February 13, 2025 • 55 mins
In 2017, an anti-Muslim nonprofit crowd-sourced the organization of a nationwide series of rallies. Many of the people who stepped up to help turned out to be well known white supremacists.
Sources:
https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2017/05/portland_suspect_in_2_slayings.html
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/27/portland-double-murder-white-supremacist-muslim-hate-speech
https://islamophobia.org/special-reports/the-hate-that-act-for-america-wrought/
https://islamophobia.org/islamophobic-organizations/act-for-america/
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/davidnoriega/meet-the-charming-terrifying-face-of-the-anti-islam-lobby
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/03/americas-most-anti-muslim-activist-is-welcome-at-the-white-house/520323/
https://politicalresearch.org/2018/03/01/profile-on-the-right-act-for-america
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/08/us/08gabriel.html?pagewanted=all
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/maher-season-premiere-inc_b_168972
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/iobsessioni-stars-have-le_b_126693
https://jewishstandard.timesofisrael.com/movie-to-marshal-support-for-college-israel-advocacy/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/ed-gillespie-declines-to-denounce-endorsement-from-anti-muslim-activist/2017/06/09/8a16a45c-4d28-11e7-bc1b-fddbd8359dee_story.html
https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2024/03/gay-trumper-almost-got-hired-by-the-gop-but-it-got-called-off-what-happened/
https://www.opb.org/news/article/portland-trimet-stabbing-trial-micah-fletcher-survivor-testifies/
https://www.opb.org/news/article/portland-prosecutors-max-stabbing-trial-call-eyewitnesses-killings/
https://www.reed.edu/reed-magazine/in-memoriam/obituaries/2017/taliesin-namkai-meche-2016.html
https://newlinesmag.com/reportage/the-target-of-a-hate-crime-she-was-labeled-as-a-witness/
Isabelle Canaan, In Bad Faith: Anti-Sharia Laws, the Constitution, and the Limits of Religious Freedom, 21 U. Md. L.J. Race Relig. Gender & Cla
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Col Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
The summer of twenty seventeen was a hot one. The
weather was hot. I'm sure I can barely remember now.
In May, the editor of the Nazi website The Daily
Stormer declared that it would be this summer of hate.
A month later, another article on the site ended with
a triumphant prediction, expect a hot summer. And I'm not
(00:31):
talking about the thermometer. The political temperature was rising rapidly.
It was the first summer of Donald Trump's first term
as president, and all over the country, right wing extremists
of all stripes were feeling bold. The summer of hate
culminated in the murder of Heather higher Here in Charlottesville
on August twelfth, twenty seventeen. Perhaps because that day ended
(00:56):
in a hate crime murder, the Unite the Right rally
is often the only one of the dozens of violent
hatefield rallies that summer that most people still remember, But
they were happening all over the country in the months
leading up to Unite the Right. In Portland and Seattle,
Patriot Prayer rallied for Trump, for free speech, and against communism.
(01:18):
In Berkeley, repeated rallies ostensibly for Trump or the concept
of free speech became a training ground for a Nazi
street fighting gang. In cities all over the country, protests
for or against Confederate monuments were just a thin excuse
for fascists spoiling for a fight. Almost any given weekend
(01:39):
that summer, somewhere in the country there was a contingent
of armed militiamen ambling around a public park acting as
self appointed protest security. Some of these rallies drew crowds
of thousands and made the national news. Some were just
a few dozen bigots standing on a street corner, drawing
only the momentary notice of passing motorists.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
And on one morning early.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
That summer, the same protest took place simultaneously in over
two dozen cities across the country. I'm Molly Conger, and
this is weird Little Guys. This episode isn't actually about
(02:36):
a guy, not just one guy anyway. If you're a
regular listener, you've probably already figured out that it is
rarely actually even about one guy at all. But typically
an episode revolves loosely around one weird little guy, using
him as an entry point to explore the world he
existed in. But last week's episode left me with some thoughts.
(02:59):
I was having trouble putting to bed questions about the
ordinary men who cross paths with our weird little guyes,
men who may be on their own path toward extremism
or just their own self destruction. And it also got
me thinking about the nature of a crowd, the way
we can lose ourselves within them, the way they can
(03:20):
give us permission to act in ways we otherwise would not.
The crowd grants the individual plausible deniability, but the individuals
within it give the crowd more power than it would
have had without them. And I've been thinking too about
the current state of affairs, the ways in which our
(03:41):
political discourse has changed over the last decade. How these
once fringe ideas have been mainstreamed. Things that were once
unthinkable are happening every day now. How did we get
to the place we are now where people who seem
so normal have the same kinds of ideas that just
(04:03):
a few years ago were relegated to the pages of
Stormfront and four chan. And as I was ruminating on
all of this, I thought of a picture, one in particular,
saved years ago in one of my hundreds of folders
of half finished ideas about a guy. It's a picture
that was taken on the morning of June tenth, twenty seventeen,
(04:26):
in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The photo shows a handful of members
of the neo Nazi group Vanguard America on their way
to the steps of the Pennsylvania Capitol Building for an
event billed as the March against Sharia, a protest against
the imaginary threat of a Muslim theocracy in America. These
(04:47):
members of Vanguard America all have their faces covered, either
with black bandanas or the half faced skull mask that
was favored by a certain flavor of neo Nazi. But
the men at the head of their tiny mark is
bear faced, proudly leading this little band of Nazis down
the street. Vanguard America would later evolve into Patriot Front,
(05:09):
a white supremacist organization led by Thomas Rousseau, and today,
when Patriot Front takes to the streets, its members too,
all cover their faces, except the leader as their public face.
Rousseau marches unmasked. So, looking at this photo of these
Vanguard America members, perhaps this bear faced man is their leader.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
But I know he isn't.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
Maybe he's so proud of being a Nazi, that he
made the choice to show his face, But the truth
is the exact opposite. By today's standards, thatt Man, Benjamin
Hornberger is just a pretty typical Maga Republican. He wasn't
and isn't, as far as I can tell, a Nazi
(05:58):
at all. Later that same evening, one of the men
who had marched behind him posted in a discord server
where the Unite the Right rally was being planned, writing.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
We got a Normy to lead our march away from
the Sharia event. I don't think he fully knows what
he got himself into. I told him after, you know,
you just let a march of a bunch of Nazis.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
And the poster notes that the man they'd talked into
joining them hadn't showed up with any group and he
didn't even seem to hate Jewish people. Another user chimed in,
saying when the Jews call him a Nazi anyway, it'll
red pell him a little, to which the original poster agreed,
writing that's exactly what we were saying. You're on our
(06:47):
side now, goy. Whether you like it or not. They
are in the Nazi discord. They were all in agreement.
These more mainstream conservative rallies were a great place to
network and recruit, of course, but also a valuable opportunity
to shape the discourse and push people they call normies
further to the right. They believe that the average white
(07:10):
Republican man would be radicalized by the experience of being
called a bigot, and instead of engaging in any self
reflection on why they were shouldered to shoulder with Nazis
at a rally for bigots, they would instead double down
and come to love being a bigot. This is, unfortunately
not an uncommon path to radicalization. But let's back up
(07:34):
for a second. What on earth was the marsh against Sharia?
The rallies were organized by a non profit organization called
Act for America. Its founder, Brigitte Gabriel, started a group
called American Congress for Truth in the months after nine eleven,
and in two thousand and seven, Act for America was
(07:56):
spun off as the organization's lobbying and activist arm. The
policy statement on their website today boasts that they are
the nation's premiere grassroots movement dedicated to preserving America's culture, sovereignty,
and security. Groups like the Council on American Islamic Relations,
the American Arab Anti Discrimination Committee, and the Southern Poverty
(08:19):
Law Center consider ACT for America one of the nation's
largest anti Muslim hate groups. In February of twenty sixteen,
Brigitte Gabriel had dinner at Mara a Lago with presidential
candidate Donald Trump. ACT for America's Facebook page posted a
photo of the meeting in a room with entirely too
(08:40):
much gold painted woodwork. There's Trump wearing a pale pink tie,
and he has one arm around Gabriel and he's giving
a thumbs up with his other hand. According to the caption,
Gabriel was there to give him a national security briefing.
Not long after their meeting, Trump announced that he'd chose
(09:00):
Michael Flynn, an ACT for America board member, to be
his campaign's national security advisor. At act's annual conference that year,
Flynn gave a speech in which he called Islam a
malignant cancer. Over the years, Brigitte Gabriel has said that
Muslims are infiltrating the government to destroy America, that people
(09:23):
should call the FBI to report the construction of mosques,
that Islam is a cancer infecting the world, and that
Islam is a radical ideology, not a religion at all,
and thus should not be afforded the protection of the
First Amendment. In the wave of Islamophobia that followed nine
to eleven, she somehow managed to situate herself as some
(09:44):
kind of expert on Islamic extremism. In two thousand and six,
she published her first book, Because They Hate. The book
is a propagandistic memoir of sorts about her childhood as
a Christian in Lebanon. The book has been described by
Georgetown University history professor Ivon Hadad as not historically accurate
(10:07):
as an account of the Lebanese Civil War. In his
book The Islamophobia Industry, Nathan Lean describes Gabriel's origin story
as quote tendentious, if not outright deceitful. But somehow in
two thousand and seven, she was invited to give a
talk about the book at the US Military's Joint Forces
(10:28):
Staff College. During the q and A portion, a man
in an Air Force uniform stood and read several passages
from the book in which Gabriel describes Islam as an
inherently violent and fanatical religion, and then he asked a question.
Speaker 4 (10:46):
Should we resist Muslims who want to seek political office
in this nation?
Speaker 1 (10:52):
What a great question?
Speaker 4 (10:55):
Uh.
Speaker 5 (10:56):
Absolutely, If a Muslim who has who is a practicing
Muslim who believes the word of the Koran to be
the word of Allah, who abides by Islam, who goes
to musque and praise every Friday, who praise five times
a day, this practicing Muslim who believes in the teachings
of the Koran, cannot be a loyal citizen to the
United States of America.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Her answer went on for nearly five minutes, and she's gish,
galloping through unrelated points and misinterpretations of the Quran. She
says Muslims are all liars, they're all killers, that they
can't be trusted to tell the truth, let alone uphold
an oath of office. And she rounds out the answer
by reiterating that no Muslim can be trusted to be
(11:42):
loyal to the United States. And then she calls on
the next audience member with a question. A man stands.
