little videos I found, it's a mix
of like historical footage, movie footage, but also video game

(09:36):
clips because these guys are all gamers, Like that's a
huge recruiting ground for the farm. Their practice in gamer Gate,
a lot of them did, if you so if you
search gamer Gate and the archives, you'll find a number
of people talking about having first like that was their
first experience and activism was gamer Gate. Um, and it
led a lot of them to the election, which the

(09:58):
term online and like alright, circles is the great meme war. Um. Yeah,
it's really like they're very lame. It's frustrating to have
to take the it's seriously now. Yeah. Well, and what's
funny to me is that the far right activists that
when they like the so the actual nazis the people
who are in the groups that will be marching today

(10:20):
Unite the Right two point. Oh. They tend to call
the r alt right the alt light and they make
fun of them too. Um, they don't like them, but
they see them as a recruiting ground. So like the
alt right hasn't been isn't like they're closer to where
these people want the Nazis, Yeah, yeah it is. It's
like r OTC. It's where their kids come up. Um.

(10:42):
But there's also like, uh, where is it? Um. You'll
also find like frustration expressed from far right activists about
gamers and stuff, Like I found quotes from a couple
of people like complaining that their discord chat had a server,
had like a chat room for video games, but didn't
have anything focused on exercise and weightlifting and fighting. And

(11:05):
he was like like, we're focused, Like you guys are
too big and nerds basically, and you're making us look
bad because you come out to these protests and your
chubby and like, you don't look good in your armor.
You don't look scary, you don't look like the master
race like the Nazi. Yeah, even Nazis don't like Nazis.
You end up looking like a third string Ninja Turtle.
Mm hmm. So um. Back to Jason Kesler a little bit.

(11:28):
He's the guy who organized Unite the Right, the original
Unite the Right rally um, which was the second rally
that Nazis had carried out in Charlottesville. There was a
few weeks before Unite the Right, like a torchlent march
um that was sort of the precursor to, uh, the
first bloody Charlottesville battle. And he's the guy who organized
this most recent thing. He also used to write for

(11:48):
a website called The Daily Caller, which is owned by
Tucker Carlson and it's the home of Ben Shapiro on
the Internet. I've heard of these Oh good have you been?
Have you? Have you personally attacked by benchfu? Yeah, you
know you're a so and so and DC like left
you advising when they did he afree your money to
debate him. I wish. I mean, you know, he is

(12:13):
the kind of person that has to pay money to
get a woman to talk to him. And so Jason
Kessler used to write for yeah, the Daily collar the
same site he did, and he got to write about
the first Charlotte skill rally for them, which now and
and and in all fairness, the Daily Callers editor at
the time, Paul Connor, said that the story he wrote
was factually accurate and plainly stated what happened. And when

(12:36):
I say he plainly or when Paul Connor says he
plainly stated what happened, what he means is that Kessler
said that the torch lit march was visually striking and
then conspicuously quoted a black person who praised the marchers
as being good people. Um, so that's that's that's a
factually accurate and plainly stated version of the events of
that march. Um. But they didn't note the fact that

(12:57):
he had organized the rally, which you should do as
a journalist. If you organize a rally and then report
on it could be considered one you're certainly supposed to
let people know. Seems like it might be one ethics man. Yeah, yeah,
and if you're if you're a fascist organizer, you should
probably let people know that too before you report on
a fascist gathering, and don't mention any of the fascism um,

(13:18):
which he did not. Uh Now. Also, in fairness to
the Daily collar they pulled Kessler's articles and ended their
relationship with him. Once it became very clear to the
entire world that Jason Kessler was a Nazi fascist. Yeah,
because he was an open Nazi instead of just a
wink wink nod nod Nazi. And that's we'll be getting
into the wink wink not not part a couple of

(13:39):
points in this, But that is an important thing is
that like these guys, their whole goal is to get
the rest of the right on board with them and
essentially pull moderate conservatives further to the right. And there's
a substantial amount of evidence that that's worked. I mean,
Laura Ingram just got on Fox News and made comments
about how like an immigration is changing the nature nature

(14:02):
of the country and we're losing our culture and stuff,
was like and we didn't vote for this, yes, which
actually did so. Um a little bit back to some history.
Right after that march that Jason Kessler covered in The
Daily Caller UH next month, in June of two seventeen,

(14:23):
Kessler started a Facebook group to try to plan the
Unite the Right rally UM and he started going around
online and in person to a variety of different fascist
activist groups. He made contact with Richard Spencer, Matthew Heinbach
of the Traditional Workers Party the League of the South.
He also became a member of the Proud Boys, which
is a group funded and founded by vice co founder
Gavin McGinnis. Uh Now, Jason Kessler's goal seemed to have

(14:45):
been to make himself a bridge between the disparate rings
of wings of the alt right. He basically wanted to
be like the central spoke in the Nazi wheel. That's
kind of how he was trying to set himself up
as and that was the goal of the Unite the
Right rally. It was a heady time to be a fascist, hm.
It was a heady time to be a fascist activist
because Donald Trump had just gotten elected, the alt right

(15:06):
was in the news, and these guys kind of figured, well,
now is the time for us to tip our hands
and to get into politics and just see where the
waters are. So they were hoping that Unite the Right
would be like a coming out party for the political
far far far fascist right of the Nazis. Exactly. It
was the Nazi Debutante Ball, and of course it was
an incredibly bloody ship show. Um. Yeah, that's what nazis.

(15:30):
That's the only thing Nazis do. Um. And at the
time it was widely seen as a disaster for the
white national movement, or that that was that's debatable. It
was definitely a disaster, a disaster for Kessler who got
dropped from the Daily Wire and disavowed as a proud
boy when he became, you know, famous for being a racist. Uh.
There was a court case levied against him, which is
still in process. Signs versus Kessler. Uh. It's basically alleges

(15:52):
that Kessler and other organizers including Richard Spencer and Matthew
Hinbach had been part of quote, a direct conspiracy to
commit violence. Um. Now, they obviously claim this was a
peaceful rally was just for political purposes, but the things
that they set online and discord and on Twitter, um,
even in the open, sort of bellayed that The anti
com official Twitter, like right before Charlottesville tweeted a picture

(16:13):
of Hitler and several leading Nazis in an open topped
car and the text on the image read, get in, loser,
We're invading Charlottesville. Yeah. It seems like a pretty clear
Yeah Hitler in a in a truck, Yeah, with a
bunch of Nazis around him, Like he's not He's definitely
not going anywhere for like, they're not going shopping, yeah, refling. Yeah,
Hitler didn't go places to not be violent. Yeah. So

(16:36):
one of the saving graces of the modern fascist movement,
at least from the perspective of the rest of us
and were fascists, is that they kind of lack in
self control. Um, they're obsessed with violence and racism, and
they have trouble hiding it. Well, that doesn't stop them
from trying. Um, they have a focus on what they
call entryism, which is basically trying to find ways to
get normal right wingers on board with their extreme ideas.

(16:58):
So that yeah, red pilling is another term you'll here
used for it. Um. And there's the like, there's a
one of the discord channels leaked to unicorn Riot was
a hashtag belt tag Beltway Bigots, which is a chat
room for d C and Virginia based bigots. Uh. Here's
a quote from Unicorn Riots sort of summing up those conversations.

