February 4, 2025 • 46 mins
Molly talks to Spencer Sunshine about his book, Neo-Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism: The Origins and Afterlife of James Mason’s Siege. Sunshine's book explores the history of Siege, the book that is today's nazi terrorist's bible.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Colson Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hello, and welcome back to it could happen here. I
am once.
Speaker 3 (00:08):
Again your occasional host, Molly Conker, and I am joined
today by Spencer Sunshine, the author of Neo Nazi Terrorism
and Countercultural Fascism, The Origins and Afterlife of James Mason's Siege.
It's available now in paperback. I have my paperback copy
from Routledge Press. So, Spencer, I guess let's get right
into it. What is Siege and why should we still
(00:30):
be talking about it?
Speaker 4 (00:31):
Well, unfortunately, we should still be talking about it because
it's still influential. It was a book originally published in
nineteen ninety three, but that is an edited version of
newsletters published in the eighties by a fellow named James Mason,
who is a lifelong neo Nazi. He joined the American
Nazi Party at age fourteen in nineteen sixty six. He
is still an active ideological believer in national socialism. It's
(00:56):
a book that in it he makes the argument that
any kind of normal legal political activity was pointless for
Neo Nazis to engage in and like forming organizations, holding marches,
making the traditional propaganda, trying to build up parties even
guerrilla warfare. At the end of it, he becomes very
cynical about and he says, through what are essentially dramatic
(01:21):
random acts of violence, of terrorism or murder. He even
goes into praising serial killers like Joseph Paul Franklin, we
can destabilize the government and society and after this neo
Nazis can come to power. This has become a very
influential idea. More recently he was rediscovered. It was a
pretty obscure The newsletters were very unpopular that he never
(01:43):
made more than one hundred copies. The original book had
a print run of one thousand, so it was a
sort of obscure text. It was known amongst neo Nazi
circles for some unusual reasons. It became mixed up with
some countercultural figures and that was actually what made up
more well known. But it was revived in twenty fifteen.
It was found by these younger aspiring terrorists, let's say
(02:06):
at the time, around a message board called Iron March.
It became the bible of the adamoff And Division, this
new Nazi group that its members and associates killed five
people and out of that everyone in the Adam offf
and Division had to read siege, which became the hashtag,
and out of that grew this whole sort of network,
(02:27):
first of groups and now really totally decentralized, like propaganda
channels on telegram to Terogram promoting these same ideas, and
so it's become very influential today. It gets named in
like terrorist manifestos. The school shooter I think it was
in Nashville, Tennessee that just happened. He makes a reference
(02:48):
to people who are into siege in his writings, and
more and more I've documented before him at least twelve
murders that are either by the Adam Waffin Division, by
people inspired by siege culture, or by people directly linked
to Terogram. So if we want to look at the
main text animating neo Nazi terrorism today, which has now
spread around the globe, of this groups in Latin America,
(03:09):
there's groups in eastern Western Europe. It's even influencing groups
in the Middle East or people in the Middle East.
They're called accelerationists. They want to accelerate the collapse of things.
And if there's a single ideological text today that's influential
on this scene, it is by easily James Mason Siege.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
And what I particularly am enjoying about the book I
just told you before we started recording.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
I haven't finished it yet.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
What I'm enjoying about this book is so you know,
you were saying that James Mason started writing this in
the eighties, right, but nobody was reading it. It was
very sort of niche. It wasn't popular, even within its
own niche. He was not a popular man. He had
a lot of beefs with other leaders in the movement.
It's rediscovered in the twenty tens. It's big on Iron March.
It's the animating force behind Adam Waffin, and so all
(03:51):
of a sudden in the last ten years, people like us,
you know, researchers of the far right, mainstream journalists, people
are talking about Siege, they're talking about me. But this,
I think, correct me if I'm wrong, is the only
book sort of tracing it back to its root. James
Mason did not come into existence in twenty fifteen on
the pages of Iron March, right, they sort of dug
(04:13):
back up this writing that was at that point thirty
years old. But this book, I mean, it's an incredible
work of research. But it's also sort of a picuresque, right.
It follows James Mason through decades of Nazi history.