He's a United States Army officer with nineteen years of service,
and he's also a practicing Muslim. He's calm, his face
is neutral, as if he had not just sat through
(12:03):
a torrent of lies attacking his very existence, but he
probably knew that he had to be lest he be
seen as the untrustworthy, volatile, violent extremist she already believes
all Muslims are, and he asks if she is a
member of the Husbara Fellowship. Gabriel interrupts him, asking what
(12:24):
Hasbara Fellowship is, as if she's never heard of it,
and then denies having any connection to the organization. The
Husboro Fellowship is an organization co founded by Israel's Ministry
of Foreign Affairs, and they train American college students to
be pro Israel activists, and contrary to her sharp denial,
she had in fact been listed on the organization's website
(12:46):
as a member of their Speakers Bureau for several years.
All that to say, Brigitte Gabriel is a bigot and
a liar, but she is one who has successfully talked
her way into a lot of rooms with a lot
of powerful people, and managed, for the most part to
maintain eveneer of legitimacy and respectability while earning a comfortable
(13:09):
living peddling hate, and by twenty seventeen, Act for America
was a decade old, she had the ear of the
sitting president securing a meeting with Trump at the White
House in March of twenty seventeen. ACT for America's March
against Sharia rallies don't show up on their website anymore. Unsurprisingly,
(13:30):
the earliest reference to the rallies I could find was
around mid April, when Facebook event pages started popping up
for events in nearly thirty cities.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
In her thesis for.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
A master's at Oxford, Isabel Canan studied the way ACT.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
For America organizes.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Regrettably, that thesis appears to be unpublished, so I couldn't
read it, But in a twenty eighteen interview about her research,
Canaan says those March against Sharia events were part of
an attempt to maintain the facade of being a true
grassrooms its organization, rather than what they truly are, which
is a lobbying group. The rallies were an effort to
(14:07):
quote create the perception that the majority shares its warped opinion,
Canaan wrote. Both Canaan and the Southern Poverty Law Center
have speculated that ACT for America is not being honest
about the size of the organization, providing artificially inflated numbers
of active chapters and the grassroots organizers in them. In
(14:29):
twenty seventeen, Act for America was claiming to have over
one thousand chapters nationwide, and the website displayed a map
showing pins with locations for five hundred chapters.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
In twenty eighteen, the SPLC.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Was only able to confirm the existence of forty seven chapters.
In her research, Canaan attempted to contact twenty five chapters
and was only able to confirm the existence of six.
An Ohio based member of the Council on American Islamic
Relations told Canaan that at least one of the alleged
ACT chapters in Ohio was just two very active individuals.
(15:10):
And it's not just progressive watchdogs and academics calling ACTS
numbers into question. Anti Islam activist Dave Galbots had worked
for Brigitte Gabriel for three years. When the two had
a falling out in twenty seventeen. He wrote in a
blog post that March that there had only been fifty
participants in that month's Chapter Leader's Call, and that might
(15:32):
explain why the rallies went the way that they did.
You see it's very hard to organize grassroots rallies without
actual grassroots activists.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
They wanted to put on a.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Big show, but the average ACT member is, according to Canaan,
a white evangelical retiree whose activism is mainly confined to
signing up for the emails and occasionally making a donation.
That demographic is not actually very likely to attend a protest,
let alone organize one. ACT members donate money, which is
(16:10):
used for lobbying efforts, but most members aren't engaged in
any way with the organization. In order to maintain their
brand and keep those donations coming and capitalize on the
momentum of those early months of the Trump presidency, they
needed to project the image of being a true grassroots organization,
one with active and engaged members, so they faked it.
(16:36):
In late spring twenty seventeen, Act for America hired Scott
Presler to coordinate the events. Presler was a rising star
in conservative activism, having founded Gays for Trump in twenty sixteen,
and now he had less than two months to figure
out how to put on twenty eight simultaneous rallies all
over the country. He couldn't exactly just reach out to
(16:58):
local ACT chapterly because those didn't really exist. In most cases,
the organization had never bothered to cultivate a group of motivated,
engaged local organizers.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
So it appears that what he did.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Was just tweet out that they needed interested volunteers to
put on rallies in their own towns. And you'll never
guess who stepped up. I suspect you all guessed correctly
(17:41):
during the break it was white supremacists. When Acted for
America needed volunteers to handle the work of putting on
their local march against Sharia. A lot of the active,
engaged bigots who knew how to handle that work were
not members of Act for America, but they were members
of other groups, groups like the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers,
(18:04):
and Identity Europa. Nazis didn't just attend these events. They
didn't happen upon them. They organized them, and they served
as the headline speakers. But there is another story to
tell before we get there, because no one was really
talking about these events at all until something terrible happened.
(18:30):
Scott Presler had dutifully created Facebook event pages for the
rallies in at least twenty six cities, with the earliest
posts I can find on pages that still exist showing
that he probably started working on that at the end
of April. But there wasn't a lot of traction in
April and most of May. There's hardly any news coverage
in any of those cities about these upcoming events. It's
(18:53):
possible people were posting about it on social media, but
those posts or accounts just don't exist anymore. Big nationwide event,
there just isn't a lot of evidence that people were
talking about it.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
No, no one.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Was talking about the March against Saria, and till the
last few days of May twenty seventeen, when Portland Mayor
Ted Wheeler made a public plea for the March against
Syria in Portland to be canceled. On May twenty sixth,
twenty seventeen, two black teenagers were riding the max light
rail train in Portland, Oregon. It was a Friday afternoon
(19:32):
and the pair were.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
Headed to the mall after school.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
They were normal, happy teenagers having a normal fun afternoon.
One of the girls, a Muslim immigrant from Somalia, was
wearing her hijab.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
She would later.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
Say it was like our faces were a trigger, because
when they got on the train, and Jeremy Christian saw
those two girls. He immediately locked on to them, shouting
things like fuck Muslims and go back to Saudi Arabia.
People were staring he was making a scene, and when
(20:11):
he stood up and started to move toward the girls,
Talisian nam Kaimich was the first to intervene, moving towards
Christian and getting out his phone to record what was happening.
When Christian turned his attention toward this first Good Samaritan,
another man on the train could see that things were
about to get violent. Michah Fletcher would later testify that
(20:32):
he could tell Tullisian had never been in a fight before,
and while Fletcher is far smaller in stature than either
of those men, he'd grown up getting bullied, and he
said he knew all too well what it looks like
right before a situation gets violent. I'm not sure if
Michah Fletcher recognized Jeremy Christian in that moment, or if
(20:53):
he didn't realize until later that this wasn't the first
time he had tried to de escalate a situation caused
by this particular man shouting racial slurs in public. Just
a month earlier at a rally put on by the
far right group Patriot Prayer, Jeremy Christian arrived wrapped in
a Revolutionary War era flag carrying a baseball bat in
(21:14):
a Wendy's parking lot. A crowd had formed around Christian
as he attempted to provoke counter protesters into a physical fight.
Michah Fletcher was there, dressed as a gesture, trying to
diffuse the tense situation by distracting the crowd with a
pretty competent juggling routine. He would later testify about that day, saying,
(21:35):
It's just less scary for other people. If I'm able
to show up in a way people would laugh at
instead of looking intimidating, I.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
Would prefer it.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
But on May twenty sixth, on the train, there was
no chance that whimsy would win the day. Michah Fletcher
moved towards this brewing confrontation, and he shouted at Jeremy
Christian that you can't talk to kids like that, and
you need to he could off this train. Christian already
had his knife in his hand.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
But no one saw it.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
Suddenly, both Micah and Tualisian had been stabbed in the neck.
A third man Ricky Best, a retired army veteran and
father of four who was on his way home from work,
moved to intervene, and he too was stabbed in the neck.
The girls fled the train, terrified that he would kill
them now that the men who tried to protect them
(22:29):
were bleeding out before their eyes. Ricky John Best and
Talisian Nankaimche were murdered. Micah Fletcher survived. As Tulisian collapsed
on the floor of the train, a woman knelt next
to him. She took off her own shirt, depressed to
(22:51):
his wound, telling him you're not alone.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
We're here.
Speaker 6 (22:58):
What you did was total kindness. You're such a beautiful man.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
I'm sorry. The world is so cruel.
Speaker 6 (23:09):
She held her shirt to his neck there on the
floor of the train, praying over him and trying to
keep him calm. He said his last words to that
gentle stranger, Tell everyone on this train, I love them.
Micah Fletcher stumbled out of the train at the next stop,
(23:31):
collapsing on the platform in front of a man waiting
for the train with his family. Fatman, an army veteran.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Used what he had at his disposal to try to
stop the bleeding a child's jacket and the pink baby
blanket from his daughter's stroller. On a Friday afternoon, just
before Ramadan, an entire train full of people watched a
self proclaimed Nazi stab three men who were brave enough
(23:58):
to defend two children from a racist, Islamophobic tirade, and
in just two weeks, the March Against Sharia promised to
bring anti Muslim activists to Portland. On Monday, May twenty ninth,
it was national news that Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler did
(24:19):
not want the March against Sharia in Portland. Permits for
events in the area where the rally was set to
be held, are not actually issued by the City of Portland,
but by the federal government through the General Services Administration,
and they declined to pull the permit, but ACT for
America voluntarily canceled the Portland event anyway, moving it to
(24:40):
Seattle instead, and then all of a sudden, people were
talking about the March against Sharia. The very next day,
on May thirtieth, in a discord server for members of
the neo Nazi group Vanguard America, Thomas Rousseau posted a
link to ACT for a Mayor because website for the rallies, writing,
(25:02):
we keep saying we need to stand up against Islam.
Well here's your chance.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
To get started.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Barely a minute later, another user had copied and pasted
that exact message into a discord server for the neo
Nazi group the Traditionalist Worker Party. That same day, May thirtieth,
act for America's rally coordinator, Scott Presler, heard from an
excited pair of new volunteers, Billy and Tina Roper. On
(25:30):
June first, Presler created a Facebook event for a march
against Sharia in Batesville, Arkansas, which would be organized and
hosted by Billy Roper. Billy Roper is a Nazi. I
don't mean that in like a colloquial, casual, careless sort
of sense. He is a Nazi, out and out died
(25:52):
in the wool Hater. His name might sound familiar if
you listen to every episode of the show. He gave
a speech at Ariyan Fest two thousand four in Phoenix,
a few weeks before Denis Mahon built that bomb and
sent it to the Diversity office in Scottsdale.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Billy Roper was raised.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
By a second generation clansman, and he turned to neo
Nazi organizing as a young man, joining the Council of
Conservative Citizens in his twenties and quickly rising through the
ranks as a regional leader in National Alliance. Shortly before
the death of National Alliance founder William Luther Pierce, Rober
had moved to the Nazi group's compound in West Virginia
to serve as deputy membership coordinator. He was pushed out
(26:33):
of National Alliance after Pierce died, and he's been trying
to lead his own wing of the movement for the
last twenty years. He led a group called White Revolution.