(17:18):
Local Charlottesville Unite the Right organizer Jaslyn Kesler Jason Kesler
repeatedly post and Beltway Bigots about his intention at various
events to try and provoke anti fascists into a violent
confrontation that could be spun as an attack against regular conservatives.
So that's their goal with these marches. Um, and here's
a direct quote from Kessler himself. We're going to be
triggering anti fat to protest and force the Alt Light's

(17:40):
hand just where your Maga hats and blend in his
proud boys. It'll be fun. So their stated goal is
to blend in as more moderate conservatives so that if
there are fights with anti Fat it looks to mainstream
conservatives like basically radical communists are ganging up on normal conservatives.
The dual purpose of putting the Alt Light in a

(18:02):
situation where they're suddenly in violence and then it creates
that US versus them exactly. M yeah. And it also
makes it easier for the fascists to go out and
march in public. Yeah yeah. Here's a quote from an
user in one of these channels who said, I love
LARPing as a normal Trump bro, not even kidding. It
allows me to feel kind of normal rather than a revolutionary.

(18:24):
Of course, I never deny being a white nationalist, which
again they'll admit white nationalism because they think they can
get away with that right now, which I guess maybe
they can. Uh. Here's another quote from Kessler in the planning.
Bring your Maga hats if you've got them. If Anti
fall Fox with us, it'll look like average Trump supporters
and Alt Light are under attack. Um So. On July eleven, seventeen,

(18:46):
Jason Kessler went to a Charlottesville town hall to talk
about Unite the Right and make it clear he was
not associated with the loyal white Knights of the ku
Klux Klan who just toasted a rally in Charlottesville. He said,
I didn't want them here. As a note, he's going
to be marching with the KKK today. Uh. He's clearly
no longer disavowing them. Um But on June, in a

(19:07):
private discord chat, eleven days after he disavowed the KKK,
Jason Kessler said this, the Confederate flag is the best
optics because it's beloved by legions of Southerners who are
on the doorsteps of becoming just like us. If we
can move them beyond heritage not hate. So again, like
the they know they can't. They know marching with swastika's
is a bad idea, but they figure if I march

(19:29):
with a Confederate flag, then I can get people who
maybe aren't full on Nazis, but who you know, are
proud of their Confederate heritage for some reason on board
with my Nazis. I think he's underestimating Southern manners. What
do you mean, Ah, the heritage and I hate people
don't like fighting. Well, I mean that's optimistic then I

(19:54):
hope so like not all of them, but definitely there's
a there's definitely a manners system in place that the
ugly fighting offense well, and that's they do. They do
talk a lot about how they should represent themselves and
how they should sort of present themselves to the public.

(20:16):
Like there's a lot of focus on not dressing like soldiers,
which they were early on, not wearing like military body
arm or not wearing camouflage. A lot of people focus
on like, we're white polo shirts dressed nicely because then
you will look like a nice, polite member of society.
And again it's all about in treatism. It's because after
after Charlottesville last year, I was campaigning with for Northam

(20:39):
in Roanoke, and I had a lot of people who
have been moderate Republicans were like, well, that was just
really ugly so we're going to vote Democrat for governor
this time around because we don't want this kind of
thing happening again. And it was the the optics of
provoking violence and bad manners, if you will, So that
was that was getting them to distance themselves from it.

(21:01):
Do you find that those glowing or not maybe not
glowing those sort of New York Times trend pieces about
you know, look at this nasty with this nicely tailored
suit and like this trendy haircut. Do those sort of
aid them in this, in this quest for better optics. Yes,
that's very important to them. So there were there were
In addition to all these discord chats, there was a
Facebook chat, very long one that went over the course

(21:24):
of a couple of weeks that was also leaked by
Unicorn Riot and it it was the planning for this
rally they were going to in and it they talk
about their frustration with getting mainstream media outlets to talk
to them, like a lot of these guys, and none
of them mentioned having connections to Info Wars, but they're
clearly interested in getting respectable news outlets to cover their
beliefs um which I think it's like the NPR recently

(21:47):
interviewed Jason Kesler uh and essentially let him talk for
like three minutes about the stuff that he believes, which
is exactly what he wants, and what the New York
Times gave them was exactly what. Yeah, they want people
who uh, they want respectable coverage. They do want to
be a mainstream political party. Um. You'll hear regularly conversations

(22:10):
where they're basically saying, the police are not on our
side yet, Um, we have to be careful until we're
in control, you know. Like it's it's this understanding that
if they play nice enough long enough, they think they
can gain functional political power. Um. So yeah, well this
has been the rights conservative rights strategy for the last

(22:33):
thirty years. I mean, if you look at the origins
of the Moral Majority and the Auburn Avenue theology, people,
you get when you have people who want to create
a theocracy out of America. They want to take on
mainstream UM avenues and like take it on step by
step and get themselves legitimized and accepted into those worlds.

(22:56):
And and honestly a lot of them are just straight
up stealing from and Tonio Graham. She's theories of like
seven spheres of cultural influence and like we have to
uh treated like trench warfare, and we're gonna we're gonna
take over this media. We're gonna take over this, We're
gonna go over the church. We're gonna take over this
and like slowly gain ground. And I think what these
guys are trying to do is essentially, because you're talking

(23:17):
more like the sort of Christian right, hard right conservatives,
I think these guys are trying to hijack that essentially,
yeah print yeah, um. And there's a big question within
these groups about how openly racist to be. That's like
a real subject of debate among racists is like how
clear can we make it that we're fascists? Um? Like
I found a brainstorming threat in the anti com channel

(23:39):
where they were trying to figure out like a logo
for their organization, and one of them suggested a design
that included little swastikas, and a person responded, people will
compare us to that then enormis know like Nazis. Other
users agree, One said, for sure, we ought to steer
away from anything that can be interpreted as Nazi symbolism
because that's going to be exactly what they are looking for.
Another person said, have to hide the power level. Uh,

(24:00):
you can't red pill normies by shoving in their face.
That's a really common phrase, hide the hide the power level.
What does that mean? It's a reference to dragon ball Z.
Because these guys are giant fucking nerds. I say, this
is a giant fucking nerd. But yeah, it's a reference
to dragon ball Z containing their hidden You know this
is not even my final form. Yeah right, And that's

(24:21):
and again this is this is taking a play out
of the Christian rights playbook that's been over the less
thirty years. Just like the cool youth pastor who walks
kids and yeah, like, hey, if you come to the
if you come to youth group, we're gonna watch movies
and play Halo. We're gonnam everybody, and then we're gonna
like it's turn up the heat and boil the frogs

(24:42):
in the water. And then before you know it, you're
protesting out that an abortionent clic or something insane like that. Well,
and when we get on the subject of especially like
the nerdy language these guys use, that brings this to
another topic that's really intriusting to me, which is the
gamification of street violence and protest, which is really big
among the far right circle. So a lot of these people,

(25:03):
like I have some recorded chats that I found on
eight Chan from like is early like two or three
weeks after the election, where people were lamenting like the
end of the election, and like, well, I ever feel
as important as I felt when I was like making
these memes that were spreading and like felt like I
was taking part in this culture movement. Well yeah, but

