There’s a reason the History Channel has produced hundreds of documentaries about Hitler but only a few about Dwight D. Eisenhower. Bad guys (and gals) are eternally fascinating. Behind the Bastards dives in past the Cliffs Notes of the worst humans in history and exposes the bizarre realities of their lives. Listeners will learn about the young adult novels that helped Hitler form his monstrous ideology, the founder of Blackwater’s insane quest to build his own Air Force, the bizarre lives of the sons and daughters of dictators and Saddam Hussein’s side career as a trashy romance novelist.
Fri, 23 Aug 2019 10:00
Part Seven: The Digital Reich
Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried True crime, and if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams, let's break or handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. Hey there, it's Ebony Monet, your co-host for the San Diego Zoo's Amazing Wildlife podcast. In this special episode, we're speaking with Doctor Jane Goodall about the fascinating journey that led to her social discoveries on chimpanzees. So four whole months, the chimps ran away from me. I mean, they take one look at this peculiar white ape and disappear into the vegetation. Bing wildlife on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts? Hey guys, I'm Kaylee, short on my podcast. Too much to say. I share my thoughts on everything from music to martinis, social media to social anxiety, regrets to risky text, and so much more. I have been known to read my literal diary entries on my show, and sometimes I do interviews with my crazy group of friends, so if you guys want to tune in, you can hear new episodes of too much to say every Wednesday on the national podcast network available on the iHeartRadio. With Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to him. What's making bad decisions? My me. In the interim between the 6th and the 7th Chapter, Sophie stole the case of Perrier that I was going to throw, so I had to upgrade to a case of Lacroix, which is roughly twice the size and mass. But before I throw this Lacroix, which will come at the end of our episode, I have a surprise thing that I'm going to throw. I found an open seats. Did it go everywhere? No, *** **** it. But now I've got a snack. I was so excited. What? It was sealed pretty tight. Thank you. Sophie signaled that she had hidden the Perrier underneath a pillow. So now I'm going to throw one of these two, but I don't know which yet. But first, my Co hosts who I didn't introduce before throwing a thing Katie stole and Cody Johnson. That's right, that's who we are. We all just had a snack attack. Max in front of it. Cody's going to be Nam and sunflower seeds, like Fox Mulder in the first several episodes of The X-Files, but not after that, because they decided it was a bad thing for his character to do. Alright, that's a good change. It's not the best thing to eat on. There's absolutely nothing that's good to eat on a microphone, but the worst thing is probably sunflower seeds. Did last time. I know. Yesterday I know, and I can already hear the complaints coming. Chapter 7 the Digital Reich. Yep. Yeah, you don't like where that's going. In the years after the Oklahoma City bombing, the white supremacist movement seemed to have spent most of its fury. Nothing like sea drift occurred in the late 90s. Nazi violence, when it happened, was mostly focused around racist skinheads and groups like the White Aryan Resistance or the Hammerskin Nation. In 1996, a group called the Aryan Republican Army robbed 22 banks in the Midwest. Several of them had ties to Elohim City, where Tim McVeigh had also tried to hide out. After his attack, but these and other eruptions of violence were dealt with in short order. By the time the early 2000s rolled along and the War on Terror kicked off, you could be forgiven for thinking the white supremacist movement was on its way out. Everything you love will burn by Vegas. Tenold chronicles the movement during this. One of the largest actions in these days was an 80 man March in Toledo by the National Socialist Movement. Putting together a March that large was the work of the entire national organization, and they were so overwhelmed by counterprotesters that they never managed to take. To the streets and we're back in Seadrift Lubim got 3 or 400 Klansmen just to show up in one town in Texas. In 2010, the National Socialist Movement held a gathering in Trenton, NJ Vegas attended to chronicle the event, and the night before the March he was present when a group called Anti Racist Action assaulted the Nazis as they ate dinner and a rented meeting hall. The next day, the National Socialist Movement marched quote. The entire rest of the March was lined with National Guard and riot police. They'd closed off every access point and no one was around to watch the Nazis trudge along the wet streets while the rains. Took their black uniforms, they arrived at a white square in front of the Capitol building. A few modest steps led up to the entrance and a small podium stood at the top. Police had cordoned off the entire square in the distance. The counter protesters had gathered. The police, fearing another showdown, kept them two blocks away from the Nazis, just barely within shouting distance. So the rally was reduced to a couple dozen Neo Nazis screaming obscenities at 50 or so anti racists down the street. While the anti racist screamed right back, the National Socialist movement billed itself as direct successors to George Lincoln Rockwell's party. In five years. They've gone from being able to make a nationwide. Gathering of 80 men down to less than 30 but looking at those numbers does not give a full picture of the American fascist movement during this. Or the ability of old guard fascist groups like the NSM and the Klan to draw numbers had declined. The movement was deep in the process of spreading to a new generation through new means. In the last chapter I mentioned Jon Ronson's them. John's book gives us a look at the movement in the late 1990s from the perspective of individuals like Alex Jones. Mr. Jones first rose to prominence