For a while he had the Shield Wall Network, and
these days he's trying to start his own ethno state
called Ozarkia. Billy will get his own episodes eventually. But
(26:55):
the point is Scott Presler obviously did not google Billy Roper.
This wasn't some obscure figure or a man who did
his not see organizing under a pseudonym. This was page
one Google results territory. I'm pretty sure that one of
(27:15):
the first things he would have found had he looked,
were news stories about the time Billy Roper emailed the
entire membership list at National Alliance about how much he
was enjoying nine to eleven. On nine to eleven, like
before noon, he wrote, the enemy of our enemy is
for now at least our friends. We may not want
(27:38):
them marrying our daughters, just as they would not want
us marrying theirs. We may not want them in our society,
just as they would not want us in theirs. But
anyone who is willing to drive a plane into a
building to kill Jews is.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
All right with me.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
I wish our members had half as much testicular fortitude, and.
Speaker 6 (27:57):
That was widely reported that would have come up.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
There's no indication that.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
Any vetting of any kind was done here. Scott Pressler
was just taking all comers, setting up Facebook event pages
with ACT for America's official endorsement on them in any
city where someone offered to put on an event. On
June fourth, Billy Roper posted on the Stormfront that he
was organizing the event and would be giving a speech.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
It wasn't until June sixth.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
Though, when he published an episode of his podcast advertising
the event, that it was made perfectly clear that he
wasn't just attaching his name to this event for attention.
He wasn't riding act's coattails. He was working with and
had the approval of, ACT for America, and on the podcast,
Roper described participating in a conference call with other event organizers,
(28:52):
a call that was hosted by Act for America, and
Roper doesn't name names, but he does hint that he
wasn't the only extremist on the call. Within hours of
that episode appearing online, the Southern Poverty Law Center was
reporting that Act for America had given Billy Roper their blessing.
(29:14):
Email exchanges later published by Roper showed that Pressler must
have seen this news pretty quickly, because by late afternoon
that very day, he wrote the Roper's an email with
the subject line Act for America marches urgent and the
body reads only Billy, please give me a call. Act
(29:36):
for America quietly removed the listing for the Batesville rally
from their website that night. Now it kind of sounds
like this is a point.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
In their favor, right.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Sure, they dropped the ball when it came to vetting,
but when they found out they were working with.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
A Nazi, they dropped him.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
That's got to account for something, right, But far from
being exact honerative, I think it only underscores what's going
on here. They don't mind working with extremists, they just
don't want to be publicly humiliated, especially not by the
Southern Poverty Law Center. Earlier in twenty seventeen, Act for
(30:18):
America joined forces with a few dozen other SPLC designated
hate groups to launch a site called SPLC Exposed, dedicated
to attacking the credibility of the people who were drawing
attention to their hateful organizations. So they couldn't give the
SPLC an easy win here by refusing to back down
from working with a man whose literal occupation was white
(30:42):
nationalist organizer. There was no plausible deniability there, and the
timeline of that day makes it very clear that someone
had Act for America was just sitting at a computer
refreshing the SPLC's website all day to see if they
were talking about them, because they saw that article about
Billy Roper instantly. But the SBLC was only able to
(31:06):
report that there was a Nazi organizing one of these
Act for America events because Billy Roper ran his mouth.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
It's impossible to say which of.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
The slew of white supremacist speakers and organizers that ACT
might have been willing to cut ties with if it.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
Had been reported ahead of time.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
But I can tell you that they never disavowed any
of them afterwards. Some of the white supremacists who spoke
at those events were lesser known figures, ones who may
have been able to slip through a vetting process had
there been one. But some of these people, some of
these guys, they could have googled.
Speaker 7 (31:47):
Fucking fantastic man. Yeah, so there was these these sharia
law protests. I'm surprised, like, I don't know what happened
that I didn't catch onto these things earlier. Like I
read about this on Saturday, and I was like, Oh,
I should have gone to one of these things.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
What's what's the story.
Speaker 4 (32:01):
Yeah, Yeah, ACT for America. It's Bridget Garriel's thing. They
put on a nationwide anti Sharia protest called March against Sharia.
So it happened in twenty three different cities all over
the country. I was one of the organizers for the
Orlando event because Orlando is my hometown.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
All right, fantastic.
Speaker 7 (32:18):
So you got together on Saturday.
Speaker 4 (32:19):
And everybody did it across the country.
Speaker 7 (32:21):
Yeah, you got together with what I think you said
you were with Identity Europa.
Speaker 4 (32:25):
Yeah, a lot of groups came out. Identity Europa was
one of them. They unfurled their banner for my speech specifically.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
Now there's a chance you might recognize those voices. They
are two of the more uniquely annoying accents of the
twenty seventeen era white nationalist figures. And that is crying
Nazi Chris Cantwell with the long Island accent, and the
one faking a Southern accent is white nationalist attorney Augustus
(32:55):
Sole and Victis. And that's from an episode of Christopher
Cantwell's pod cast. Two days after those rallies, Invictus organized
and headlined the Orlando March against Sharia, and he posed
for photos with an Identity Europa banner held by members
of that now defunct white nationalist organization. Augustus and Victus
(33:16):
had a very busy summer in twenty seventeen. He spoke
at altwright rallies all over the country for months. In May,
he told a crowd in Boston that a new civil.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
War was upon them.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Two weeks later, at a pro Confederate Statue rally he
organized in Orlando, he blamed Islam for mass shootings and
Ranston about white genocide. He gave speeches in Chapel Hill, Washington,
d C. Austin, and Huntington Beach. He criss crossed the
country that summer, but wherever he went the message was
the same. Now is the time for violence.
Speaker 4 (33:59):
No one's going to fix this for you.
Speaker 8 (34:02):
That's why it doesn't matter if we are armed, or.
Speaker 4 (34:05):
Even if our security details are armed.
Speaker 5 (34:07):
What matters is that you.
Speaker 9 (34:09):
Are armed, and you are prepared for war, and you
are prepared to carry on the heritage of your forefathers.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
And by June he was on board as an organizer
for the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
In August, after his.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Speech at the March against Sharia, he led a dozen
members of Identity Europa in chance of one people, one
nation and immigration, and that's a chance they would use
again in August as they marched through the grounds of
the University of Virginia with their torches. And around the
(35:01):
same time that morning that Augustus and Victus was straining
to be heard over the passing cars in Orlando. The
March against Sharia in New York was in full swing too.
The hosts of Fox and Friends scoffed at the way
the mainstream media had characterized the event as anti Muslim,
something they thought was very unfair, so they'd send a
(35:21):
correspondent out into the streets to get the real story.
Speaker 9 (35:26):
It's not about being against Muslims. It's just being against
the ideology of I guess, murdering homosexuals and treating women
as a second class maybe under a second class set,
as they're just the humanizing.
Speaker 10 (35:39):
Over in Britain.
Speaker 8 (35:40):
They were just frogs boiling in water and now they're dead.
Speaker 3 (35:43):
Critics will say that you're anti Muslim? Are you anti Muslim?
Speaker 7 (35:46):
Absolutely not, absolutely not.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
This one really messed me up. I had to take
a break after I found this video. I see a
lot of really upsetting stuff in my research, you know,
sometimes you have to take a.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
Break to cry, take a walk, close the computer. But
this one was just surreal. It's hard to wrap your
head around who's in this video. Fox and Friends didn't ask.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
Any of those rally attendees their names, at least not
that they showed on air, so as presented, this clip
just shows random man on the street, candid interviews with
average people, and you probably don't recognize their voices, but
I think you'd know their faces, because that's former Fox
(36:37):
and Friend's co host and current Secretary of Defense Pete
Hegseth asking Proud Boys founder Gavin McGinness and neo Nazi
troll Jovi Val what they think about Islam. And I
didn't watch the confirmation hearing, so I don't know if
they ever got to the bottom of this allegation from
(36:58):
a former employee that Pete Hegseth once got blackout drunk
and started yelling, keel all Muslims at some bar in Ohio.
But either way, I'm not sure we're getting a straight
answer about Islam for any of these guys. The New
York City March against Sharia was organized by a man
(37:18):
named Pax Hart, a staff writer at the Proud Boys magazine.
Speeches were given by Heart, as well as Proud Boy's
founder Kevin McGinnis and Proud Boys Magazine creative director Paul Basil.
Frank Morgenthaler, the vice president of the New York chapter
of the Oathkeepers, had only barely finished his speech when
he collapsed, apparently having a massive heart attack. The oath
(37:41):
Keeper's New York chapter would later tell reporters that Morgenthaler
was in the hospital in stable condition. I tried to
cut a clip of Laura Loomer's speech, but it's just
not worth it. She has no charisma and she never has.
It's just kind of sad and just a position you
in the timeline of embarrassing Laura lumer stunts. This was
(38:04):
after she tried to do voter fraud as a prank,
showing up at a polling location in a burka and
pretending to be Huma Aberdeen, but before she handcuffed herself
to the front door at Twitter, but only to one
side of a double door, so people were just coming
and going through the other side of the doors. Oddly,
(38:28):
I think it was Gavin McGinnis who gave the most
honest speech that day, because a lot of speakers at
these rallies in various cities pretended that their concern was
for women's rights, for gay rights, for freedom and liberty,
despite the fact.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
That these people absolutely.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
Do not believe in women's rights or gay rights. And
when Gavin McGinnis took the mic after being introduced by
Pax Hart, an openly gay brown boy, he started with
what I assume we're supposed to be jokes.
Speaker 3 (39:07):
I like that guy.
Speaker 8 (39:07):
I like Paxton, but uh, let's cut the shit.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
He's a homo.
Speaker 8 (39:15):
And I was talking to this guy.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
I don't know if you went to.
Speaker 8 (39:17):
Columbia, but this guy aka Medina Jahd, he was saying
that in Iran there's no homos, and that sounds like
my kind of place, you know.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
So I'm not gonna be.
Speaker 8 (39:31):
Your average speaker up here today because I've been kind
of looking Indushuriyah and I kind of liked a lot
of it.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
Of all the speeches I was able to dig up
from that day from rallies all over the country, these
jokes are the closest anyone came to telling the truth.
They don't care about women, they hate gay people, they
just don't like Muslims, and they don't think that any
immigrant can never really be American. Over in Denver at
(40:06):
the March against Sharia, neo Nazi Will Planer was briefly
detained by police after brandishing a knife. He had not
yet at that time been convicted for beating a woman
unconscious with a flagpole at a Nazi rally in California
a year earlier. In Richardson, Texas, just outside of Dallas.
Both Keeper's leader Stuart Rhodes was in attendance. Jason Lee
(40:29):
van Dyke, who now works as an attorney for Patriot Front,
was there hanging out with the Proud Boys, a group
he claims he was never a member of, but did
work for and hang out with all the time. And
unlike rallies in state capitol plazas or near random intersections,
that rally in Richardson, Texas was held right outside of
(40:51):
a mosque.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
So as children were.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
Arriving for their weekend classes in Arabic Muslim heritage and
Quran recitation, there were armed men standing across the street
shouting at them to go back to their own country.