(25:25):
that's that those those kids and that energy is exactly
what these movements are trying to co opt, and they've
done it in a variety of different ways. Um. The
Proud Boys are probably which is again that group found
about Gavin McGinnis had probably done the best job of this.
By the way, he got banned from Twitter. He sure
did get banned from Twitter to bay they're the Proud Boys.
Whole organizational structure UM is based in part around whether

(25:48):
or not you've been in a violent fight. Uh So
to get be a first degree Proud Boy or whatever,
you have to declare online via YouTube or something that
you're a proud boy and a Western chauvinist and you
believe in the super to see of Western culture, YadA, YadA, YadA.
Then you have to promise not to masturbate, which is key.
You don't want you to want to get rid of
your virile energy. Yes, you want to contain that can

(26:10):
have sex, Yes they can, and they can masturbate if
a woman is in the room who is consenting that
you specify that, But they cannot masturbate just for their
own pleasure. It is I can imagine your shitty ideology
having a masturbation class. It's the right wing circles of Christianity. Yeah,

(26:31):
not even kidding. And I was like, oh no, that
sounds that sounds pretty. And then after you've declared your
Western chauvinism and promise not to masturbate, basically the best
way to get i think fourth degree or whatever is
you have to either be arrested for the cause or
be involved in a serious fight. Uh. And they they

(26:52):
pretend that like that's not what they want, like that
this is a consolation for having been involved in something
so horrible. Uh. You Also, the only way to progress
in ranks is to be involved in street actions that
get violent, and so it's it is gamifying. It's like
giving you a little achievement it's like now you've been
in a street fight, you move up a level, you
get to yeah, giving you cookies for violence, yea and

(27:17):
their extremist groups. I should note have been using video
games and video game imagery for quite some time. There's
an isis made mod for Grand Theft Auto where you
like blow up American soldiers. During the start of the
Ukrainian Civil War, there was this famous propaganda video I
Russian Occupier that went viral and it was a mashup
of a pro Russian rant and recruiting video with graphics
that made it look like the opening to a Call

(27:38):
of Duty game. Um, so this is not this is
not like a new thing. And the like I said,
like the Lion of Europe video that the guy mentioned
is red pilling him had a shipload of video game
imagery in it because they are trying to make you
feel like the protagonist of one of these games. Well,
and one of the problems here too is um and
you see this with Muslim Radical Station um where YouTube

(28:02):
doesn't really have any locks in terms of content, and
so the suggested play next Auto feature will get people
down rabbit holes. Which is why, like, if you have
kids and you just let them sit on the iPad
and like watch YouTube videos. They'll eventually get into like
really sketchy territory because there will be like, um, like

(28:24):
parody videos made of common kids shows that will just
AutoPlay and it will eventually be like really graphic, horrific
sexual content and with like Telly Tubby's sucking each other
and like Pepper Pig getting yeah, and and and and
it's all because it's said on AutoPlay, and just like
the associative algorithm will just send you down a really

(28:44):
dark rabbit hole really fast. Hey, we're going to continue
our talk about Nazis and eventually actually go out and
yell at some of them and then tell you what
that was like. But first, here's some ads. Um Okay,
So we were talking about sort of like how silly

(29:06):
a lot of the imagery around these these guys are.
Did you you'll see that picture of the green Keck
Warrior from the Portland protests. That was what I was
referring to. Yeah, third third rate in Ninja Turtle, Yeah,
third rate in Ninja Turtle. But this is part of
the reason that they dress like this is because they
think it's it's less threatening and it's less overtly like

(29:27):
violent than wearing again body armor that makes you look
like a militia man. He looks like your your local
LARPing suburban dad. Yeah, and he is. In fact, if
you look at his pants, I guarantee you he got
those from his LARPing days or whatever, like those are
those are fantasy LARPing pants that he got them run. Yeah,
guarantee you. I guarantee you. He has recently had a

(29:48):
conversation in which he explained just how many pounds of
pressure it takes to break a human neck. Oh yeah,
only ten, right, Yeah, it's like ten pounds. It's like,
that's not how it works then, So I don't want
to get too deep in the wood some weird internet culture,
but his you can see the words keck written on
his shield in a stylized form, which is obviously that
entered the Internet because it was how like gamers in
Korea would type out l O L and it sort

(30:09):
of became a part of Internet culture, and then four
Chan turned it into doing it from doing it to
the lolls to doing it for the kex or whatever,
and then this morphed into the idea of Kekistan, a
fake country that was mostly a joke, but also not quite. Uh, Kakistan,
You and not everybody who talks about Kakistan or whatever
is a far right nationalist. But Kakistan has a flag.

(30:31):
You will see these flags at protests regularly. Maybe not today,
but you saw it in Portland, you saw it in Berkeley. Uh.
And that flag looks like this, right, we'll have the
pictures up on our website behind the bastards dot com.
That is a green version of the Nazi naval flag.
So this is well known around the iconomists in the

(30:54):
center Keck. It's like it's like done to look like
a palindrome. Yeah, it's the The flag of Kakistan, so
to speak, is exactly the same with just the colors
inverted as the naval battle flag for the Third Reich. Um.
So this gets into what I was saying about how
a lot of the outright fascist activists are frustrated with

(31:15):
some of the people on the alt right or the
alt light as they call them. Um. I found one
chat in a discord channel where someone said the Kakistan
meme has gotten too dumb to be useful. It doesn't
trigger anyone. Now you'd be surprised at how many people
flying the flags don't even know it's a variation on
the Kriegsmrine flag. And then there's a lot of debate
because some people will say, well, know, the fact that
like the that flag is out there is good and

(31:36):
like on the whole, I think that this this thing
is like positive optics for us. So they're they're very
much undecided about this. But it's interesting how I think
most of the people that you would see carrying that
flag would tell you they're not Nazis. I'm not a fascist,
but they are carrying a flag that's a rip off
of a Nazi flag. Understand that, I think a lot
of them do. I think some of them don't, because

(31:56):
it's gotten obscure enough and it's spread enough around the
internet that some people who would never consider themselves Nazis
still use that flag. But that is where it started.
I was curious, do you think that that's what they want?
They want this to become as a popular symbol where
mainstream not Nazis, you know, have like fly it without
really knowing what it means. So I think what they

(32:17):
want is it makes it easier for them to convert
these kids later if these people are already used to
being out in the street, they're already hanging out when
they're at protest around Nazis and they're flying this flag,
it's like you're one step closer. They want to normalize
it so that it can become a dog whistle when
they want to activate it. Yes, Kistan recruiting ground exactly,
and it's it's all about like they recognize and they

(32:39):
don't like how small they are. There's somewhere between two
and four hundred Nazi activists, maybe less than two hundred
expected today, but that's just because these people are out racists.
UM groups like the Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer who
were again at the Portland and Berkeley protests, they are
better at hiding their fascism and better at hide their racism,

(33:00):
and I think as a result, they're a lot more
dangerous UM. But they're like the Quekistan stuff is part
of like it's it's a recruiting tool. And there are
a lot of conversations in the discord about like trying
to harden up these kids, trying to like give them
classes on how to deal with the police and train
them to fight. The Proud Boys initiation is you have
to get punched by a bunch of other proud boys

(33:21):
until you can name five breakfast cereals. And the stated
goal is too Yeah, it's really dumb. If you find
videos on it, it's the saddest thing in the world
because none of these kids, they don't they don't know
how to punch. Really, look it up if you want
to laugh. But their stated goal for it is they
want to train these kids how to focus while they're
stressed out and in pain. M Marine Corps three months.