within the fringe right in the mid to late 1990s and his career. Illustrates the first stages of what would grow to be known as the Alt Right now. On paper, Jones was a libertarian or political independent who attacked Democrats and Republicans with equal vigor, seeing both as agents of the NWO and the globalist elite. You would not hear attacks on the Jews as an ethnic group from Jones, nor would you see him sporting a swastika. But if you dig in just a little bit, there have always been connections between Alex Jones and the fascist. Right at one point in them, John tries to infiltrate a meeting of the Bilderberg Group with a writer named Big Jim Tucker, editor. Of the spotlight, Willis Carto's magazine. Big Jim Tucker was a friend and a frequent guest on Alex Jones's Infowars in its early days. Like Jones, Big Jim was obsessed with the Bilderberg Group. He viewed it as part of the Jewish conspiracy to dominate the globe. Jones possessed the same beliefs, minus the J word that 1999 gathering at the ruins of the Branch Davidian compound near Waco that I talked about in the last chapter when John Ronson showed up with Randy Weaver, will. That gathering was a volunteer effort to rebuild the Branch Davidian church organized. By 25 year old Alex Jones, he told The Oklahoman. Quote, we've had school teachers and black single mothers in auto mechanics and doctors. There is even a Jewish rabbi out here one day helping us. Sure, we've had folks in their camo and their camo hats and then with the militias helping us too. One of the men who gathered in Mount Carmel that day to help Alex Jones was Colonel Bo Gritz. Gritz was a legendary figure in the Patriot movement, a decorated veteran, the supposed inspiration behind the character John Rambo, and a ******** believer in Christian identity theology. In 1998, right before the Mount Carmel meeting, he sent out this in an online bulletin to his followers. Do you see the sign, the scent of the stain and mark of the Beast on America today? Are you willing to submit and join the seed line of Satan? Look to those who are openly Antichrist, who in the world is promoting abortion, *********** pedophilia, godless laws, adultery, new age, international banking, entertainment industry, and world publishing? Wherever you find perversion of God's laws, you will find the worshippers of bow with their roots still in Babylonian mysticism. So that's cool. Now, New Age international banking, the entertainment industry, and world publishing is a bit quieter than just shouting Jews. But Bo Gritz was more direct in a bulletin he sent out a year later during the 2000 election. Jews, feminists and other liberal activists may install Gore over an apathetic moral majority. If so, run away. Abortion, Antichrist God and globalism are certain the first message was too subtle. Yeah. Now think about those messages as I read this quote that Alex Jones as a related in Jon Ronson's book. Them, which was said during that Mount Carmel meeting, the Bilderbergers said, Alex, are the Roman Senate. It's a pyramid. They're way up there below them. They've got the IMF, the World Bank, the United Nations. And then you've got us down here, the cattle, the human resources. And Randy Weaver is way out over there. See, he left. They hate that. So they scared the cattle back in the pin. See? Burn him out. I'm living in a place where black helicopters 150 miles South of me are burning buildings, terrorizing people. And I'm the extremist who says you're an extremist? I asked. That's Ronson speaking. The Anti Defamation League, he yelled. The ADL. Bucket of black paint and a brush. They're worse than the clan. They get massive funding from the globalist. It doesn't matter if your girlfriend's Jewish, your little sisters, Korean. Anybody who wants to live free is a racist. The ADL is the scum of the earth. Alex Jones, 1989. Yeah, now he did a good job. Yeah, what he was trying to do was really succeeded. So these are more or less the same beliefs that Alex Jones has been years broadcasting to millions of listeners around America in the late 90s and early 2000s. Viewed independently, Jones looks like a harmless. Conspiracy theorist, but place next to Bo Gritz we can see him for what he is a way to ease people into Christian identity style, beliefs that lead inevitably to exterminationist anti-Semitic beliefs 100%. Seventeen years later, I published a study with the investigative journalism collective Bellingcat on how 75 fascist activists were initially red pilled to the cause. My research was based on leaked internal conversations where these Neo Nazis, Klansmen, and other extremists discussed their ideological evolution. Six of them credited Alex Jones with their red Pilling. They even had a name for it. Taking the conspiracy pill. There was an explicit understanding. Yeah. That interest in wacky? Yeah, I love that. That's a brag. Yeah. Yeah, we call it taking these conspiracy pill wild. The things these people will brag about. Yeah, yes, one user wrote. I don't give a **** if you think it it being the secret rulers of the world are aliens are not, as long as those aliens are Jewish at the end of the day. Yikes. Yeah, pretty explicit. Ridiculous? Obviously, yeah. For those of us who grew up online in the early aughts, the last five years or so have been a continuous, dispiriting process of watching outright fascist beliefs bubble up on places like Reddit and 4 Chan. It seems at times as if the Nazis have literally eaten the Internet. We all knew and loved his kids. This did not happen by accident. Alex Jones is just one prong of a concerted digital power grab that began before most of us knew the Internet existed. In 1984, Louis B used money he'd received from Robert Matthews's order to create Liberty Net. Yeah, an international network of code word accessed message boards. The goal of Liberty Net was to link the white power movement together. It was used to spread recruitment materials, and its establishment allowed the movement to switch tactics quickly, as was seen after Estes Park. It also included personnel ads and pen PAL programs, which could be as innocuous as connecting