In Indianapolis, the Indiana Director for Identity Europa gave a speech.
I can't find any video of his speech, but a
(41:15):
reporter for the Indie Star quoted him saying, we're here
to support the march against Sharia, but we're here to
take it a bit further. Apparently, this man gave his
name to the reporter as John Richardson, and I suppose
the reporter from the Indie Star had no way of
knowing that was a lie, because there's a picture in
(41:36):
that article, and I recognized that man who said his
name was John Richardson. That's Allison Richard Pierce, the fourth
Jack to his friends, a Jax to his fellow Nazis.
He was Richard Spencer's head of security for the weekend
of the Unite the Right rally, and he served as
(41:56):
the point of contact for the rallies organizers with the
Charles Police Department.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
Like Augustus and Victus, he too.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
Had spent most of that summer in the car, driving
halfway across the country multiple times just to stand behind
Richard Spencer at Nazi rallies on the East Coast. At
the March against Sharia in Roseville, California, Identity Europa founder
Nathan Dimigo gave a speech. I really wish I could
(42:25):
have dug up video of this speech. In particular, I
would have liked to know how Nathan Dimigo presented himself
to that crowd. In a live stream the day after
the event, he admitted to his own followers that he
knows there's no actual threat of Sharia law in America,
but he felt it had been worthwhile to dispatch members
(42:47):
of Identity Europa to those events across the country.
Speaker 10 (42:52):
We had IE as a nationwide network Identity Europa. We
had members go to this thing across the country just
kind of support a little bit, but also to get
a chance to talk to people who were there and
normalize ourselves in their eyes.
Speaker 2 (43:12):
Dimigo's Nazis didn't wear swastika armbands. They wore khaki.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
Pants and white polos.
Speaker 2 (43:19):
They were clean cut, with fresh haircuts and professionally printed
banners and signs. And he recognized the value in showing
up to things like this to shift the conversation in
their direction, which is why I'm.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
Curious how he chose to address that crowd.
Speaker 2 (43:38):
I'm sure they didn't know that he'd been discharged from
the Marine Corps in two thousand and seven after he
drunkenly pulled a gun on an Arab American taxi driver
because he quote looked Iraqi. Dimigo has claimed that he
had his political awakening after reading David Duke's autobiography in prison.
I wonder if he knows that David paid a pedophile.
(44:01):
The ghostwrite that probably not, but that's neither here nor there.
Photos of the March against Sharia and San Bernardino, California
show physical confrontations between the rallies attendees, and anti fascist
counter protesters. And again I don't even need to look
at the captions. I recognize the men at the center
(44:23):
of the violence. One of them captured by the photographer
in the moment where his fist is drawn back readying
himself to punch a woman is a man I've spent
hours picking out of crowd shots at Nazi rallies. That's
Benjamin Daley from the Nazi fight Club the Rise Above movement.
Speaker 1 (44:44):
In Atlanta.
Speaker 2 (44:45):
Georgia's three percent Security Force militia claimed that they had
been asked by Act for America to provide security for
the event. A year earlier, that march had held armed
demonstrations at a construction site for a mosque outside of Atlanta.
Georgia State Senator and gubernatorial candidate Michael Williams gave a
speech at the march against Sharia and then posed for
(45:08):
photos with the militia. One photo of Williams with that
militia shows yet another man that I can't help but recognize.
Militia member Alex Ramos attended the Unite the Right rally
later that summer, and after that rally, he proudly posted
a video on Facebook of his participation in a brutal
(45:30):
beating of a young black man, and.
Speaker 1 (45:33):
He wrote, we stomped ass.
Speaker 2 (45:36):
I didn't really want CNN showing this, but getting some
was fucking fun. I've spent a lot of time in
a courtroom listening to that judge, in particular, the one
who sentenced Alex Ramos to six years in prison for
that assault. And I don't even have to check my
notes to pull this quote from that hearing. It was
(45:57):
six and a half years ago, but it was such
a jarring thing to hear him say that. I'll never
forget it. As he pronounced Ramos's sentence for that beating,
Judge Moore told him, you could spend the rest of
your life thinking about this. It's just evil. It's beyond me.
(46:21):
So that's who benefited from the March against Sharia Identity Europa.
The Proud Boys, the Oathkeepers, Vanguard America, the Traditionalist Worker Party,
the Georgia three Percent Security Force. Those events provided ideological
cover for these groups to seek violent confrontations with counterprotesters
(46:42):
and to spread their ideas to conservatives who hated Muslims
enough to show up.
Speaker 1 (46:47):
But weren't quite red pilled.
Speaker 2 (46:51):
Act for America did not disavow these organizers, speakers, attendees,
or security teams. In a column from Breitbart shortly after
the Rallies Act, founder Burgique Gabriel wrote, America.
Speaker 1 (47:04):
Is a divided nation.
Speaker 2 (47:06):
Countless political issues fragment our nation, while race, gender, and
religious identification enhanced division even further. But there is one
issue that has brought Americans of all backgrounds together in
opposition to it, the barbarism of sharia law. Issues such
as gay marriage, affirmative action, medicinal marijuana, and others may
(47:27):
bring out our differences, but sharia law is an enemy
that all rational citizens unify against.
Speaker 5 (47:36):
And in the.
Speaker 2 (47:36):
Column, she lists off some of these speakers at the rallies.
Some of them were gay, some of them were Jewish,
some of them used to be Muslim. So many kinds
of people, and they all agree with her about Islam.
Speaker 1 (47:51):
Isn't that beautiful?
Speaker 2 (47:54):
She fails to mention the involvement of any neo Nazi groups,
and she says group like the Council on American Islamic
Relations and Antifa thugs staged repulsive counter protests, and she
repeats the claim that someone had been splashed with urine
at the rally in New York. She does mention that
(48:16):
the rally attendee in question who was maybe splashed with
piss was Lauren Southern, but she doesn't mention that Lauren
Southern had very recently been detained by the Italian Coastguard.
Just a month before she arrived in New York for
the March against Sharia. Lauren Southern was with the French
neo fascist organization Generation Identity as they attempted to block
(48:39):
a search and rescue mission for shipwrecked refugees in the
Mediterranean Sea. I don't know if Lauren Southern really did
get piss thrown on her in New York City. That's
one of those things that I think is probably an
urban legend. Fascists are constantly talking about this ongoing threat
(49:00):
of Antifa throwing piss on them, but I've never actually
heard anybody talking about preparing for a protest by storing
their urine in gatorade bottles. I'm just not convinced that happens.
But if this was the one time it really did happen,
I can't say the woman who tried to drown refugees
(49:24):
didn't deserve to get splashed. Gabriel ends her column about
the march against Sharia by addressing the lies that the
events had been anti Muslim or even white supremacist, common
sense Americans see these allegations for how fantastically stupid they are.
Speaker 1 (49:43):
She wrote.
Speaker 2 (49:45):
The people at her rallies weren't white supremacists.
Speaker 1 (49:49):
They were just quote fed up with the.
Speaker 2 (49:51):
PC propagandists trying to bully and intimidate everyone into silence
who doesn't go along with their suicidal open borders philosophy.
Later that summer, Act for America announced they'd be putting
on another nationwide series of rallies in September, but after
the events of the Unite the Right rally, they called
them off.
Speaker 1 (50:11):
In a press release, Gabriel wrote, Act for.
Speaker 2 (50:14):
America is deeply saddened that in today's divisive climate, citizens
cannot peacefully express their opinions without risk of physical harm
from terror groups domestic and international. In recent weeks, extremist
and radical organizations in the United States and abroad have
overrun peaceful events in order to advance their own agendas,
and in many cases, violence has been the result. And
(50:37):
this is just a staggering lack of self awareness. The
picture accompanying the press release is of anti fascist counter protesters,
implying that she means that the people who have overrun
peaceful events causing violence have.
Speaker 1 (50:57):
Been the anti fascists.
Speaker 2 (51:00):
But this announcement came in the aftermath of Unite the Right,
where Nazis caused violence, the Nazis that had attended her
rallies two months earlier.
Speaker 1 (51:12):
And I don't just.
Speaker 2 (51:13):
Mean the same kinds of people, I mean literally the
same exact people. As I was going through photos of
these march against Sharia rallies all over the country, I
was shocked to see so many familiar faces. Scott Presler,
the conservative influencer who failed so spectacularly at organizing those
(51:36):
anti Muslim rallies in twenty seventeen, went on to be
an early promoter of the QAnon conspiracy theory and was
a major figure in the Stop the Steel movement leading
up to the January sixth riot. In the hours after
the riot of the Capitol, Presler posted a video of
himself outside the Capitol, calling it quote the largest civil
rights protest in American history, and to really bring things
(52:01):
full circle. In twenty twenty three, Scott Presler started a
political action committee called Early Vote Action in twenty twenty four,
Laura Trump praised his efforts, calling him quote an amazing
vote register. In the final months of the twenty twenty
four presidential campaign, backed by a million dollar donation from
(52:23):
Elon Musk, Scott Presler and his Early Vote Action Pack
hired a team of field organizers to register Republican voters
in Pennsylvania. There are those who credit Pressler for securing
a Trump win in that swing state, and that brings
us all the way back around to the photo We
(52:44):
started with that regular maga Republican, a guy who just
hated Muslims, the normal Republican amount who accidentally led a
Nazi march to the Pennsylvania State Capitol in twenty seventeen.
One of the field organizers on the page role at
Pressler's political Action committee in twenty twenty four was the
(53:04):
very same man, Benjamin Hornburger. And as for the rest
of this cast of characters, Oh, I don't know. The
Nazi who stabbed three men on the train is serving
two life sentences for his conduct at the Nazi Torch
march in twenty seventeen. Augustus and Victus was recently convicted
of felony which at the time of this recording, he
(53:25):
does not appear to have reported to the Florida State
Bar Association. Nathan Dimigo declared bankruptcy to try to get
out of a lawsuit filed by the victims harmed at
the Unite the Right rally, and it remains to be
seen whether a bankruptcy judge will discharge the millions of
dollars he may be on the hook for. And a
lot of far right extremists are celebrating the successful mainstreaming
(53:47):
of their belief in the Republican Party platform. I don't
have a tidy ending for this story, but I think
there's something to mull over here. Act for America used
crowds of neo Nazis to bulk up the numbers at
those rallies. Rallies they staged to fake mass support for
(54:09):
hateful lies. The way they talked about our Muslim neighbors
wasn't grounded in reality, and their ideas were not actually popular.