(33:44):
I don't think getting punched in a circle name and
breakfast cereal will Actually I don't think so either. But
I also think that they're on the path to figuring
out how to get better at this. And they're not
just punching each other in a circle. They are showing
up to protest where these kids are getting into fights
and where they are game experience and functioning that way. Um. Now,

(34:04):
in terms of like actual talk about terrorism, um, it's
fairly mild on the discord channels. They know that there's
chances of being caught. But I have noticed that over
the last couple of months that they were talking in
the time after Charlottesville, they got more open about talking
about things like explosives. So I found one conversation in
August two where some guy was talking about legal explosives

(34:25):
and people immediately shut it down and told him that
he was just like making them a magnet for the Feds.
But then a few weeks later, after Charlottesville, in the
same server, another user offered access to a library of
a hundred and thirty seven PDFs on how to manufacture
explosives and received no pushback. Uh. Now this did make
the news once the chats got leaked and it got
the anti com server taken down. Um, but it's interesting

(34:47):
to me that in the weeks and months after Charlottesville,
people got more and more comfortable among the fascist right
with talking about explosives and terrors. Are they do they
use the word terrorism? Do they? Are they weird that
that's what they're doing? I think so, because in December nineteen,
two seventeen, several members of the Traditional Workers Party Discord
got into a conversation about how they would have carried

(35:09):
out a Dylan Roof style mass shooting at a black
church without being caught. And yeah, I've got the whole
conversation here. One guy said, I would have parked a
mile away. Another guy said same, uh, and ride a
bike to the location. Another guy says, I would have
mapped out all the CCTV cameras first on a recon
op then planned parking Accordingly, another guy said that too.

(35:30):
I follow the same m O when I go to
a rally. The other guy said, me too. Man, So
they were basically talking about what they would have done
to have carried out that massacre and then gotten away
with it. We were talking about this last night. Do
you think that a lot of these people are former veterans?
Do you think they actually have any combat experience some
of them. I'm not completely sure whether there are a

(35:52):
significant number of veterans involved, and I'm sure there are some,
or if the people using a lot of this jargon
and stuff because they use a lot of of military
style tactics. They talk about X fill points or X filtration,
how to get out um, they talk about high value targets,
they refer to them as h vt s, And the
thing is that's very jargoning, and I'm not completely clear
if there's actually veteran in their writing their orders, because

(36:15):
it's not quite structured the right way. But it's also
the use of jargon that you find among people who
are like military adjacent and want to feel really tough,
like their dad was a marine or a cop or something,
and they're like they'll be talking about like h vt
s because it makes them feel like they're badass girling. Yeah,
I'm really not sure. It could be just a veteran,
but like a veteran who had a job like mine

(36:37):
where they worked a six to six death job and
want to feel like they were a badass, or they
you know, they could just be one of these like
military fan fanboy knots. They're like larbers. They are Nazis,
but like they're LARPing military doing tactics and stuff. They
don't think they could actually hack it in the military,
but they want the all of the prestige and fund

(36:58):
or they think they can. They think they could hack
it in the military, or if they were in the
military and in a job like mind where they didn't
see action, they think they could hack it as a grunt,
but they've never they've never been tested. There are, however,
some of them who have been uh, some of them
who are combat veterans, although that's not the norm. Um
and In fact, it's more common around groups like the

(37:18):
oath keepers and the three percenters, those militias which they hate. Um.
But the idea is that only three percent of Americans
would be ready to like defend their country and defend
the constitution. And it's supposedly a group of veterans who
stand ready to defend free speech and whatnot. Though they
do have some of the same problems the Proud Boys

(37:39):
do of having people in their organization who are like,
I would have joined the military, but pt was hard. Yeah,
And they also get infiltrated by fascists and stuff. But
in general they're treated with contempt by the fascists because
they call them oath cuts um. Because they will do
stuff like stand around Anti five protests and try to

(38:00):
build a wall between them and the police, and they
probably masturbate it, so that that that means they're right
out in terms of protecting Western culture. How much like
messy kind of petty in fighting and drama is there
in this huge amount of a lot of patty high
schoolers in a lot of ways. And they one of
the things that is again makes them easier to fight

(38:21):
is that they have no sense of in group loyalty whatsoever.
When Unite the Right was a disaster and someone died
and there was a lot of blood, they abandoned Jason
Kessler like that, like he has become very marginalized and
insulted and mocked. And the same thing happened with Matthew
Heinbach when he got arrested for beating up his father
in law after having an affair with his father in

(38:43):
law's wife. Uh, he was made fun of and mocked
and pretty much dropped by the community. Loyalty, no loyalty
for their heroes. And I should note that conversation we're
going through with these guys were talking about how to
carry out a Dylan Roof style shooting on a a
black church. One of the two members in that goes

(39:03):
in discord by the name a Hopstorm foer Pepe Hopstorm
Fear was a Nazi like an S. S. Rank It
means essentially like Stormtroop leader Um Hopstrom fuer Peppe was
also the guy who started Anti com that group that
was supposedly nonpartisan and non political and contained people of
all political persuasions. He was the guy talking about how
to carry out and get away with an attack on

(39:24):
a black Church. Uh, and here's a picture of him.
He's a baby. He's a baby. Oh my god. We
will not be posting the picture of him because I
don't want to docks this guy because I'm not acent
share it's him. But there is a Trump stamp on
the side of his computer tower, and he looks like
the guy. These are these are the these are the
guys that you could really use just because their egos

(39:48):
are so fragile to be like, well, you could be
the great leader and then cause a lot of discord
and like keep things disorganized because they're all fighting each other. Yeah,
and also like it's hard to say, it's probably like
the conversation they're saying Karen talking about how they'd get
away with an attack. I'm going to guess this guy
is never going to do anything. But like, this kid

(40:09):
looks like he's maybe eighteen. He's got no hair on
his face, he looks like a little baby. He looks
like all the mass murders I've ever seen. That's what's scary,
because there is this guy does look like exactly the
kind of person in age group, and there's nothing stopping
him from getting an a R fifteen like the what's
the ven diagram overlap with in cells and these guys
they do not Like none of these guys identify as

(40:32):
in cells that I have found, um, And there's not
a lot of talk about them here because the in
cells are for one thing. Um, A lot of in
cells are not white. They are like like Elliott Roger
wasn't a white kid. Um. He was obsessed with wanting
to be and look white because he thought that those
were the guys who get all the girls. And you'll
run into that along the in cell community. But I

(40:54):
think these guys would generally view those people as degenerates. Um,
although they do share some of the same goals. I
think in sales also masturbate a lot, so they couldn't
be proud boys. Yeah. So anti com the leader of
this baby faced Nazis was a member of that claimed
not to be a political group that included yet he
looks like a half baked puppy. These guys got kicked

(41:16):
off of Discord after Charlottesville in September in part because
of like the bomb stuff that was being shared on
their discord chat um. But from February to September seventeen,
their members posted more than nine messages, and they were
a prominent part of the first Unite the Right rally.
Their Twitter account is still active. They don't seem to
be doing a lot right now. Um, but I do
think the basic ideas behind this group have sort of