Speaker 4 (04:27):
Right.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
He wasn't just a guy who wrote a newsletter. He
was a guy who was in a lot of rooms.
He knew a lot of people. So through the lens
of James Mason's life, you can follow the origins of
the modern neo Nazi movement back to the sort of
splinters and sects and rival personalities of the seventies. Right
that you can't understand modern neo Nazi organizing if you
(04:50):
don't know the history that goes back to the sixties
and seventies.
Speaker 4 (04:53):
Well, thank you for getting that. I had someone write
a review and it was an interesting view from the
viewpoint of literary criticism. And he's like, well, this is
one of these books about a book it's not. And
I'm like, yeah, it kind of is, but it's really
and I started after I started writing this which has
an unusual origin, or just maybe it is a usual origin.
Like the first half is about neo Nazism in the
nineteen seventies, which is incredibly undocumented. There's a huge problem
(05:17):
with a documentation about the far right in general before
twenty fifteen. Probably more books have come out in the
last ten years about the far right in the US
before twenty fifteen than came out before, and certainly about
neo Nazis, who are almost always when they are written
about American Neo Nazis, it's usually in a history of
the white supremacist movement, and there's no differentiation made between them,
(05:41):
and I would say the National Socialists are quite different
from other white supremacists for a variety of different reasons.
So there is no book about neo Nazism in the
nineteen seventies in the US at all. There are only
two documents I can really name, and they're both written
by National Socialists actually when in Australia and one the
head of the New Order which used to be the
(06:01):
American Nazi Party. It's actually not bad. It's an eight
part series by Martin Kirk. So the first half is
really reconstructing what happened in the nineteen seventies, because this
is what siege is coming out of. This siege is
an answer to the questions that faced neo Nazis in
the nineteen seventies. And then the second half of the
book is even I would say less about Mason. It's
about these four countercultural figures who discover Mason, helped published him,
(06:24):
and eventually published and disseminated Siege itself. And part of
that is I was just around the scene these people
were part of in the nineteen nineties. Like I saw
one of them, boyd Rice play. I had many mutual
friends with another, the publisher Adam Parfrey of Farrell House.
So like, I was like right around what these people
were doing as part of the nineties counterculture. So I
(06:46):
became very interested in that because these people always denied
their background, you know, or left it off or something.
And I found just so many smoking guns in this.
And so I will say how this started is right
after Charlottesville. The Right rally at Charlottesville. Always you say
these things and just you give the name of the thing,
and people are like, wait a minute, that's like where
(07:06):
I live. You know, we're more than that, you know,
I was in Seattle. I was like, oh, I was
at Seattle, referring to this nineteen ninety nine demonstration, and
I'm like, people are here weren't even necessarily born then,
and just saying at Seattle doesn't mean anything. So after
younit the right, there was a spike in popularity in
Siege and the hashtag read siege because it looked like
(07:26):
the rally followed what he said, and he said, no
one in an American society will allow neo Nazis to succeed.
And a lot of people don't know this, but what
happened at the initial rally is that it wasn't the
street fighting people might be familiar with, even that's fading
from memory. Was before it was supposed to start, And
when it was supposed to start at noon, the police,
who had been standing a block away and letting everything unfold,
(07:49):
marched in and forced everyone out, Meaning the rally never happened.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Nobody ever gave a speech.
Speaker 4 (07:54):
Nobody gave a speech. As as we know, the car
attack happened like an hour or two later. I got
a lot, got a timeline. That's all like garbled now right, Yeah,
that sounds right. And the book is co dedicated to
Heather Hair I just want to point out, so it
seemed to coincide with what Mason said. He's like, you
can't do legal work, you have to do a terrorism right,
(08:15):
And so there was a spike and interest in it,
and Adam often had been doing more and more. Adam
often people are committing murders, strange murders. They're all very
strange murders, which I think speaks to a lot of
the personalities who are involved in this and other forms
of violence, and even in more structured political movements, I
think it does attract tends to attract fringe people, except
(08:36):
at certain times where people are intentionally using it as
a strategy as part of a bigger mass movement. Anyway,
these are questions for terrorism studies, and so there was
a spike of interest in it. So I was going
to write a short article for a think tank I
used to be associated with, which I will not name
because I had such a bad experience with them, and
it was going to be an article. I couldn't get
the facts to line up. As I said, there's terrible
(08:57):
scholarship about this period, and so I used this very
sophisticated research tool called Google, and through that I found
that Mason's papers. There was a huge collection of Mason's
papers at the University of Kansas and Lawrence, Kansas. So
I decided I'd go there. I thought I'd just straightened
these things out there were some documents I needed, some
very obscure fanzines and stuff. That'd be the end of
(09:19):
the day. I got through. Well, first I discovered it's
not easy to get to Lawrence, Kansas. You have to
fly into an airport, and then I think I took
an uber for like an hour. There was like one
bus a day or something. Anyway, I got there and
started poking at the papers. It was sixty boxes of
his correspondence. He had letters incoming and outgoing since the
early nineteen sixties. As you mentioned, he was an insider
(09:40):
to the neo Nazi movement, so it was with all
these people he had kept carbon copies of his outgoing letters.