racists for social purposes was also useful in planning crimes. The Internet allowed beam to send racist propaganda into places where it was illegal, like Canada and Germany after setting up Liberty Net, Beam wrote. Finally, we're all going to be linked together at one point in time. Imagine, if you will, all the great minds of the patriotic Christian movement linked together and join to 1 computer. Imagine any patriot in the country being able to call up and access these mines. You were online with the Aryan nation's brain trust. It is here to serve the folk. It has been said that knowledge is power, which it most assuredly is. The computer offers to those who become proficient in its use, power undreamed of by the rulers of the past 1984. Wow. Yeah, that's like the beginning of the darkness. Yeah, yeah. Have memories go back further than most people would anticipate? Crazy. The meaning of that starts the wars. Yeah, yeah. Computers were not cheap in the 1980s. Beams work required the modern equivalent of 10s of thousands of dollars in seed money. A single Apple computer cost $2000 at the time. Without the order, none of this would have been possible. And while law enforcement was diligent about trying to track down all the rocket launchers and machine guns and explosives bought with the orders ill gotten games, they barely seem to notice the computer equipment that Louie Bean had bought. Yeah, weird about that. Classic underestimation of the Internet. After all, why would the 19 news FBI care if some Apple twos wound up gifted? The Nazis around the country? How could that cause a problem? I don't know. Yeah, yeah, but 1995? Slightly over a decade later, Nazi efforts online had crystallized into a cohesive and effective Digital Reich. Fascists were some of the first people to effectively harness the power of the Internet in an organized way. The book nation and race, edited by Jeffrey Kaplan and Tor Biologo, includes a chapter that delves into the state of the online white power movement. At this time, they cite Walter Benjamin, a scholar who wrote an essay about how new technology like photography was harnessed by Nazism. Mass movements are usually discerned more clearly by a camera than by the naked eye. A bird's eye view best captures gatherings of hundreds of thousands, and even though such of you may be accessible to the human eye as it is to the camera, the image perceived by the eye cannot be enlarged the way a negative is enlarged. While photographs and film best capture the character of the original Nazi movement, it's modern descendant is best captured online and countless conversations and debates across message boards, image boards, YouTube comments sections, and the like in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing and in response to the effectiveness. Which anti racist St movements like skinheads against Racial Prejudice shut down fascist St gatherings? The Internet became increasingly central to the development of American fascism. Yeah, you know what's not central to the development of American fascism? I don't know. There's an ad plug. It's the products and services that support this show. Sophie's that a good ad segue? Sophie's saying I did well. Yeah, I liked it. You guys excited about this? Canon Lacroix. I'm going to throw. Increasingly nervous. Good. Well, increasingly nervous is the right way to feel when Prada. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. Mint Mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the bill to find all these nuts fees. There's no luring you in with free subscriptions or streaming services that you'll forget to cancel and then be charged full price for. None of that. For anyone who hates their phone Bill, Mint Mobile offers premium wireless for just $15.00 a month. But we'll give you the best rate whether you're buying one or for a family, and it meant family start at 2 lines. All plans come with unlimited talk and text, plus high speed data delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can use your own phone with any mint mobile plan and keep your same phone number along with all your existing contacts. Just switch to Mint mobile and get premium wireless service starting at 15 bucks a month. Get premium wireless service from just $15.00 a month, and no one expected plot twist at mintmobile.com/behind. That's mintmobile.com slash. Behind seriously, you'll make your wallet very happy at mintmobile.com/behind. My name is Erica Kelly, and I am the host and creator of Southern Freight true crime. There are so many people that just have no idea about some injustices in the world, and if you can give a voice to them, you can create change. To be able to do it within podcasting is just such a gift. I believe it was 18 months after I got on with Spreaker that I was making enough that I could quit my day. It was incredible. Always felt like an ambassador for speaker. But that's because I'm passionate about podcasting. It's really easy to use. I always tell people I am so not tech. Took me 5 minutes to get comfortable with spreaker, and when I find a new friend that has an incredible show, I want them to make money. I want them to be able to do what I did. Follow your podcasting dreams. Let's breaker handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's SP. RE aker.com, get paid to talk about the things you love with speaker from iheart. In the 1980s and 90s, a psychopath terrorized the country of Belgium. A serial killer and kidnapper was abducting children in the bright light of day. His unspeakable crimes and the incompetence or unwillingness of the police to stop him brought the entire country of Belgium to the brink of revolution. Yep. From Tenderfoot TV and iHeartRadio this is la Monstra. A story of abomination and conspiracy that led to the demise of the entire institution of Belgian federal police and rattled the foundations of its government. A story about the man who simply become known as La Monster. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back, we're back, we're back. We are back. In the early 1990s, Milton John Climb Junior was a 25 year old studying at Saint Cloud University. His school provided him with a free Usenet account, and one of his professors rather accidentally gave him the listing where he came upon Alt dot skinheads and Neo Nazi News Group. Milton was one of the first young men to become radicalized into fascism through the Internet. Climb grew obsessed, spending hours a day writing thousands of newsgroup posts and emails he become. Coordinator for several digitally inclined fascists, claim graduated in 1995 and shortly thereafter had his first face to face encounter with a member of the Movement, Lynn Young, William Pearce's secretary. She gave climb a check for $500.00, which he used to buy a computer to continue his work. Now that he was no longer at the university, climb never again met another Nazi in person, but he continued his activities and later that year wrote an essay on digital strategy that he posted to the Arian Crusader libraries website. In it, he wrote. That the Internet quote offers enormous opportunity for the Aryan resistance to disseminate our message to the unaware and the ignorant. It is the only relatively uncensored, free forum mass medium which we have available. The state cannot yet stop us from advertising our ideas and organizations. Now is the time to grasp the weapon which is the net and wield its skillfully and wisely, while you may still do so freely. Stop posting. Never stop posting. Perfect forum for lone wolves. Yeah, yeah, lone wolves. In the mid 1990s, Usenet, an early predecessor to modern form culture, was where most online discussions occurred. The most critical Nazi destinations had names like Alt dot nationalism, dot white, Alt dot Revolution, dot counter, alt dot Skinhead, and as a prelude to 8 Chance poll board, alt dot politics. This is all very much in line with the ideas that BAAM had laid out a decade earlier, but client wanted to see his fellow fascists move on from their digital safe spaces and become what he called cyber gorillas. Quote, he decided they should quote. Take up positions on mainstream groups, except on our groups. Avoid the race issue. Sidestep it as much as possible. We don't have time to defend our stance on this issue against the comments of hundreds of fools, liars and degenerates who, spouting the Jewish line, will slaughter our message with half truths, slander, and the ever used sophistry that'll hide that power level. 1995 climbs writing is particularly fascinating to me for the similarity, as I see between it and the things I've encountered in my own explorations of modern online Nazi haven. 8 Chan, near the end of his essay climb rights. All of my comrades and I, none of whom have ever met face to face, share unique camaraderie, feeling as though we have been friends for a long time. Selfless cooperation occurs regularly amongst my comrades for a variety of endeavors. This feeling of comradeship is irrespective of national identity or state borders. Now they love the word comrade you do. They do. Everybody loves the working right now. What claim expressed there is not so different from what Poway synagogue shooter John Ernest related in the 8 Chan post he made announcing the start of his rampage. It's been real. Dudes. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for everything. Keep up the infographic red pill threats. I've only been lurking for a year and a half. Let what I've learned here is priceless. It's been an honor. Always keep posting, posting until you start shooting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So climbs last line about feeling comradeship across national barriers would prove to be an eerie premonition of the future of the international fascist movement. Because during the late 1990s and early 2000s, the American fascist movement went international in a way it never had been before. Even back in the 30s and 40s. Italian, German, and Spanish fascism were all very different beasts. One side effect of the propaganda that started emanating out of the US as a result of beams, liberty, net, was that all the world's sundry fascists? Started getting on the same page, I found a 2002 study by Les Black published in the Journal of Ethnic and Racial Studies. Les interviewed an Irish fascist with the Internet handle white wolf quote. During the height of his involvement in the movement, he was spending five hours a day online. He lives in an Irish town where there are virtually no visible minorities. He was drawn to the white power movement through a fascination with naziism. He concluded mostly Americans are on the net, but there are British, Irish and lots of others from different countries. The net breaks down the distance a person who is living on a 2000 acre farm in Australia and had nobody to talk to. That his views suddenly understands that he can link people who would never have met and talk with them, plan with them, learn and teach one another. Things help each other. Our Aussie friend, who may be well removed from the rest of his comrades, can nevertheless play a part in forwarding the agenda of a group. Racists love the Internet. You know, people love the Internet. People do love the love the Internet. Yeah, well, it's like that's, I mean it's no matter who you are, you can find your group online and then you have people actively trying to saying all the good things on the Internet but not saying the the dark thing and use it to do what they do. It's like when you like when you talk about like ISIS recruitment and stuff. I've been thinking that this entire book about. I keep saying terrorists, but yeah, it's like ISIS recruitment. It's the same basic strategy going after the same pool of people. 