A small loud minority backed by money from a handful
of right wing donors doesn't change reality. Muslims were never
(54:30):
destroying America, and neither are your immigrant neighbors. Neither are
transgender people diversity, doesn't cause plane crashes. Asylum seekers aren't
to blame for violent crime. Don't fall for it, don't
fall in line. Weird Little Guys is a production of
(54:56):
Cool Zone Media and iHeartRadio. It's researched, written and recorded
by me, Molly Conger. Our executive producers are Sophie Lettterman
and Robert Evans. The show is edited by the wildly
talented Rory Gagan. The theme music was composed by Brad Dickert.
You can email me at Weird Little Guys podcast at
gmail dot com. I will definitely read it, but I
(55:19):
almost certainly will not answer it. It's nothing personal. I
don't answer any of my emails. You can exchange conspiracy
theories about the show with other listeners on the Weird
Little Guys subreddit. Just don't post anything that's going to
make you one of my Weird Little Guys
Col Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
The summer of twenty seventeen was a hot one. The
weather was hot. I'm sure I can barely remember now.
In May, the editor of the Nazi website The Daily
Stormer declared that it would be this summer of hate.
A month later, another article on the site ended with
a triumphant prediction, expect a hot summer. And I'm not
(00:31):
talking about the thermometer. The political temperature was rising rapidly.
It was the first summer of Donald Trump's first term
as president, and all over the country, right wing extremists
of all stripes were feeling bold. The summer of hate
culminated in the murder of Heather higher Here in Charlottesville
on August twelfth, twenty seventeen. Perhaps because that day ended
(00:56):
in a hate crime murder, the Unite the Right rally
is often the only one of the dozens of violent
hatefield rallies that summer that most people still remember, But
they were happening all over the country in the months
leading up to Unite the Right. In Portland and Seattle,
Patriot Prayer rallied for Trump, for free speech, and against communism.
(01:18):
In Berkeley, repeated rallies ostensibly for Trump or the concept
of free speech became a training ground for a Nazi
street fighting gang. In cities all over the country, protests
for or against Confederate monuments were just a thin excuse
for fascists spoiling for a fight. Almost any given weekend
(01:39):
that summer, somewhere in the country there was a contingent
of armed militiamen ambling around a public park acting as
self appointed protest security. Some of these rallies drew crowds
of thousands and made the national news. Some were just
a few dozen bigots standing on a street corner, drawing
only the momentary notice of passing motorists.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
And on one morning early.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
That summer, the same protest took place simultaneously in over
two dozen cities across the country. I'm Molly Conger, and
this is weird Little Guys. This episode isn't actually about
(02:36):
a guy, not just one guy anyway. If you're a
regular listener, you've probably already figured out that it is
rarely actually even about one guy at all. But typically
an episode revolves loosely around one weird little guy, using
him as an entry point to explore the world he
existed in. But last week's episode left me with some thoughts.
(02:59):
I was having trouble putting to bed questions about the
ordinary men who cross paths with our weird little guyes,
men who may be on their own path toward extremism
or just their own self destruction. And it also got
me thinking about the nature of a crowd, the way
we can lose ourselves within them, the way they can
(03:20):
give us permission to act in ways we otherwise would not.
The crowd grants the individual plausible deniability, but the individuals
within it give the crowd more power than it would
have had without them. And I've been thinking too about
the current state of affairs, the ways in which our
(03:41):
political discourse has changed over the last decade. How these
once fringe ideas have been mainstreamed. Things that were once
unthinkable are happening every day now. How did we get
to the place we are now where people who seem
so normal have the same kinds of ideas that just
(04:03):
a few years ago were relegated to the pages of
Stormfront and four chan. And as I was ruminating on
all of this, I thought of a picture, one in particular,
saved years ago in one of my hundreds of folders
of half finished ideas about a guy. It's a picture
that was taken on the morning of June tenth, twenty seventeen,
(04:26):
in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The photo shows a handful of members
of the neo Nazi group Vanguard America on their way
to the steps of the Pennsylvania Capitol Building for an
event billed as the March against Sharia, a protest against
the imaginary threat of a Muslim theocracy in America. These
(04:47):
members of Vanguard America all have their faces covered, either
with black bandanas or the half faced skull mask that
was favored by a certain flavor of neo Nazi. But
the men at the head of their tiny mark is
bear faced, proudly leading this little band of Nazis down
the street. Vanguard America would later evolve into Patriot Front,
(05:09):
a white supremacist organization led by Thomas Rousseau, and today,
when Patriot Front takes to the streets, its members too,
all cover their faces, except the leader as their public face.
Rousseau marches unmasked. So, looking at this photo of these
Vanguard America members, perhaps this bear faced man is their leader.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
But I know he isn't.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
Maybe he's so proud of being a Nazi, that he
made the choice to show his face, But the truth
is the exact opposite. By today's standards, thatt Man, Benjamin
Hornberger is just a pretty typical Maga Republican. He wasn't
and isn't, as far as I can tell, a Nazi
(05:58):
at all. Later that same evening, one of the men
who had marched behind him posted in a discord server
where the Unite the Right rally was being planned, writing.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
We got a Normy to lead our march away from
the Sharia event. I don't think he fully knows what
he got himself into. I told him after, you know,
you just let a march of a bunch of Nazis.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
And the poster notes that the man they'd talked into
joining them hadn't showed up with any group and he
didn't even seem to hate Jewish people. Another user chimed in,
saying when the Jews call him a Nazi anyway, it'll
red pell him a little, to which the original poster agreed,
writing that's exactly what we were saying. You're on our
(06:47):
side now, goy. Whether you like it or not. They
are in the Nazi discord. They were all in agreement.
These more mainstream conservative rallies were a great place to
network and recruit, of course, but also a valuable opportunity
to shape the discourse and push people they call normies
further to the right. They believe that the average white
(07:10):
Republican man would be radicalized by the experience of being
called a bigot, and instead of engaging in any self
reflection on why they were shouldered to shoulder with Nazis
at a rally for bigots, they would instead double down
and come to love being a bigot. This is, unfortunately
not an uncommon path to radicalization. But let's back up
(07:34):
for a second. What on earth was the marsh against Sharia?
The rallies were organized by a non profit organization called
Act for America. Its founder, Brigitte Gabriel, started a group
called American Congress for Truth in the months after nine eleven,
and in two thousand and seven, Act for America was
(07:56):
spun off as the organization's lobbying and activist arm. The
policy statement on their website today boasts that they are
the nation's premiere grassroots movement dedicated to preserving America's culture, sovereignty,
and security. Groups like the Council on American Islamic Relations,
the American Arab Anti Discrimination Committee, and the Southern Poverty
(08:19):
Law Center consider ACT for America one of the nation's
largest anti Muslim hate groups. In February of twenty sixteen,
Brigitte Gabriel had dinner at Mara a Lago with presidential
candidate Donald Trump. ACT for America's Facebook page posted a
photo of the meeting in a room with entirely too
(08:40):
much gold painted woodwork. There's Trump wearing a pale pink tie,
and he has one arm around Gabriel and he's giving
a thumbs up with his other hand. According to the caption,
Gabriel was there to give him a national security briefing.
Not long after their meeting, Trump announced that he'd chose
(09:00):
Michael Flynn, an ACT for America board member, to be
his campaign's national security advisor. At act's annual conference that year,
Flynn gave a speech in which he called Islam a
malignant cancer. Over the years, Brigitte Gabriel has said that
Muslims are infiltrating the government to destroy America, that people
(09:23):
should call the FBI to report the construction of mosques,
that Islam is a cancer infecting the world, and that
Islam is a radical ideology, not a religion at all,
and thus should not be afforded the protection of the
First Amendment. In the wave of Islamophobia that followed nine
to eleven, she somehow managed to situate herself as some
(09:44):
kind of expert on Islamic extremism. In two thousand and six,
she published her first book, Because They Hate. The book
is a propagandistic memoir of sorts about her childhood as
a Christian in Lebanon. The book has been described by
Georgetown University history professor Ivon Hadad as not historically accurate
(10:07):
as an account of the Lebanese Civil War. In his
book The Islamophobia Industry, Nathan Lean describes Gabriel's origin story
as quote tendentious, if not outright deceitful. But somehow in
two thousand and seven, she was invited to give a
talk about the book at the US Military's Joint Forces
(10:28):
Staff College. During the q and A portion, a man
in an Air Force uniform stood and read several passages
from the book in which Gabriel describes Islam as an
inherently violent and fanatical religion, and then he asked a question.
Speaker 4 (10:46):
Should we resist Muslims who want to seek political office
in this nation?
Speaker 1 (10:52):
What a great question?
Speaker 4 (10:55):
Uh.
Speaker 5 (10:56):
Absolutely, If a Muslim who has who is a practicing
Muslim who believes the word of the Koran to be
the word of Allah, who abides by Islam, who goes
to musque and praise every Friday, who praise five times
a day, this practicing Muslim who believes in the teachings
of the Koran, cannot be a loyal citizen to the
United States of America.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Her answer went on for nearly five minutes, and she's gish,
galloping through unrelated points and misinterpretations of the Quran. She
says Muslims are all liars, they're all killers, that they
can't be trusted to tell the truth, let alone uphold
an oath of office. And she rounds out the answer
by reiterating that no Muslim can be trusted to be
(11:42):
loyal to the United States. And then she calls on
the next audience member with a question. A man stands.
He's a United States Army officer with nineteen years of service,
and he's also a practicing Muslim. He's calm, his face
is neutral, as if he had not just sat through
(12:03):
a torrent of lies attacking his very existence, but he
probably knew that he had to be lest he be
seen as the untrustworthy, volatile, violent extremist she already believes
all Muslims are, and he asks if she is a
member of the Husbara Fellowship. Gabriel interrupts him, asking what
(12:24):
Hasbara Fellowship is, as if she's never heard of it,
and then denies having any connection to the organization. The
Husboro Fellowship is an organization co founded by Israel's Ministry
of Foreign Affairs, and they train American college students to
be pro Israel activists, and contrary to her sharp denial,
she had in fact been listed on the organization's website
(12:46):
as a member of their Speakers Bureau for several years.