It was a unique slice of national socialist life in
the United States. Never seen an archive like it. People
didn't keep their papers because they were doing illegal activities.
The government sees them and has them in a warehouse
somewhere or whatever. This is even in the pre Internet.
I can only do this because it was pre Internet
(10:00):
and there were paper copies of stuff, and of the
age where I grew up doing all research on paper
and in archives. And I quickly found out what I had.
And there were two things. One, as I said was
that there was this whole story of American neo Nazism,
of when the American Nazi Party splinters then called the
National Socialistory People's Party in the nineteen seventies, and all
(10:22):
these groups come out of it, many of which we
know parts of, like William Peers who wrote the Turner
Diaries and the Skoky Incident which is parodied, and the
Blues Brothers. Some people don't know this just so Paul
Franklin shooting and paralyzing US publisher Larry Flint, and some
other things. And I was like, Oh, these are all
people who came out of one thing, a splintering of
the party. And I realized that there basically was a
(10:43):
terrorist wing that came out of the splintering. And people
knew Mason and people knew Pierce, but there was like
a couple other groups or people, but people didn't put
it together that they were all like the most radical
wing of these splinter groups. So there was that story.
And then, as I mentioned, there was a second story
about the these countercultural people who had always denied that
they were involved in national socialism or the level of it.
(11:05):
It was just a joke. All these things that we
hear today almost word for word. And so I found
all their letters to James Mason, and they're adorned with
swastikas and eight eights and they're helping him. Had they
reveal the extent that they helped him? And the funny
thing is a lot of this stuff was actually available
and out in the open. It was published books, but
it was like little pieces of flakes of gold scattered
(11:26):
around everything. And I started picking them up because I
realized you could put them together. And so one article
turned out was supposed to be one article, and then
it turns two articles. And I sat down to write
it and turned into a book. And then five years
later I finally had the manuscript done, then took another
year at the publishers, and then it came out last year.
So it's been seven years of work, and I've been
(11:48):
going around doing talks. I did seventeen talks and support
of the book and as many podcasts and stuff. So
I'm still the book is still part of my life,
as much as I would like to sort of put
it down. But thank you Remedy on the podcast this
is not It's great they have me on the podcast
Not Against No diss against you. No shade, no shade no.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
And I'm so I'm so jealous of your trip to
Kansas to see the archives.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
I only recently.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
A year or two, discovered that his papers existed in
those archives, and so I wrote to the archivist and
I said, like, you know, are any of these digitized?
I would love to see them. And they're like, you know,
we've only digitized like one box. And they sent me
a couple of a couple of scans, but most of
it has not been digitized. So you have to go
to Kansas if you want to read this old pedophile
Nazis letters to Charles Manson.
Speaker 4 (12:33):
Well, I do have thousands of pictures I took of
this correspondence. So yeah, if you request digital copies, they
won't tell you what they've digitized. And so it's it's
like you know, trying to like randomly throw darts or something.
If you get the right file, they have them.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
And I was like, I was begging and pleading.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
I was like, please, just like any letters you have
with Bob Hyke, I just I just want the Bob
Hike letters.
Speaker 4 (12:55):
But I can give you the Bob Hike letters.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
I would love those.