17 years later, a young man who might very well have been the Aussie friend that White Wolf was talking about, Brendan Tarrant, drove him to a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand and gunned down more than 50 people. Like White Wolf, Brenton was a loner, spending hours a day online building a sense of report with his far from digital comrades and fascism before finally deciding to take action. Now, the thing that really shocked me when I started digging into this research was how damned groundbreaking the fascists were in their understanding of what online culture would become and how to manipulate it. I'm going to quote from that book. That I quoted from earlier nation and race quote. This arena has spawned its own language and combines previous forms of right wing organizing with new political strategies. CNG various, really referred to as the Cyber nationalist group, Cyber Nazi Group, or computer nationalist group, is the brainchild of activist Jeff Foss and his article entitled The C&G An Idea for online organization. A complete division of Labor is outlined that assigns operatives particular roles within an overall strategy. Voss makes a distinction between idea men and men of action. The former provide background information for the latter to post within Usenet this manifesto. Outlines 4 different types of foreground operative DIS, a subtle disseminator of information, places it on FTP sites, and makes subtle references to endorsements of such info on news. Usually pretending to be a disinterested observer, a pirate, a person who will pirate an account for a one shot, high saturation dissemination of propaganda, and impersonator who impersonates the enemy posting embarrassing the left, infuriating the enemy, and an infiltrator who infiltrates the enemy. Camp, 1995. They got their hands over this. Yeah, yeah man, fascists were some of the first folks to develop a cohesive strategy around what they called flaming. As early as the 1990 fives, researchers into online extremism had realized that quote, a common endpoint used by right wing activists is the stylized disclaimer. I am not a Nazi. Those same researchers also noted the use of mail bombs or software that allowed fascists to deluge your recipient and hundreds upon hundreds of pieces of spam e-mail in order to make an opponents account functionally unusable 21 years later when I wrote. The first article critical of 8 Chan in the lead up to the 2016 election, my work count was deluged in a massive flow of spam emails, which is why I still get emails from homeschooling.com every day. Now, Wyatt Kaldenberg was an Internet activist affiliated with Tom Metzger's White Aryan resistance, or war? We haven't talked much about them in this audio book because I had to limit my focus somewhere, but Tom was a major part of the Skinhead movement as well as an associate of the order. Back in the 1970s, he worked with David Duke to help organize the Klan border watch. Wyatt helped spread wars message online and gained infamy as one of the first proponents for what would come to be known as Brigading, disrupting other online communities in an organized way, Wyatt wrote. This ought to be our new tactic. Instead of hanging out around the four racist news groups, we can hit news groups as a mob. We cannot win when we are outnumbered by Jews. But if we go in as a group, we can win with the average Joe 6 pack. Post fact about black crime, give them your update numbers. Web addresses, push books, newspapers. Yeah, what year was it? 1995? Cool fascist groups like the Carolinian Lords of the Caucasus started going into news groups dedicated to loneliness and people who had just ended relationships. They went in and news groups for popular musicians and even the News Group for Denny's, which might as well just be a support group for lonely people. Raids like this were often just for the purpose of harassment, but over the years, fascists got better and better at spreading their ideology. In this way, they quickly hit upon the tactic of hiding their beliefs as humor, retreating behind the shield of we're just joking when people responded badly to their rants. About Jewish people or black on black crime like Hitler did earlier, Hitler did earlier. Yeah, it all ties together. Christian identity theology also spread online in this. I found an article in the Journal of Black Studies written by Tanya Sharpe in 2000. She noted the Internet has become a primary means for disseminating information for these groups. Currently, there are 25 websites and 13 news groups devoted specifically to identity Christianity on the World Wide Web, as well as 130 other websites that are devoted to similar and related topics. Individuals can tap into these websites and find procedures for making bombs. Obtain hate propaganda tracts and request catalogs that market white supremacist books and paraphernalia. So that's cool. Very cool code. Very cool. You know what's even cooler than spreading Christian identity theology online in the year 2000? Tons of stuff, man. Yes, lots of things. Including the products and services that support our show. Could you, could I get some of those? Those nuts and some seeds? Yes, please. Call those seeds nuts. Oh, wait, no. I almost got them. That was really effective. I just wanted you to have some seeds to eat some nuts. I'll have some though, all right. Sophie and I are going to do the exchange of the Lacroix for the Perrier. You throw me the idol and I'll throw you the whip. I have the Perrier. You get up. That's really good. Every time we do this, zecker audio man looks back at me with this baleful look. Just what are you doing with the recording? Great idea. You're, like, lording over products. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one meant mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the bill to find all these nuts fees. There's no luring you in with free subscriptions or streaming services that you'll forget to cancel and then be charged full price for none of that. For anyone who hates their phone Bill, Mint Mobile offers premium wireless for just $15.00 a month. Mint Mobile will give you the best rate whether you're buying one or for a family and at Mint. Family start at 2 lines. All plans come with unlimited talk and text, plus high speed data delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can use your own phone with any mint mobile plan and keep your same phone number along with all your existing contacts. Just switch to Mint mobile and get premium wireless service starting at 15 bucks a month. Get premium wireless service from just $15.00 a month and no one expected