(41:38):
been funneled into the activism of the Proud Boys and
groups like Patriot Prayer. Um, they've just done a better
job of hiding the racism. But it's important to know that, Like,
there's a lot of movement between all these groups. So
when Anti Com got shut down, all of the Anti
com guys started talking in the traditional Workers Party discord.
And you know, while Patriot Prayer and like Gavin McInnis

(41:59):
of the Boys said don't attend the first Unite the
Right rally, ordered is people not to posted a big
article saying we're not part of the alt right, we
don't associate with the alt right. A ton of Proud
Boys showed up at Charlotteessville the last time. They might
be there this time. The guy who's the leader of
their quote Militant Order and the Proud Boys the Fraternal
Order of All Knights, which Kevin McInnis says has nothing
to do with the alt right. A lot of them

(42:21):
were there at Charlottesville. So it's again they say, we
have no affiliation with these groups, and the leaders will
disavow them, but you look at what their people do,
and the bad guys just not be the lamest version
of themselves for twenty seconds, like we were in the
dumbest timeline. We're in the dumbest timeline. And what sucks
is that like being the lamest version of the bad
guys might work. Yeah, that's that's why this is the

(42:44):
dumbest time. The third would never have these guys because
they have no dignity. And then that and the fact
that that makes them more dangerous is really stupid. Yeah,
but because it makes the police are more likely to
be sympathetic with them, um, and because moderates are more
likely to be sympathetic with them because they look yeah, yeah,

(43:05):
they look like kicked little puppies rather than like fucking
ryanhard Hydrick marching down the street or whatever. And it's
I think that you could make a I mean it
would probably a whole other, big pile of research and
a whole up or maybe even like a whole other podcast,
but you could talk about how you said a lot
of these guys identified as former Democrats who voted whoever

(43:28):
and then and they were a lot of these guys
were probably pretty centrist as it were, like because they
just they were centrist and they hated like a lot
of them will talk about how they didn't like banks
and they didn't like uh, capitalism or whatever. But it's
because they think the Jews are behind it. And so
they started out being more moderate and then they realized

(43:50):
that there was this whole ideology Taylor built to people
who were paranoid about all that ship. Um, So they
just found their people. Basically, they found their people. It
took them a little while, um, but the election really
gave them an opportunity to get out in public with
this ship. The first Unite the Right rally, as they said,
was meant to be like a political coming out party
for the fascist right. Uh. It seems to have been

(44:13):
their high water marks so far. But there's disturbing trends
that they're winning, both in terms of like the further
right tilt that you've seen among a lot of conservative
commentators and stuff like the MPR talking to Jason Kessler
because they let him talk about his theories on like
you know, the data says this about these are all
the most intelligent races. And one of the things Kessler

(44:34):
did that they'll usually do. They'll never say white people
are the most intelligent race, because they say they're not
white supremacist. Let's say Ashkenazi Jews are the smartest, and
then it's Asians, and then it's white people and then
everybody else comes on. But that that gives them again
they can couch it in science. They can say I'm
not a white supremacist. I'm yeah, well, well it's never

(44:55):
any good science. It's like phrenology. But like they'll be like,
facts don't have feelings. Well they're not acts. But because
you said the phrase facts and not feelings, now we're
debating on your terms. Yeah, And they'll talk about like
i Q tests and stuff and ignore the fact that like, well, no, actually,
you can give someone a twenty minute coaching session that
raises their i Q score by twenty points, which proves
that the i Q is not a measure of intelligence,

(45:15):
but as a measure of your ability to Yeah, that's
been like debunked, like twenty years ago, constantly debunked. It's
like it's like it's one of intelligence. Yeah, the past.
It was like how polygraph is still used in stuff,
but like our average person is like, oh, yeah, the
polygraphs are not that accurate. The government still polygraphs people.
You can. Yeah, it's frustrating, bad science, but it gives

(45:35):
them camouflage. And it's all about camouflage. And that's part
of why the Nazis were going to be seeing today.
I don't think are the most dangerous ones because they're
just not disciplined enough to camouflage. Well, Gavin McGinnis has
done a better job of camouflaging, although he still got
banned from Twitter. The Patriot prayer guy is Joey Gibson
or better do it is? It's I mean, it's really

(45:56):
hard and for a white guy. Ye. Speaking of Bason
Kessler and speaking of Twitter, here's what he said less
than a week after the first Unite the Right rally
on Twitter. He essentially said that Heather Hayer was a horrible,
disgusting communist quote communists if killed ninety four million, looks
like it was payback time now. His tweet ignited a
firestorm of condemnation. And this is the ship that I

(46:18):
think NPR should have brought up. They shouldn't have said.
What do you believe they should have said? After Charlottesville?
You said this, what is your plan for the current rally?
I'm frustrated at the bad journalism of just letting this
guy talk about his ship, because this is not the
kind of thing. Even other fascists weren't willing to stand
up for him. Richard Spencer, after this tweet, came out

(46:38):
disavowed him and said I will no longer associate with
Jason Kessler, and no one should. Hayer's death was deeply saddening.
Payback is a morally reprehensible idea because she was a
white woman, but also because these guys are scared. They
don't want to be seen as culpable to a death.
Because Spencer's part of the lawsuit against the organizers of
Unite the Right, so he's scared too. Yeah. Um, they're

(47:00):
all scared. Take much more bad press after getting punched
in the face on television, Yes, and we will be.
We'll get into the Nazi punching debate, and a little
bit here I want to read a quote from Matt
Novak of Gismoto, who discuss described sort of the general
fallout from Jason Kessler tweeting the Heather Higher deserve to
die because communism quote. Some so called alright activists said

(47:22):
that Kesler is a secret Barack Obama supporter and even
wanted Hillary Clinton to win. Basically the worst things you
can say in the white supper Mrs community about other
neo Nazis. Others said that Heather Hair herself was some
kind of government agent. Um, so that's again like these
it's this is one of the saving graces that we
have is that these guys have not gotten good at
keeping one unified line, which the original Nazis were fucking

(47:45):
great at. Everybody stuck to Hitler, and everybody stuck to
the same story. For his part, Kessler posted a tweet
the next day saying I was hacked last night. I
apologized for the tweets sent out from my account last night. Um, yeah,
at least I didn't blame Ambion. Well he did, so
he makes everyone racist. It's a little He deleted that

(48:08):
tweet very shortly after, and then put up another one
saying at two part tweet saying I repudiate the heinous
tweet that was sent from my account last night. I've
been under a crushing amount of stress and death threats.
I'm taking Ambien zan X and I had been drinking
last night. Sometimes I wake up having done strange things
I don't remember. So you called it to him? No, no,

(48:32):
not just Roseanne, but there were there were even jokes
among the Nazis about his comment in Roseanne's comment and
about like maybe we should all just say we're on ambient.
Ha wow, pre advertising for Ambien though, yeah, Ambien donal
in turns racism cover. I guess whatever the competitor of

(48:52):
Ambient is should really at least our drug doesn't make
you a Nazi. Whiskey helps you sleep and doesn't make
you a Nazi having trouble sleeping. Try Alcoholism doesn't leave
to Nazism. They are sometimes correlated. The Nazism came first,

(49:13):
so again after Unite the Right one point oh, a
lot of the groups that were involved in planning and collapsed.
The Traditional Workers Party fell apart back in March when
Heimbach was arrested for assaulted David Parrott, the husband of
his mistress and spokesperson for the TPP and also his
father in law. This is yeah, this is his stepmom
messy ship Like this is like Shakespeare level of yeah,