All that to say, Brigitte Gabriel is a bigot and
a liar, but she is one who has successfully talked
her way into a lot of rooms with a lot
of powerful people, and managed, for the most part to
maintain eveneer of legitimacy and respectability while earning a comfortable
(13:09):
living peddling hate, and by twenty seventeen, Act for America
was a decade old, she had the ear of the
sitting president securing a meeting with Trump at the White
House in March of twenty seventeen. ACT for America's March
against Sharia rallies don't show up on their website anymore. Unsurprisingly,
(13:30):
the earliest reference to the rallies I could find was
around mid April, when Facebook event pages started popping up
for events in nearly thirty cities.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
In her thesis for.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
A master's at Oxford, Isabel Canan studied the way ACT.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
For America organizes.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Regrettably, that thesis appears to be unpublished, so I couldn't
read it, But in a twenty eighteen interview about her research,
Canaan says those March against Sharia events were part of
an attempt to maintain the facade of being a true
grassrooms its organization, rather than what they truly are, which
is a lobbying group. The rallies were an effort to
(14:07):
quote create the perception that the majority shares its warped opinion,
Canaan wrote. Both Canaan and the Southern Poverty Law Center
have speculated that ACT for America is not being honest
about the size of the organization, providing artificially inflated numbers
of active chapters and the grassroots organizers in them. In
(14:29):
twenty seventeen, Act for America was claiming to have over
one thousand chapters nationwide, and the website displayed a map
showing pins with locations for five hundred chapters.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
In twenty eighteen, the SPLC.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Was only able to confirm the existence of forty seven chapters.
In her research, Canaan attempted to contact twenty five chapters
and was only able to confirm the existence of six.
An Ohio based member of the Council on American Islamic
Relations told Canaan that at least one of the alleged
ACT chapters in Ohio was just two very active individuals.
(15:10):
And it's not just progressive watchdogs and academics calling ACTS
numbers into question. Anti Islam activist Dave Galbots had worked
for Brigitte Gabriel for three years. When the two had
a falling out in twenty seventeen. He wrote in a
blog post that March that there had only been fifty
participants in that month's Chapter Leader's Call, and that might
(15:32):
explain why the rallies went the way that they did.
You see it's very hard to organize grassroots rallies without
actual grassroots activists.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
They wanted to put on a.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Big show, but the average ACT member is, according to Canaan,
a white evangelical retiree whose activism is mainly confined to
signing up for the emails and occasionally making a donation.
That demographic is not actually very likely to attend a protest,
let alone organize one. ACT members donate money, which is
(16:10):
used for lobbying efforts, but most members aren't engaged in
any way with the organization. In order to maintain their
brand and keep those donations coming and capitalize on the
momentum of those early months of the Trump presidency, they
needed to project the image of being a true grassroots organization,
one with active and engaged members, so they faked it.
(16:36):
In late spring twenty seventeen, Act for America hired Scott
Presler to coordinate the events. Presler was a rising star
in conservative activism, having founded Gays for Trump in twenty sixteen,
and now he had less than two months to figure
out how to put on twenty eight simultaneous rallies all
over the country. He couldn't exactly just reach out to
(16:58):
local ACT chapterly because those didn't really exist. In most cases,
the organization had never bothered to cultivate a group of motivated,
engaged local organizers.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
So it appears that what he did.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Was just tweet out that they needed interested volunteers to
put on rallies in their own towns. And you'll never
guess who stepped up. I suspect you all guessed correctly
(17:41):
during the break it was white supremacists. When Acted for
America needed volunteers to handle the work of putting on
their local march against Sharia. A lot of the active,
engaged bigots who knew how to handle that work were
not members of Act for America, but they were members
of other groups, groups like the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers,
(18:04):
and Identity Europa. Nazis didn't just attend these events. They
didn't happen upon them. They organized them, and they served
as the headline speakers. But there is another story to
tell before we get there, because no one was really
talking about these events at all until something terrible happened.
(18:30):
Scott Presler had dutifully created Facebook event pages for the
rallies in at least twenty six cities, with the earliest
posts I can find on pages that still exist showing
that he probably started working on that at the end
of April. But there wasn't a lot of traction in
April and most of May. There's hardly any news coverage
in any of those cities about these upcoming events. It's
(18:53):
possible people were posting about it on social media, but
those posts or accounts just don't exist anymore. Big nationwide event,
there just isn't a lot of evidence that people were
talking about it.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
No, no one.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Was talking about the March against Saria, and till the
last few days of May twenty seventeen, when Portland Mayor
Ted Wheeler made a public plea for the March against
Syria in Portland to be canceled. On May twenty sixth,
twenty seventeen, two black teenagers were riding the max light
rail train in Portland, Oregon. It was a Friday afternoon
(19:32):
and the pair were.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
Headed to the mall after school.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
They were normal, happy teenagers having a normal fun afternoon.
One of the girls, a Muslim immigrant from Somalia, was
wearing her hijab.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
She would later.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
Say it was like our faces were a trigger, because
when they got on the train, and Jeremy Christian saw
those two girls. He immediately locked on to them, shouting
things like fuck Muslims and go back to Saudi Arabia.
People were staring he was making a scene, and when
(20:11):
he stood up and started to move toward the girls,
Talisian nam Kaimich was the first to intervene, moving towards
Christian and getting out his phone to record what was happening.
When Christian turned his attention toward this first Good Samaritan,
another man on the train could see that things were
about to get violent. Michah Fletcher would later testify that
(20:32):
he could tell Tullisian had never been in a fight before,
and while Fletcher is far smaller in stature than either
of those men, he'd grown up getting bullied, and he
said he knew all too well what it looks like
right before a situation gets violent. I'm not sure if
Michah Fletcher recognized Jeremy Christian in that moment, or if
(20:53):
he didn't realize until later that this wasn't the first
time he had tried to de escalate a situation caused
by this particular man shouting racial slurs in public. Just
a month earlier at a rally put on by the
far right group Patriot Prayer, Jeremy Christian arrived wrapped in
a Revolutionary War era flag carrying a baseball bat in
(21:14):
a Wendy's parking lot. A crowd had formed around Christian
as he attempted to provoke counter protesters into a physical fight.
Michah Fletcher was there, dressed as a gesture, trying to
diffuse the tense situation by distracting the crowd with a
pretty competent juggling routine. He would later testify about that day, saying,
(21:35):
It's just less scary for other people. If I'm able
to show up in a way people would laugh at
instead of looking intimidating, I.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
Would prefer it.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
But on May twenty sixth, on the train, there was
no chance that whimsy would win the day. Michah Fletcher
moved towards this brewing confrontation, and he shouted at Jeremy
Christian that you can't talk to kids like that, and
you need to he could off this train. Christian already
had his knife in his hand.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
But no one saw it.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
Suddenly, both Micah and Tualisian had been stabbed in the neck.
A third man Ricky Best, a retired army veteran and
father of four who was on his way home from work,
moved to intervene, and he too was stabbed in the neck.
The girls fled the train, terrified that he would kill
them now that the men who tried to protect them
(22:29):
were bleeding out before their eyes. Ricky John Best and
Talisian Nankaimche were murdered. Micah Fletcher survived. As Tulisian collapsed
on the floor of the train, a woman knelt next
to him. She took off her own shirt, depressed to
(22:51):
his wound, telling him you're not alone.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
We're here.
Speaker 6 (22:58):
What you did was total kindness. You're such a beautiful man.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
I'm sorry. The world is so cruel.
Speaker 6 (23:09):
She held her shirt to his neck there on the
floor of the train, praying over him and trying to
keep him calm. He said his last words to that
gentle stranger, Tell everyone on this train, I love them.
Micah Fletcher stumbled out of the train at the next stop,
(23:31):
collapsing on the platform in front of a man waiting
for the train with his family. Fatman, an army veteran.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Used what he had at his disposal to try to
stop the bleeding a child's jacket and the pink baby
blanket from his daughter's stroller. On a Friday afternoon, just
before Ramadan, an entire train full of people watched a
self proclaimed Nazi stab three men who were brave enough
(23:58):
to defend two children from a racist, Islamophobic tirade, and
in just two weeks, the March Against Sharia promised to
bring anti Muslim activists to Portland. On Monday, May twenty ninth,
it was national news that Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler did
(24:19):
not want the March against Sharia in Portland. Permits for
events in the area where the rally was set to
be held, are not actually issued by the City of Portland,
but by the federal government through the General Services Administration,
and they declined to pull the permit, but ACT for
America voluntarily canceled the Portland event anyway, moving it to
(24:40):
Seattle instead, and then all of a sudden, people were
talking about the March against Sharia. The very next day,
on May thirtieth, in a discord server for members of
the neo Nazi group Vanguard America, Thomas Rousseau posted a
link to ACT for a Mayor because website for the rallies, writing,
(25:02):
we keep saying we need to stand up against Islam.
Well here's your chance.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
To get started.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Barely a minute later, another user had copied and pasted
that exact message into a discord server for the neo
Nazi group the Traditionalist Worker Party. That same day, May thirtieth,
act for America's rally coordinator, Scott Presler, heard from an
excited pair of new volunteers, Billy and Tina Roper. On
(25:30):
June first, Presler created a Facebook event for a march
against Sharia in Batesville, Arkansas, which would be organized and
hosted by Billy Roper. Billy Roper is a Nazi. I
don't mean that in like a colloquial, casual, careless sort
of sense. He is a Nazi, out and out died
(25:52):
in the wool Hater. His name might sound familiar if
you listen to every episode of the show. He gave
a speech at Ariyan Fest two thousand four in Phoenix,
a few weeks before Denis Mahon built that bomb and
sent it to the Diversity office in Scottsdale.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Billy Roper was raised.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
By a second generation clansman, and he turned to neo
Nazi organizing as a young man, joining the Council of
Conservative Citizens in his twenties and quickly rising through the
ranks as a regional leader in National Alliance. Shortly before
the death of National Alliance founder William Luther Pierce, Rober
had moved to the Nazi group's compound in West Virginia
to serve as deputy membership coordinator. He was pushed out
(26:33):
of National Alliance after Pierce died, and he's been trying
to lead his own wing of the movement for the
last twenty years. He led a group called White Revolution.
For a while he had the Shield Wall Network, and
these days he's trying to start his own ethno state
called Ozarkia. Billy will get his own episodes eventually. But
(26:55):
the point is Scott Presler obviously did not google Billy Roper.
This wasn't some obscure figure or a man who did
his not see organizing under a pseudonym. This was page
one Google results territory. I'm pretty sure that one of
(27:15):
the first things he would have found had he looked,
were news stories about the time Billy Roper emailed the
entire membership list at National Alliance about how much he
was enjoying nine to eleven. On nine to eleven, like
before noon, he wrote, the enemy of our enemy is
for now at least our friends. We may not want
(27:38):
them marrying our daughters, just as they would not want
us marrying theirs. We may not want them in our society,
just as they would not want us in theirs. But
anyone who is willing to drive a plane into a
building to kill Jews is.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
All right with me.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
I wish our members had half as much testicular fortitude, and.