plot twists at mintmobile.com/behind. That's mintmobile.com/behind. Seriously, you'll make your wallet very happy at Mint Mobile. Com slash behind my name is Erica Kelly and I am the host and creator of Southern Freight true crime. There are so many people that just have no idea about some injustices in the world and if you can give a voice to them you can create change. To be able to do it within podcasting is just such a gift. I believe it was 18 months after I got on with Spreaker that I was making enough that I could quit my day job. It was incredible. I always feel like an ambassador for speaker. But that's because I'm passionate about podcasting. It's really easy to use. I always tell people I am so not tech. Took me 5 minutes to get comfortable with spreaker, and when I find a new friend that has an incredible show, I want them to make money. I want them to be able to do what I did. Follow your podcasting dreams. Let's break your handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. Get paid to talk about the things you love. Spreaker from iheart. In the 1980s and 90s, a psychopath terrorized the country of Belgium. A serial killer and kidnapper was abducting children in the bright light of day. His unspeakable crimes and the incompetence or unwillingness of the police to stop him brought the entire country of Belgium to the brink of revolution. From Tenderfoot TV in iHeartRadio this is la Monstra. The story of abomination and conspiracy that led to the demise of the entire institution of Belgian federal police and rattled the foundations of its government. The story about the man who simply become known as La Monstre. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back and I'm a villain, stroking a case of Perrier as if it's a cat. And what are you about to do to that. I'm going to throw it, and it will be the last time I can throw something because we've done it way too much in this this episode series. It's fun in the room. I know it's going to wear on people, and they're recording, but you can't. You can't edit audio. You can't cut this stuff out. It turns out you can. Nope, I'm undecided. Bit by bit, and almost entirely in a decentralized manner, the digital right came together in the early 2000s. Law enforcement was not just helpless to do anything. It's debatable whether or not they even realized what was happening. Most of their online efforts were spent keeping track of known quantities with long standing online ties like Don Black and his popular fascist website Stormfront. Now Stormfront is important. Nearly 100 hate crime murders have been traced to the site, but the FBI wasn't even particularly good at monitoring them, which is why nearly 100. Murders were traced to the site, yeah. In July of 2019, in response to a FOIA request, the beer was admitted that they had somehow lost almost all of their files on Stormfront somehow. Oh, I hate it when that happens. Like internal files on like white supremacist movement be lost. Not worth examining. To fathom how that happens. Yeah, I can't think of a theory, right, Cody? It sounds like you're about to accuse the FBI, the Bureau of whom a member heroically was present during the Greensboro massacre and didn't do anything to stop it. You're going to accuse that FBI of acting to defend the Stormfront? I don't know what I was thinking. I took the conspiracy pill. You know what? I think the FBI is good and Bob Mueller is going to save us. I. Yeah, man, you're it's gonna be all everything's gonna be real good. It's going to be great. Go away in handcuffs, that guy. Yeah, so the FBI only did 1/4 ***** job of monitoring the most obvious Nazis online, and if that's the case, it's probably not surprising that they completely failed to notice. When Fascists started infiltrating communities on websites like 4 Chan and Reddit. It happened slowly, camouflaged an irony and humor. As a young man, I was only vaguely aware of the changes taking place in the digital space. As I've grown up around, Holocaust jokes became more common. So did racist humor. More than just growing more frequent. These jokes grew more specific of Alving, from jibes about Jewish people being stingy with money clearly inspired by South Park, to memes about how Hitler did nothing wrong and image macros that repeated bad science about race and IQ. In 2018, I found an article on the Observer by Holocaust scholar Timothy Snyder. In it, he comments on the use of irony and humor by fascists to mainstream their views. Quote with the 21st century culture is introduced is that nothing is really serious, and that is an interestingly dangerous. Idea because if nothing is serious, you can have this ambiguity where you can actually be doing something very serious, but you're pretending not to. And you can always fall back and say, well, that was just a joke because everything is just a joke. But of course you don't really believe that everything is just a joke, or you wouldn't be promoting fascism or white supremacy or whatever it may be. That's well said signer knows his ******* **** quote. That's that too. I would have brought it up because I can't. I don't remember it, but it describes that sort of like, you say it and then when it's a little too far, you're like stroke and challenge them sort of walk away. Yeah. Whether or not you laugh determines whether or not I decide I was joking. Yeah, Mr prank, bro. Just a prank, bro. Don't you have a sense of humor? Yeah, in 2014, things on the Internet rather suddenly boiled over into the cultural phenomenon known as Gamergate. On its surface, Gamergate was a reaction to corruption of video games journalism. In reality, it was an eruption of white and male supremacist hatred, an attack on modernity and liberalism by an army of young men who believed they'd been wronged by society. There has not yet been a great deal of research into whether or not there was an organized attempt by the white power movement to Co opt Gamergate, but there is ample evidence that the ideas of that movement quickly made it into popular memes. Read by gamergaters during my research, I came across a thread on the website resetera