(49:37):
and just like, come on, guys, don't plan to your
own stereotypes of being like incestuous and weird. And they
this was that doesn't lead to weird ship at all,
doesn't Yeah, And there was a lot of the Nazis
sort of recognized this at the time. I found one
user who summed up a lot of people's opinions when

(49:57):
he said, seems like if we had higher standards, the
whole ship show with Heinbach wouldn't have happened. What did
I say earlier about dignity, Maybe if you hadn't been Nazis,
that would have been part of it. Um. So, yeah,
a lot of these groups have fallen apart. Vanguard America
went to the ground and split up into new groups
and including Patriot Front, the t WB collapse, Anti com collapse,

(50:18):
But all of the people are still there. It's not
worthwhile to focus too much on the names of most
of these groups. Like right now, Patriot Prayer and the
Proud Boys are kind of the most ascendant in like
the far right, the fascist right, street violence groups, but
I'm sure they will collapse, but the people will still
be there. And one yeah, yeah, they move very freely
within these groups. It's frustrating um, which gets me into

(50:41):
the matter of how their tactics have evolved, because this
is what does concern me, because as ridiculous as these
people are, they have hit upon some good tactics for
getting away with the ship that they do. UM. At
that Portland protest, I want to read you a quote
from a Frontline PBS correspondent who described Patriot Front and
how they presented themselves at Portland. I would say that
it was perhaps a fascist rally in Portland, but not

(51:02):
a white supremacist rally, and that's sort of a new
wrinkle in the fire right movement. So the groups that
were in Portland, they wanted you to know, hey, look,
we're not racist, and many of them have had leaders
who were people of color. But they also said, hey,
we're really into fascist characters like Pinochet. The first guy
I met had a huge shirt on that said Pinochet
did nothing wrong, and other people had shirts on that
would say things like right wing death squad. And so
these people are what it would call multicultural, multi ethnic

(51:24):
fascist groups that laud characters like Pinochet, and that just
happened to be like nineties seven point eight percent white. Yeah, Yeah,
it just happened to be the vast majority of white
and they happened to have been caught online send which
a racist ship. Yeah, almost all dudes. I have a
question about one of these gripts is prayer in their name? Yeah?
They do. They purport to be Christians, Yes, and they

(51:45):
were saying that they were praying like they were having
a prayer rally in Portland. So do they're have their
churches like just barred them, given like withdrawn their membership,
or given them any kind of church discipline. They're not evangelical,
come out and just about Trump during all his mania. Yeah,
I haven't heard of it. I wouldn't expect it. I'm

(52:06):
just curious that there's been any any internal rejection of
them from Christian community. I am sure there have been
churches that have rejected them, particularly in Portland, but these
guys are not affiliated with a particular church. They just
claimed to be a group of patriotic anti communist activists.
So that's again, that's the new camouflage the far right
has and the people were going to be seeing today

(52:26):
are people who will say they're white nationalists. Most of
the movement has moved away from that and say white
nationalism isn't a selling point, let's call ourselves anti communists.
Well that yeah, So we're going to get more into
the strategies with police that these people have evolved, and

(52:46):
the wisdom of whether or not it's a good idea
to punch and nazi. But first, ads, so, I want
to talk a little bit more about again how connected
these groups are, because one of the things that they
are doing to try and protect themselves and save their
movement is to claim, like Patriot prayerbal claim, we have

(53:10):
nothing to do with Jason Kessler, we have nothing to
do with the Traditional Workers Party, we have nothing to
do with Charlottesville or any of those people, even though
Joey Gibson, the founder of Patriot Prayer, has been photographed
and found talking with a shipload of people who were
at the first Unite the Right rally. UM. It's also
worth noting that like Pinochet was the dictator of Chile

(53:30):
and one of the things he did he had a
lot of communists and quote unquote communists executed and including
a lot of people thrown from helicopters. UM. Now, among
the Patriot Prayer people, you saw a number of shirts
with like flaming people from helicopters on them and with
like pinocheted nothing wrong on them and right wing death
squads and stuff. Because Pinochet had right wing death squads

(53:50):
to kill communists, so they are willing to hearken back
to that. And even a year or so before these
guys were very active, the Pinochet of session was obvious
on the far right, like in the In the chats
from these various groups, I found more than a dozen
references to throw in communists out of helicopters, mostly on
anti comm which I think is kind of an intellectual

(54:11):
precursor in a lot of ways to how Patriot Prayer
is marketing themselves right now. Um. And there were also
numerous references to right wing death squads uh and to Pinochet.
So again, these groups will all try to say we're
different from the fascists who marched in Charlottesville. We're different,
but they're not different. They talk about the same things.
They have a lot of the same members in common. Well,

(54:33):
this is this is like the conservative Christian thing because
they're all decentralized and they have so many splinter groups,
but they all believe the same stuff that they're able
to disavow each other and still promote the same ideas. Yes,
and they are again. One of the things that's really
frustrating is that a lot of the journalists covering these

(54:54):
people do not do their due diligence. So they'll talk
to Gavin Mechanics about the Proud Boys and he will say,
you know, we're not a violent group. We don't start fights,
but we will finish them. The violence you see in
the media is us defending ourselves from lunatics who want
us dead for no discernible reason. But if you actually
do a little bit of digging, you can find other
quotes from Gavin again Us, including this one from a
right wing Canadian website called The Rebel quote. We're the

(55:16):
only ones fighting these guys, and it's fun when they
go low, go lower, Mason back, throw bricks at their heads.
Let's destroy them. We've been doing it for a while now,
and I gotta say it's really invigorating. Well, my question
is what role do you think the media should be playing, Like, like,
how can you report on these people correctly? I I mean, okay,
so there's no way to say this without sounding like

(55:36):
a little bit narcissistic, but I Like, what I am
trying to do in my reporting on them is I'm
i am not trying to report on their beliefs. I'm
not trying to read out quotes about here's what they
believe about the world. I'm gonna read you like a
page of statistics about what they think about i q
s and races, because that would bring the debate to
their terms. Yes, what is important to talk about is
what these people believe, what they say, and what they

(55:59):
do in the streets, because you can't just ignore them
because they are out there. They all marching and they
are hurting people. If you're going to cover them, you
have to do your legwork. You can't just say, Gavin mcginnison,
the Proud Boys deny any involvement with a violent group
and say that they're not you know, they're a multi
racial group or whatnot. You have to look at the
quotes from these guys where they say incredibly racist shit. Uh,

(56:20):
Like there's a you can even find it on their website.
So in that article Gavin wrote called we are not
all Right, he had a quote where he said there
are no racial requirements to be in the Proud Boys.
There are no special rules for black proud boys. But
then he said this overrides anything previously published about black
proud boys, which means that at some point he had
special rules if you were going to be black and
a proud boy. It takes very cursory research to find

(56:43):
out all of the back chatter sort of and all
of the times where these guys contradict each other and
where they are clearly racist. But you have to do
that research otherwise you're just letting them present themselves. So
you have to zoom out a little bit further than
you would do for a specific event based reporting and
look at the like the context of the entire worldview
and the conversation that's come beforehand. And you need to