Speaker 6 (27:57):
That was widely reported that would have come up.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
There's no indication that.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
Any vetting of any kind was done here. Scott Pressler
was just taking all comers, setting up Facebook event pages
with ACT for America's official endorsement on them in any
city where someone offered to put on an event. On
June fourth, Billy Roper posted on the Stormfront that he
was organizing the event and would be giving a speech.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
It wasn't until June sixth.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
Though, when he published an episode of his podcast advertising
the event, that it was made perfectly clear that he
wasn't just attaching his name to this event for attention.
He wasn't riding act's coattails. He was working with and
had the approval of, ACT for America, and on the podcast,
Roper described participating in a conference call with other event organizers,
(28:52):
a call that was hosted by Act for America, and
Roper doesn't name names, but he does hint that he
wasn't the only extremist on the call. Within hours of
that episode appearing online, the Southern Poverty Law Center was
reporting that Act for America had given Billy Roper their blessing.
(29:14):
Email exchanges later published by Roper showed that Pressler must
have seen this news pretty quickly, because by late afternoon
that very day, he wrote the Roper's an email with
the subject line Act for America marches urgent and the
body reads only Billy, please give me a call. Act
(29:36):
for America quietly removed the listing for the Batesville rally
from their website that night. Now it kind of sounds
like this is a point.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
In their favor, right.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Sure, they dropped the ball when it came to vetting,
but when they found out they were working with.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
A Nazi, they dropped him.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
That's got to account for something, right, But far from
being exact honerative, I think it only underscores what's going
on here. They don't mind working with extremists, they just
don't want to be publicly humiliated, especially not by the
Southern Poverty Law Center. Earlier in twenty seventeen, Act for
(30:18):
America joined forces with a few dozen other SPLC designated
hate groups to launch a site called SPLC Exposed, dedicated
to attacking the credibility of the people who were drawing
attention to their hateful organizations. So they couldn't give the
SPLC an easy win here by refusing to back down
from working with a man whose literal occupation was white
(30:42):
nationalist organizer. There was no plausible deniability there, and the
timeline of that day makes it very clear that someone
had Act for America was just sitting at a computer
refreshing the SPLC's website all day to see if they
were talking about them, because they saw that article about
Billy Roper instantly. But the SBLC was only able to
(31:06):
report that there was a Nazi organizing one of these
Act for America events because Billy Roper ran his mouth.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
It's impossible to say which of.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
The slew of white supremacist speakers and organizers that ACT
might have been willing to cut ties with if it.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
Had been reported ahead of time.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
But I can tell you that they never disavowed any
of them afterwards. Some of the white supremacists who spoke
at those events were lesser known figures, ones who may
have been able to slip through a vetting process had
there been one. But some of these people, some of
these guys, they could have googled.
Speaker 7 (31:47):
Fucking fantastic man. Yeah, so there was these these sharia
law protests. I'm surprised, like, I don't know what happened
that I didn't catch onto these things earlier. Like I
read about this on Saturday, and I was like, Oh,
I should have gone to one of these things.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
What's what's the story.
Speaker 4 (32:01):
Yeah, Yeah, ACT for America. It's Bridget Garriel's thing. They
put on a nationwide anti Sharia protest called March against Sharia.
So it happened in twenty three different cities all over
the country. I was one of the organizers for the
Orlando event because Orlando is my hometown.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
All right, fantastic.
Speaker 7 (32:18):
So you got together on Saturday.
Speaker 4 (32:19):
And everybody did it across the country.
Speaker 7 (32:21):
Yeah, you got together with what I think you said
you were with Identity Europa.
Speaker 4 (32:25):
Yeah, a lot of groups came out. Identity Europa was
one of them. They unfurled their banner for my speech specifically.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
Now there's a chance you might recognize those voices. They
are two of the more uniquely annoying accents of the
twenty seventeen era white nationalist figures. And that is crying
Nazi Chris Cantwell with the long Island accent, and the
one faking a Southern accent is white nationalist attorney Augustus
(32:55):
Sole and Victis. And that's from an episode of Christopher
Cantwell's pod cast. Two days after those rallies, Invictus organized
and headlined the Orlando March against Sharia, and he posed
for photos with an Identity Europa banner held by members
of that now defunct white nationalist organization. Augustus and Victus
(33:16):
had a very busy summer in twenty seventeen. He spoke
at altwright rallies all over the country for months. In May,
he told a crowd in Boston that a new civil.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
War was upon them.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
Two weeks later, at a pro Confederate Statue rally he
organized in Orlando, he blamed Islam for mass shootings and
Ranston about white genocide. He gave speeches in Chapel Hill, Washington,
d C. Austin, and Huntington Beach. He criss crossed the
country that summer, but wherever he went the message was
the same. Now is the time for violence.
Speaker 4 (33:59):
No one's going to fix this for you.
Speaker 8 (34:02):
That's why it doesn't matter if we are armed, or.
Speaker 4 (34:05):
Even if our security details are armed.
Speaker 5 (34:07):
What matters is that you.
Speaker 9 (34:09):
Are armed, and you are prepared for war, and you
are prepared to carry on the heritage of your forefathers.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
And by June he was on board as an organizer
for the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
In August, after his.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Speech at the March against Sharia, he led a dozen
members of Identity Europa in chance of one people, one
nation and immigration, and that's a chance they would use
again in August as they marched through the grounds of
the University of Virginia with their torches. And around the
(35:01):
same time that morning that Augustus and Victus was straining
to be heard over the passing cars in Orlando. The
March against Sharia in New York was in full swing too.
The hosts of Fox and Friends scoffed at the way
the mainstream media had characterized the event as anti Muslim,
something they thought was very unfair, so they'd send a
(35:21):
correspondent out into the streets to get the real story.
Speaker 9 (35:26):
It's not about being against Muslims. It's just being against
the ideology of I guess, murdering homosexuals and treating women
as a second class maybe under a second class set,
as they're just the humanizing.
Speaker 10 (35:39):
Over in Britain.
Speaker 8 (35:40):
They were just frogs boiling in water and now they're dead.
Speaker 3 (35:43):
Critics will say that you're anti Muslim? Are you anti Muslim?
Speaker 7 (35:46):
Absolutely not, absolutely not.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
This one really messed me up. I had to take
a break after I found this video. I see a
lot of really upsetting stuff in my research, you know,
sometimes you have to take a.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
Break to cry, take a walk, close the computer. But
this one was just surreal. It's hard to wrap your
head around who's in this video. Fox and Friends didn't ask.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
Any of those rally attendees their names, at least not
that they showed on air, so as presented, this clip
just shows random man on the street, candid interviews with
average people, and you probably don't recognize their voices, but
I think you'd know their faces, because that's former Fox
(36:37):
and Friend's co host and current Secretary of Defense Pete
Hegseth asking Proud Boys founder Gavin McGinness and neo Nazi
troll Jovi Val what they think about Islam. And I
didn't watch the confirmation hearing, so I don't know if
they ever got to the bottom of this allegation from
(36:58):
a former employee that Pete Hegseth once got blackout drunk
and started yelling, keel all Muslims at some bar in Ohio.
But either way, I'm not sure we're getting a straight
answer about Islam for any of these guys. The New
York City March against Sharia was organized by a man
(37:18):
named Pax Hart, a staff writer at the Proud Boys magazine.
Speeches were given by Heart, as well as Proud Boy's
founder Kevin McGinnis and Proud Boys Magazine creative director Paul Basil.
Frank Morgenthaler, the vice president of the New York chapter
of the Oathkeepers, had only barely finished his speech when
he collapsed, apparently having a massive heart attack. The oath
(37:41):
Keeper's New York chapter would later tell reporters that Morgenthaler
was in the hospital in stable condition. I tried to
cut a clip of Laura Loomer's speech, but it's just
not worth it. She has no charisma and she never has.
It's just kind of sad and just a position you
in the timeline of embarrassing Laura lumer stunts. This was
(38:04):
after she tried to do voter fraud as a prank,
showing up at a polling location in a burka and
pretending to be Huma Aberdeen, but before she handcuffed herself
to the front door at Twitter, but only to one
side of a double door, so people were just coming
and going through the other side of the doors. Oddly,
(38:28):
I think it was Gavin McGinnis who gave the most
honest speech that day, because a lot of speakers at
these rallies in various cities pretended that their concern was
for women's rights, for gay rights, for freedom and liberty,
despite the fact.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
That these people absolutely.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
Do not believe in women's rights or gay rights. And
when Gavin McGinnis took the mic after being introduced by
Pax Hart, an openly gay brown boy, he started with
what I assume we're supposed to be jokes.
Speaker 3 (39:07):
I like that guy.
Speaker 8 (39:07):
I like Paxton, but uh, let's cut the shit.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
He's a homo.
Speaker 8 (39:15):
And I was talking to this guy.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
I don't know if you went to.
Speaker 8 (39:17):
Columbia, but this guy aka Medina Jahd, he was saying
that in Iran there's no homos, and that sounds like
my kind of place, you know.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
So I'm not gonna be.
Speaker 8 (39:31):
Your average speaker up here today because I've been kind
of looking Indushuriyah and I kind of liked a lot
of it.
Speaker 2 (39:42):
Of all the speeches I was able to dig up
from that day from rallies all over the country, these
jokes are the closest anyone came to telling the truth.
They don't care about women, they hate gay people, they
just don't like Muslims, and they don't think that any
immigrant can never really be American. Over in Denver at
(40:06):
the March against Sharia, neo Nazi Will Planer was briefly
detained by police after brandishing a knife. He had not
yet at that time been convicted for beating a woman
unconscious with a flagpole at a Nazi rally in California
a year earlier. In Richardson, Texas, just outside of Dallas.
Both Keeper's leader Stuart Rhodes was in attendance. Jason Lee
(40:29):
van Dyke, who now works as an attorney for Patriot Front,
was there hanging out with the Proud Boys, a group
he claims he was never a member of, but did
work for and hang out with all the time. And
unlike rallies in state capitol plazas or near random intersections,
that rally in Richardson, Texas was held right outside of
(40:51):
a mosque.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
So as children were.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
Arriving for their weekend classes in Arabic Muslim heritage and
Quran recitation, there were armed men standing across the street
shouting at them to go back to their own country.
In Indianapolis, the Indiana Director for Identity Europa gave a speech.
I can't find any video of his speech, but a
(41:15):
reporter for the Indie Star quoted him saying, we're here
to support the march against Sharia, but we're here to
take it a bit further. Apparently, this man gave his
name to the reporter as John Richardson, and I suppose
the reporter from the Indie Star had no way of
knowing that was a lie, because there's a picture in
(41:36):
that article, and I recognized that man who said his
name was John Richardson. That's Allison Richard Pierce, the fourth
Jack to his friends, a Jax to his fellow Nazis.