filled with other confused digital natives trying to figure out just what the **** had happened with Gamergate 1. User posted a series of memes he'd saved during that time, and retrospect, they seemed to show a progressive descent into white nationalism. The 1st is a propaganda poster featuring a cartoon mascot of Four Chance Poll board Polina, advising the Anons of poll on how to effectively aid the movement. Polina is blonde haired and blue dyed at the top of the poster of the words. Who is that girl? Blonde haired? Blue eyes, fair skin. Why it must be Polina. Another meme from further on the collection is significantly nazier. It's based around an old labor movement political cartoon pyramid of a modern capitalist system, showing laborers on the very bottom being exploited by the classes above them. And the Gamergate adaptation gamers are the bottom of the pyramid, with games journalists above them, critical theorists, social justice warriors like Anita Sarkeesian above them, cultural Marxist academia above them, and then FAFSA loans atop, represented by an Illuminati I symbol. We don't see explicit anti-Semitism in this cartoon, but it is there, subtly, in the caricature drawings of Jewish video game critics. It's clear at this point that some white power talking points had started to mutate to better appeal to modern and extremely online youths. Yeah, yeah. Also especially more effective because it's like that dork fantasy **** with gamers, yeah? Yeah, absolutely. We're just joking. We're just joking. It's the same. Same like source of resentment to grievance and all that stuff that gravitate towards. OK, dork loser stuff. Yeah, I know exactly. And it's it's it's especially frustrating because it's so it is clear that that's there is a connection there. But because it's a lot of image boards like 4 Chan, it disappears really quickly. So there's less record of that time of the sort of the proto. What's going on. Yeah, we'll have all these up on our website behindthebastards.com and of course the war on everyone.com, which I have not plugged enough in this series. Just we're just barreling along. Eventually, their harassment of video game journalists and critics, most of whom were women, grew severe and illegal enough that 4 Chan exiled its gamer Gaters. Many of them migrated to 8 Chan, and over the next several years they grew more radical and more explicitly fascist, until eventually they were openly planning for how to cause a new Holocaust. It's impossible to know how much of the ironic fascist **** posting started off innocently, and how much of it was seated by white power activists, but we know they were engaging in that behavior purposefully for more than 20 years. And in the years after Gamergate this work has paid dividends. The true danger of the Digital Reich was best expressed by Alex Curtis, the publisher of an extremist neo-Nazi magazine and self-proclaimed Lone Wolf of Hate. In the early 2000s he wrote of his hope that, quote, some well placed Arians will one day cause some serious wreckage. 1000 Timothy McVeigh would end any semblance of stability in this racially corrupt society. Just gotta find enough lone wolves. Yep. To connected by some magic computer thing. Some historical echo that won't go away. Yeah. No, continue. No, we have not yet reached 1000 Timothy Mcveigh's, thankfully. But we have seen a marked increase in the amount of right wing domestic terror over the last several years. And it's. Yeah, yeah. And it certainly seems to be driven largely by online radicalization. Robert Bowers, the Tree of Life synagogue shooter, was radicalized in part on Gab, a social network for Nazis. He announced the start of his rampage there. Six months later, the Poway synagogue shooter announced the start of his rampage on 8 Chan, as had the Christchurch shooter six weeks prior. There are other names in the roll call of Internet. Inspired fascist violence, the Atomwaffen terrorist group, responsible for three murders so far, started off with extremely online Nazis working to form a terror cell in imitation of the book siege written by James Mason. We talked briefly about Mason and siege at the start of this book. He was a student of William Pierce, and siege might thus be understood as a more academic accompanying text to the Turner Diaries with the Diaries proposes fiction, siege outlines and strategic depth. Mason advocates for leaderless resistance and Lone wolf style attacks. The lone wolf cannot be detected, cannot be prevented. And seldom can be traced. If I were asked by anyone of my opinion on what to look for or hope for next, I would tell them a wave of killings or assassinations of system bureaucrats by roving gunmen who have their strategy well mapped out in advance, and well Nayan possible to stop. Early in 2019, Coast Guard Lieutenant Christopher Hasson was caught planning this exact sort of attack. He had a cache of weapons and ammo and a kill list of journalists and democratic politicians. Hassan was obsessed with the manifesto of Anders Brevik, a right wing shooter who murdered dozens of students in Utoya, Norway. We don't know when where he first came into contact with that manifesto, but spreading it has been a priority of online fascists for years. In the wake of the Christchurch shooting, fascists have started spreading Brenton Terrence manifesto as well. The Poway synagogue shooter cited both manifestos. These inspirations for his attack. In his own rampage thread on 8, Chan, the Poway shooter, stated his desire to beat Terence High score. In this we see echoes of Eric Harris, the Columbine shooter, who was obsessed with beating Timothy Mcveigh's high score. Right now, as I read this, violent armed men and eight Chance Poll Board and numerous discord chat rooms are plotting for ways that they might beat their heroes and win a high score of their own. On Telegram, the bowl patrol, a group of young fascists dedicated to Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof celebrates St Ruth and fantasize about new acts of violence in his name. The yearly harvest and blood these young men will reap was sown by Louis Beam, William