(57:05):
pay journalists more so that they have time to do
that research. Yes, you need a journalist who will go
at them kind of in the style referred to as
kind of like bulldogging, like, um, just keep hitting them
with things like on this day, on at this time,
on this website, you said this, what do you have
to say for yourself? And then like as they're trying
to spin it away when they try to pivot, go

(57:27):
for another one. Well, on this day, on this session,
like have your ammunition high school debate side have have
the receipts, make them answer you. Well, it is basic
debate tactics. If you make them answer you, they're losing. Yeah, exactly,
Like That's that's what you have to do. You don't
come to them and say, well, like NPR did, tell
me what you believe, you come and say you tweeted
this about Heather Hair. Are you still saying it was

(57:48):
ambient like you said? Because again, we have thousands of
things that Jason Kessler posted in these quotes, including an
enormous amount of really racist ship, which I'm not going
to read out here, but just type in racial layers
into the search database that unicorn Right has provided for
these guys quotes, and you will find them talking about
racist ship. It is not hard. It's very easy to

(58:08):
as in specific racist. You type in any slur, you'll
find a bunch of conversations um or you just type
in his name he was mad dimension on the form.
So if you type that into the search thing that
unicorn right provides, you can find everything he said, and
you can find plenty of evidence that Jason Kessler is
as racist as someone helped me with a with a

(58:29):
the day is long. Oh there we go. Okay, okay,
we we are in the South. So as NBR done
a counter counterbalancing interview too. If they gave him three
minutes a fare time, did they give someone else three
minutes a fair time? That should have that No, but
they did during the same day kind of equate Black
Lives Matter as like the opposite of these guys in

(58:50):
a way that basically implied that the Black Lives Matter
is as extreme as these guys and just being like, hey,
we'd like to stop being shot. That'd be fantastic. Yeah, No,
Black Lives Matter is nowhere near as radical as Malcolm
X's followers or anything. They're very very well. Even Malcolm
X wasn't that radical, Like it shouldn't be radical to

(59:11):
just say we don't want to be shot anymore. It's
not that complicated, but it is. So there's a lot
of false equivocation happening. And that's exactly the point of
a group like anti comm and I what I think
is their mental descendants Patriot Prayer, because their goal their
and their goal is to say Anti fall is not
an organization. There's no national Antifa. There are different cities

(59:32):
and whatnot. But everyone should be anti fascist. It's not
like and if you I started interviewing anti fascist activists before,
like right before the election and a little bit after,
and this was back before anti fall was a word
most people knew. And there were a few dozen of
these people really who were active around the world outside
of a place like the UK where it was common,
it was not. It's it's not an organization that exists

(59:54):
to further in ideology. It is grassroots organizations that have
started because there's Nazis marching, and what the Nazis are
trying to do is say no, no, no, no no.
These people are communist activists and so we're not fascist
activists were anti communists. They're essentially trying to turn around.
They're trying to make themselves look reactionary against a group
that doesn't have a coherent ideology. And is it self reactionary, yes,

(01:00:19):
And they're doing that in order to gain the sympathy
of the police and moderate conservatives um, because that is
what worked in Germany in the nineteen thirties. That's why
Hitler came to power in large degree, because the German
Centrists and German conservatives and we go over this on
our episode about the non Nazi bastards behind Hitler. So
I won't labor the point too long, but I will

(01:00:39):
say everybody should read True Believer because it gets into
all of this and it's a real short book and
the death of democracy. Um, but these guys. One of
the points that these guys are not ignorant about the
history of the Nazi Party. They have also done their
reading on how Hitler rose to power, and they know
what works. They have the pook, they have the playbook,
and it's worked once before. So I think actually at

(01:01:00):
this point, I do want to kind of go around
the table and get sort of your expectations of everybody
for how this protest is going to go today, because
probably in about an hour or so from now, will
be face to face with the members of the fascist
parties in the United States who are willing to call
themselves white nationalists or fascists. So what do you expect,
And let's start with Nick. I expect that they want

(01:01:23):
us to start ship. I expect that they will be
as inflammatory as possible. They're gonna say things, They're gonna
try to like make eye contact, They're gonna try to
like draw us in. I will be interested to see
what they chant because, like one of the things that
made the march in Charlotte's feel so startling to people
with some of the like legitimately scary things they were chanting.

(01:01:46):
Like just hearing the audio of those people chanting like
blood and soiled blood and so like that scared people. Yeah. Like,
and I mean that one sounds lamer so, but like
I think that they're going to try to do stuff
like that. Second one, like the Jews will not replace
or whatever. They're gonna try to be like as specifically
insulting as possible to try to get someone to snap.

(01:02:07):
And you when we lad a phone conversation prior to
coming out here, you talked to me about something that
those chances made you remember from your time in the
Marine Corps, right, they So I will refer to the
to the boot camp process in the Marine Corps brainwashing,
which not everybody likes because it's an ugly word, but
it is what it is. It's real, it's exactly, it

(01:02:28):
is exactly what it is in the Marine Corps. What
one of the things that's intended in boot camp is
just basically what they want is the military has no
use for just a regular human personality with all of
its chaos and disorder. So what they do is they
strip out your personality through a lot of psychological crap,
and then they build a new personality that values order

(01:02:49):
and authoritarianism, and then your old personality, depending on how
strong you your personality was to begin with, it grows back. Um,
some people it doesn't grow back. And those are the
guys that like have a high end tight for the
next forty years and like treat their kids like their
kids are at boot camp and you know, like I
had a gun any like that way, there was like
a a platoon like a dinner or something, and his

(01:03:11):
kids were standing at attention by the wall like that
kind of creepy ship. Those guys, their personality never grew back.
The rest of us, our personalities grew back, and after
a few years the brainwashing starts to wear off, but
you still have the basic frame of a very orderly,
authoritarian marine. Um, if you put a bunch of veterans
in the room and give them basic constructions on how

(01:03:32):
to do a task none of them have ever done before,
you will find a lot of times they still complete
the task faster and more efficiently than a group of
civilians who have gone through it once before and so
connect to the chance the chanting um. One of the
ways that you get people to sync up together is
if you can make them say the same thing at

(01:03:52):
the same time over and over again. It makes people
feel like a group. We are heard creatures. If you
make us all chant one to three four, I Love
the Marine Corps over and over again, you begin to
believe the things you're saying and be feel like a
big piece of biological evidence for that. With like parasynthetic responses.
In terms of meditating with a group and chanting together,

(01:04:15):
your body does get into the same kind of rhythm
and breathing pattern. It's call and response and um. The
chanting blood and soil, Blood and soil isn't really that
different from you know, going on a run and then
the person calling Cadence sings something that everyone knows how
to respond, and they all respond and it makes you
I mean, people make fun of calling Cadence and stuff

(01:04:36):
in the Marine Corps, but there's no doubt that it
makes you feel like part of the team, and it's
a part of you see it in the military, you
see it in pep rallies in school where everybody's chanting
there whatever their team slogans are, and it works, It
really works. It's a psychological tool. So they will probably
try to do things like that, and one of the

(01:04:57):
ways to defeat that is either to make it hard
for them to focus, and frankly, white people aren't great
at rhythm, so another thing to do is to chant
over them and chant things that do the opposite what
they're trying to do, scare them. Like a chance that
I would like to hear out there. I don't know
if anybody could get it going with a chance I
would like to hear out there is we are many,