He was Richard Spencer's head of security for the weekend
of the Unite the Right rally, and he served as
(41:56):
the point of contact for the rallies organizers with the
Charles Police Department.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
Like Augustus and Victus, he too.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
Had spent most of that summer in the car, driving
halfway across the country multiple times just to stand behind
Richard Spencer at Nazi rallies on the East Coast. At
the March against Sharia in Roseville, California, Identity Europa founder
Nathan Dimigo gave a speech. I really wish I could
(42:25):
have dug up video of this speech. In particular, I
would have liked to know how Nathan Dimigo presented himself
to that crowd. In a live stream the day after
the event, he admitted to his own followers that he
knows there's no actual threat of Sharia law in America,
but he felt it had been worthwhile to dispatch members
(42:47):
of Identity Europa to those events across the country.
Speaker 10 (42:52):
We had IE as a nationwide network Identity Europa. We
had members go to this thing across the country just
kind of support a little bit, but also to get
a chance to talk to people who were there and
normalize ourselves in their eyes.
Speaker 2 (43:12):
Dimigo's Nazis didn't wear swastika armbands. They wore khaki.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
Pants and white polos.
Speaker 2 (43:19):
They were clean cut, with fresh haircuts and professionally printed
banners and signs. And he recognized the value in showing
up to things like this to shift the conversation in
their direction, which is why I'm.
Speaker 1 (43:34):
Curious how he chose to address that crowd.
Speaker 2 (43:38):
I'm sure they didn't know that he'd been discharged from
the Marine Corps in two thousand and seven after he
drunkenly pulled a gun on an Arab American taxi driver
because he quote looked Iraqi. Dimigo has claimed that he
had his political awakening after reading David Duke's autobiography in prison.
I wonder if he knows that David paid a pedophile.
(44:01):
The ghostwrite that probably not, but that's neither here nor there.
Photos of the March against Sharia and San Bernardino, California
show physical confrontations between the rallies attendees, and anti fascist
counter protesters. And again I don't even need to look
at the captions. I recognize the men at the center
(44:23):
of the violence. One of them captured by the photographer
in the moment where his fist is drawn back readying
himself to punch a woman is a man I've spent
hours picking out of crowd shots at Nazi rallies. That's
Benjamin Daley from the Nazi fight Club the Rise Above movement.
Speaker 1 (44:44):
In Atlanta.
Speaker 2 (44:45):
Georgia's three percent Security Force militia claimed that they had
been asked by Act for America to provide security for
the event. A year earlier, that march had held armed
demonstrations at a construction site for a mosque outside of Atlanta.
Georgia State Senator and gubernatorial candidate Michael Williams gave a
speech at the march against Sharia and then posed for
(45:08):
photos with the militia. One photo of Williams with that
militia shows yet another man that I can't help but recognize.
Militia member Alex Ramos attended the Unite the Right rally
later that summer, and after that rally, he proudly posted
a video on Facebook of his participation in a brutal
(45:30):
beating of a young black man, and.
Speaker 1 (45:33):
He wrote, we stomped ass.
Speaker 2 (45:36):
I didn't really want CNN showing this, but getting some
was fucking fun. I've spent a lot of time in
a courtroom listening to that judge, in particular, the one
who sentenced Alex Ramos to six years in prison for
that assault. And I don't even have to check my
notes to pull this quote from that hearing. It was
(45:57):
six and a half years ago, but it was such
a jarring thing to hear him say that. I'll never
forget it. As he pronounced Ramos's sentence for that beating,
Judge Moore told him, you could spend the rest of
your life thinking about this. It's just evil. It's beyond me.
(46:21):
So that's who benefited from the March against Sharia Identity Europa.
The Proud Boys, the Oathkeepers, Vanguard America, the Traditionalist Worker Party,
the Georgia three Percent Security Force. Those events provided ideological
cover for these groups to seek violent confrontations with counterprotesters
(46:42):
and to spread their ideas to conservatives who hated Muslims
enough to show up.
Speaker 1 (46:47):
But weren't quite red pilled.
Speaker 2 (46:51):
Act for America did not disavow these organizers, speakers, attendees,
or security teams. In a column from Breitbart shortly after
the Rallies Act, founder Burgique Gabriel wrote, America.
Speaker 1 (47:04):
Is a divided nation.
Speaker 2 (47:06):
Countless political issues fragment our nation, while race, gender, and
religious identification enhanced division even further. But there is one
issue that has brought Americans of all backgrounds together in
opposition to it, the barbarism of sharia law. Issues such
as gay marriage, affirmative action, medicinal marijuana, and others may
(47:27):
bring out our differences, but sharia law is an enemy
that all rational citizens unify against.
Speaker 5 (47:36):
And in the.
Speaker 2 (47:36):
Column, she lists off some of these speakers at the rallies.
Some of them were gay, some of them were Jewish,
some of them used to be Muslim. So many kinds
of people, and they all agree with her about Islam.
Speaker 1 (47:51):
Isn't that beautiful?
Speaker 2 (47:54):
She fails to mention the involvement of any neo Nazi groups,
and she says group like the Council on American Islamic
Relations and Antifa thugs staged repulsive counter protests, and she
repeats the claim that someone had been splashed with urine
at the rally in New York. She does mention that
(48:16):
the rally attendee in question who was maybe splashed with
piss was Lauren Southern, but she doesn't mention that Lauren
Southern had very recently been detained by the Italian Coastguard.
Just a month before she arrived in New York for
the March against Sharia. Lauren Southern was with the French
neo fascist organization Generation Identity as they attempted to block
(48:39):
a search and rescue mission for shipwrecked refugees in the
Mediterranean Sea. I don't know if Lauren Southern really did
get piss thrown on her in New York City. That's
one of those things that I think is probably an
urban legend. Fascists are constantly talking about this ongoing threat
(49:00):
of Antifa throwing piss on them, but I've never actually
heard anybody talking about preparing for a protest by storing
their urine in gatorade bottles. I'm just not convinced that happens.
But if this was the one time it really did happen,
I can't say the woman who tried to drown refugees
(49:24):
didn't deserve to get splashed. Gabriel ends her column about
the march against Sharia by addressing the lies that the
events had been anti Muslim or even white supremacist, common
sense Americans see these allegations for how fantastically stupid they are.
Speaker 1 (49:43):
She wrote.
Speaker 2 (49:45):
The people at her rallies weren't white supremacists.
Speaker 1 (49:49):
They were just quote fed up with the.
Speaker 2 (49:51):
PC propagandists trying to bully and intimidate everyone into silence
who doesn't go along with their suicidal open borders philosophy.
Later that summer, Act for America announced they'd be putting
on another nationwide series of rallies in September, but after
the events of the Unite the Right rally, they called
them off.
Speaker 1 (50:11):
In a press release, Gabriel wrote, Act for.
Speaker 2 (50:14):
America is deeply saddened that in today's divisive climate, citizens
cannot peacefully express their opinions without risk of physical harm
from terror groups domestic and international. In recent weeks, extremist
and radical organizations in the United States and abroad have
overrun peaceful events in order to advance their own agendas,
and in many cases, violence has been the result. And
(50:37):
this is just a staggering lack of self awareness. The
picture accompanying the press release is of anti fascist counter protesters,
implying that she means that the people who have overrun
peaceful events causing violence have.
Speaker 1 (50:57):
Been the anti fascists.
Speaker 2 (51:00):
But this announcement came in the aftermath of Unite the Right,
where Nazis caused violence, the Nazis that had attended her
rallies two months earlier.
Speaker 1 (51:12):
And I don't just.
Speaker 2 (51:13):
Mean the same kinds of people, I mean literally the
same exact people. As I was going through photos of
these march against Sharia rallies all over the country, I
was shocked to see so many familiar faces. Scott Presler,
the conservative influencer who failed so spectacularly at organizing those
(51:36):
anti Muslim rallies in twenty seventeen, went on to be
an early promoter of the QAnon conspiracy theory and was
a major figure in the Stop the Steel movement leading
up to the January sixth riot. In the hours after
the riot of the Capitol, Presler posted a video of
himself outside the Capitol, calling it quote the largest civil
rights protest in American history, and to really bring things
(52:01):
full circle. In twenty twenty three, Scott Presler started a
political action committee called Early Vote Action in twenty twenty four,
Laura Trump praised his efforts, calling him quote an amazing
vote register. In the final months of the twenty twenty
four presidential campaign, backed by a million dollar donation from
(52:23):
Elon Musk, Scott Presler and his Early Vote Action Pack
hired a team of field organizers to register Republican voters
in Pennsylvania. There are those who credit Pressler for securing
a Trump win in that swing state, and that brings
us all the way back around to the photo We
(52:44):
started with that regular maga Republican, a guy who just
hated Muslims, the normal Republican amount who accidentally led a
Nazi march to the Pennsylvania State Capitol in twenty seventeen.
One of the field organizers on the page role at
Pressler's political Action committee in twenty twenty four was the
(53:04):
very same man, Benjamin Hornburger. And as for the rest
of this cast of characters, Oh, I don't know. The
Nazi who stabbed three men on the train is serving
two life sentences for his conduct at the Nazi Torch
march in twenty seventeen. Augustus and Victus was recently convicted
of felony which at the time of this recording, he
(53:25):
does not appear to have reported to the Florida State
Bar Association. Nathan Dimigo declared bankruptcy to try to get
out of a lawsuit filed by the victims harmed at
the Unite the Right rally, and it remains to be
seen whether a bankruptcy judge will discharge the millions of
dollars he may be on the hook for. And a
lot of far right extremists are celebrating the successful mainstreaming
(53:47):
of their belief in the Republican Party platform. I don't
have a tidy ending for this story, but I think
there's something to mull over here. Act for America used
crowds of neo Nazis to bulk up the numbers at
those rallies. Rallies they staged to fake mass support for
(54:09):
hateful lies. The way they talked about our Muslim neighbors
wasn't grounded in reality, and their ideas were not actually popular.
A small loud minority backed by money from a handful
of right wing donors doesn't change reality. Muslims were never
(54:30):
destroying America, and neither are your immigrant neighbors. Neither are
transgender people diversity, doesn't cause plane crashes. Asylum seekers aren't
to blame for violent crime. Don't fall for it, don't
fall in line. Weird Little Guys is a production of
(54:56):
Cool Zone Media and iHeartRadio. It's researched, written and recorded
by me, Molly Conger. Our executive producers are Sophie Lettterman
and Robert Evans. The show is edited by the wildly
talented Rory Gagan. The theme music was composed by Brad Dickert.
You can email me at Weird Little Guys podcast at
gmail dot com. I will definitely read it, but I
(55:19):
almost certainly will not answer it. It's nothing personal. I
don't answer any of my emails. You can exchange conspiracy
theories about the show with other listeners on the Weird
Little Guys subreddit. Just don't post anything that's going to
make you one of my Weird Little Guys
Host
Molly Conger
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