Pierce, and Bob Matthews. Now, though, there is no need for an organization to buy up arms and planned terror attacks. The order proved to be less resilient than the completely decentralized radicalization and killing machine made possible by the advent of the Internet. The Internet has given the white power movement a steady supply of armed and ready young killers, living cruise missiles who strike unpredictably at targets around the country. Bit by bit, their attacks chisel away at our sense of security, our national stability, and our trust. And each other. It took decades, but Louis B and his comrades did bring the war home to all of us and against all of us. At the end. Cool. That's a good. That's cool. That's a good book ending chapter. Yeah, devastating. Yeah. It's just, it's just. The the gamer thing is so interesting. Yeah, it really is. And apparent it's like all gamers, but like, there is that element that it that it's drawn to and like with the. The New Zealand shooting live streaming it like that's you're you're broadcasting a video game. Yeah, exactly. You trying to make it look like Call of Duty, right? And then you get the high score talk and then it tolerates it. Even more horrifying to see it all laid out so linear like this. The single biggest surprise to me in researching this was when I came upon the fact that Eric Harris had specifically stated his desire to beat Timothy Mcveigh's kill Count. Like realizing like, oh, that part. It's the same thing. Really, all of the like, the like, that's the problem. We look at this so much is like separated and like, even as far back as like the the fact that like the Nazis trying to recruit kids on the Internet in 1995, like one of the guys doing that had his computer bought for him by William Pierce's National Alliance. The guy who wrote the Turner Diaries. The book which inspired Timothy McVeigh, which inspired Eric Harris, which inspired 79 other mass shooters. Like, yeah, it's a whole, it's a whole web that it's really hard to. It's really hard to describe to lay out because there's so much I had to leave out. It's like I could, I could have done this whole thing about, I could have done a whole seven part episode on like, Alex Jones's ties to explicit terrorists. Yeah, like that's the one of the most frustrating things because it's like once you once you see it, it's not. You see it everywhere. Once you see it, you see it where it is, you realize how big it is, and it's so upsetting. It is upsetting. What's even more upsetting is that it's time for me to throw the Perrier. Or yeah, yeah, you. You'd better move away from that point because that's where I'm going to check it at. No, it's OK. It's OK. All right, guys? Cody, I need you to get close to your microphone and describe this as I do it. No one seems thrilled about it. Sophie's hiding continues. Not really hiding. She just sort of like sleeping. Oh, I'm looking through the chair. I'm really not doing a great job. Robert stood up. Two hands on the Perrier. Winding up, taking, taking a few breaths, throwing it. Three cans fell out. Katie shouted. That was so anticlimactic. Well. It's just a new way to open up a box. A little of Perrier. Yeah, worked. Now we have one for everybody. I dare you to open it. All of your worry was for nothing. There's one for each of us. Here we go. I don't want one. Yeah, I don't want it up. I just prefer throwing it. Yeah, pretty out of shape. You should open it now, though. I mean to see. Totally fine. Nothing happened. Absolutely disappointing about this has been disappointing, except for you, Robert, and your work. Well, can I have some? You know what? Yeah, in the moment I'm gonna close it real quick. I am incredible. Audio custody closes things really meticulously and well, so I'm not surprised that it didn't open when you threw it against the wall. You got to make sure it's closed. What I'm surprised about is what good audio content code. Shower seats is for this bucket. Our choices in this eight part, seven part. Cody dropped a bunch out of the bag. Just a few. There. I got him. I got him. It's fine. Well, guys, you want to plug your? I don't really want to. I just want everybody to read. I guess you already listen to the book. Give people to read the book. It's a topic that everybody's aware of. I don't know. I'm really glad we did this. I'm glad we did this, too. I wish we didn't hated myself during it. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't smoke earlier, but I wish we didn't smoke earlier, too. But, you know, we all learned things. We take these, we take that with us. Just like, I apologize. Let's not say just like, Nope. Just like, OK, that's I guess what we learned. So some more news, more news. Some more news even more. Is you know this name is Cody Johnston's name is Katie Stoll and that's my names behindthebastards.com the website where you can find the sources for this podcast. You can also find it on the war on everyone.com. You can buy shirts on teepublic.com by looking for behind the ********. We have a Twitter at at ******** pod and an Instagram at the same name. Check out my trusted Sophie. You proud? Oh yeah, because I remembered two. Finally. Yeah. You did all well, guys. Time to go online. Yeah, I just threw some seeds at Cody. The episodes done. Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried True crime and if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Speaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams. Let's break your handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's SP. RE aker.com. Hey there, it's Ebony Monet, your co-host for the San Diego Zoo's Amazing Wildlife podcast. In this special episode, we're speaking with Doctor Jane Goodall about the fascinating journey that led to her impactful behavioural discoveries on chimpanzees. It wasn't until one of the chimpanzees began to lose his fear of me, but I began to really make discoveries that actually shook the scientific world. Listen to amazing wildlife on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, I'm Kaylee short on my podcast. 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