(01:05:19):
they are a few, because one of the things they're
very afraid of is that being outnumbered and having a
thousand black people being like, there's a lot more of
us in there our view here, we'll break that feeling
of like well, a lot of the old the old
resistance chants from like the sixties have that kind of
mindset like that we will overcome song like that. That's
the same kind of you know, because we both come

(01:05:40):
from that like church conservative background, singing together in church,
exact same thing. I don't know, you want to talk
about your expectations for today. I'm not really sure what
to expect. It depends on the numbers. But I do
agree with Nick here that they really want to be
seen as the victims, and so they will try to
provoke things that will make it look like they're the
victim and sent um. It's just schoolyard bullying tactics. That's

(01:06:03):
kind of what I'm anticipating, and the point is to
not let them get a rise out of us. I'm
not expecting that much. Like I think it's going to
be a hundred of the guys the first wave fashion. Yeah,
I think it's going to be like very sunburned white
people who like don't look scary at all. Like, I

(01:06:24):
don't think it's going to be as intimidating. Is maybe
they are hoping to because they're not open carrying this time, correct? Yeah?
I think Yeah. I think a city like DC, it's
a very black city. It's a city where you know,
you don't fuck the people from d C. I think
that all of the nonsense that you see in other places, Um,

(01:06:44):
I don't think any of that ship is going to
fly here. Yeah. I was really happy to hear it
was going to be in DC because d C is
used to protests and mass movements, and the police here
are equipped to de escalate things definitely. Like during Occupy
I was, you know, I want to occupy New York
are a couple you know out on the West coast.
DC was by far the most well managed in terms

(01:07:06):
of police interactions. Because this is DC. There's a protest
of some kind every weekend. The police. You know, I'm
the big champion of the police, but the police when
it comes to you know, big rallies and stuff, like,
they know what they're doing. And so I think that
if it was any other city, I would be worried.
I will be concerned. I will be maybe even scared.
I just think in d C, like this is my home.

(01:07:26):
Like I just know that we we don't put up
with that ship. And I would, you know, I would.
I would love to see some of these guys like
on the Metro with your average DC Metro ridership. I
thought that was really cute that they wanted their own
private metro cars and they thought that that that that
would fly here. Yeah. I don't know what, you know
what it was unions? Yeah, no, yeah, the the union,
the Metro Union was like, hell no, let's go back

(01:07:49):
a little and explain that, because there was rumors about
a week or so ago. I think that the DC
Metro would essentially be giving three train cars to the
to the protesters, to clansmen essentially and and Nazi activists
to sort of privately take them in and out of
where they were going to march. And then the the
Metro Union was like, we will go on strike the
whole weekend, which like, they never go on straight. They'll

(01:08:13):
put up with anything. So if that's their limit, pretty good.
And again, the first target of the Nazis in Germany
was the trade unions, the first target before the Jews,
before anybody. Uh yeah, so wait, what are you expecting.
I'm expecting about a hundred and fifty to two hundred

(01:08:34):
Nazis and activists and uh my worst case scenario expectation
is that the police will be jumpy, which again I
agree with Bridget that's not as likely in d C
as it was in Portland. The worst case scenarios, you know,
the police start firing tear gas and rubber bullets into
the crowd. Um, I expect if there's violence it will
either be so I've read all the planning chats for

(01:08:57):
these guys, and Kessler like one of the things he
says over and over and is that if this gets violent,
we're done as a movement. So Jason Kessler does not
want today to be violent, but other members of his
group talked regularly about hoping to get in fights with
anti flaw and hoping they have an excuse to be
violent at this rally. They want to get there. They
move up a degree. Although these guys aren't Proud Boys,
although some of them might be, but they they're not.

(01:09:19):
The Proud Boys are not openly allowed to attend this
event um, but they still put a lot of cash
a and being involved in fights. Um. So if there's violence,
it's possible it'll start with the anti fascist activists just
getting too hot under the collar. There's also a bunch
of wild cards among these guys, um. Which does bring
me to someone I want to bring up in terms

(01:09:40):
of what scares me potentially about this rally. Does anybody
know about Vassilios Pistoles. He is a guy who showed
up to unite the right one and I think he
marched with the traditional workers party that don't off the
top of my head. But he was a member of
a group called adam Waffen, which is the German word
for atomic weapons. And adam Waffen is a fairly small group,

(01:10:00):
but one of the more they like. There's multiple murders
associated with Adam. Often they've killed a number of people
and attempted, yeah in the US and attempted to carry
out terrorist attacks. Uh. Now, Vassilos Pistoles was one of
the most violent people at the first Unite the Right rally.
There's at least three videos of him very clearly committing
assault um like beating people with sticks. I think one

(01:10:20):
person went up in the hospital because of the violence
he did. Uh. He was found at the time through
the work of an activist who I'm not going to
name on this it doesn't hide her involvement, but I
don't want to add any harassment. But but an activist
who was at Charlottesville and attacked at Charlottesville exposed this guy.
He was an active duty United States Marine and it
took a surprising length of time for the core to

(01:10:41):
separate this guy. And he's not the only member of
the United States Armed Forces. One study that I found
suggests that about one quarter of all active duty U
S soldiers have met a white nationalist while on duty.
Like in the military, I actually met a like literally
car carrying member of the KKK when I was in

(01:11:02):
the Marine Corps. Um a guy was in my office
and he was like part of one of the other platoons,
and he tried to tell me that it was just
a local community organization, it wasn't about racism anymore. Um.
So I told him that racism is a primitive caveman idea,
and then he was an idiot for being one because
I was trying to get him to fight me in
my office. Since if there's a thing that I could

(01:11:23):
have gotten away with when I was in the Marine
Corps would have been beating the ship out of a
KKK member as a black guy in my office, Like
I could have been like, sir, it was a Nazi.
What the fund did you want me? Like? Yeah, that's
all we're gonna have for today. We're about to go.
As we've record this, we're probably about the thirty or
forty five minutes at from from reaching the protest location.

(01:11:45):
So we're gonna go do that. And then the next yeah,
we gotta grab some Dorito's, protest Doritos and protest water,
and then we're gonna go March. And so the next
episode that drops on Thursday will will be us talking
about that um and we'll we'll also talk a little
bit about the history of punching Nazis and how well
it tends to work historically. Not that any of us

(01:12:08):
are planning to punch Nazis, but it is a subject
of debate to punch. All of us know how to punch.
And this is the city where Richard Spencer was punched
during the inauguration. So if everybody, basically every guy at
every radical house party I went to after that was like, hey, baby,
that was me. I've got a hundred of guys who

(01:12:30):
conclaimed with the puncher. Okay, Well, for a look into
the history of punching Nazis and whether or not that's
a good idea, because it's very much debatable, and for
our after rally experiences. You will have to check it
on Thursday when we were recording all of that, or
when we will be daring all of that. We're already

(01:12:51):
recording it. Time is a flat circle. It's a relative concept.
I'm Robert Evans. This has been behind the Bastards. You
can find us online at www dot behind the bastards
dot com. You can find us on Twitter at Instagram
at Bastards pod, and you can find me on Twitter
at I Right. Okay, see you guys soon. H h

(01:13:14):
h h

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Silly Bastards Behind the Modern Fascist Movement