Speaker 4 (12:58):
I think they'll they'll digitize stuff for a price.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
Though, Oh I'm sure. I'm sure if I pay for it,
they would do me the favor.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
But that's the thing is that there's so much interconnection
here because these stories always get told episodically, right, like
the story of James Mason and Adam Woffen, the story
of William Luther Peers, the story of the founding of
the National Socialist Movement. But nobody takes those pieces and
slots them together because they interlock. They all interlock, right,
(13:26):
And so this idea of the lone wolf, I mean,
I guess James Mason's life's work is to perpetuate and
motivate the lone wolf, But is it really a lone
wolf if he's training them?
Speaker 4 (13:36):
Well, the lone wolf question is a long question. A
lot of people know Metzger moved to the lone wolf
strategy after a war was sued by the SPLC and collapse,
but Mason was advocating this beforehand and was very tight
with Metzger. So there is actually a book describing what
you've said, putting the pieces together, and it's called Neo
Nazi terrorism and counterculture.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Has exactly the I think which you can buy to.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
I mean, like I said, it's the only book that
I know of that fits these pieces together.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
No, it is the only book. Actually. I've been in
contact with James Mason, and he said when radio interview,
it's not the first of its kind, but it's the
best of its kind.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
A high praise from the book's Nazi pedophile subject. Why
did he donate his papers to the library because, like
you said, most people are not only not preserving these
(14:34):
items where they're not preserving them at all because they
know what they've done is illegal or embarrassing to everyone involved,
and they're intentionally destroying the evidence of these kinds of communications.
But he not only saved them, but he wanted to
make sure we could read them. Did you talk to
him at all about why he did that?
Speaker 4 (14:51):
Well, he sold them. He was a wheeler dealer in
especially American Nazi Party memorabilia. You know, he sold furniture
on the side like antiques. He'd go antiquing and he
if you've seen pictures of his apartment, it's filled with
Nazi nickknacks, right, he's got a knife collection.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
Maybe it looks like it looks like the Area Nation's
booth at the Tulsa Gun Show.
Speaker 4 (15:13):
It looks like my apartment, but like the in the
inverse and fewer plants. So he was a collector, so
he was already on. My understanding is he was already
selling George Lincoln Rockwell Memory of Bilia or whatever papers
in such two Kansas. They have this collection there called
the Wilcox Collection of anti extremist stuff. This guy, Laard
(15:34):
Wilcox had been in early students for Democratic Society before
they took the like Marxist turn, and then decided that
the left and the right were the same, like in
the seventies or something, and started collecting all this material.
So they were one of the they're probably the biggest
collection of far right material. And as I said, at
the time, libraries weren't collecting it, and people weren't writing
about it. They were like, oh, these are just a
(15:55):
bunch of kooks and wing nuts. They're not important. And
some of this is because, like as I say in
the book, the first neo Nazi mass murder wasn't until
the late seventies, like it was what we know as
neo Nazism today really only emerged in the seventies. Is
one of my arguments in the book. So the papers
were there because he sold them. The second thing is
he is unique, I think, not unique, but very uncommon,
(16:19):
because he is an unabashed neo Nazi. He does not
try to hide it. He is not like the NSM,
which is actually a party he co founded, shockingly, but
left over that as they turned, because originally it was
to promote violence, and then as it turned to a
more traditional Hollywood Nazi party, he left. But it's the
same one that was at Charlottesville, and Jeff's Scoop was
(16:40):
the head of I actually taught Jeff Scoop about how
the party was founded. That was very interesting. I interviewed
him for the book.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Another one of those dishonest actors.
Speaker 4 (16:48):
Well, the guy who had made him the head of
the party, who was actually the second head, Harrington, cliff Harrington.
Clifford Harrington did not give him the truthful account of
the parties founding. Harrington claimed he was a co founder,
and he wasn't. He claimed a different date. This is
one reason I spent so much time on stuff. Also
that I found all these things that had been printed that
were wrong by scholars and others that were and it
(17:10):
wasn't their fault. They were taken. It was hard to
get these harder to get these documents, especially when a
group is moving. And so Harrington claimed he had been
a co founder in nineteen seventy four or whatever, but
he was lying. Mason was one of the co founders
and not him. He only became the head in the eighties.
So this is some of this stuff I found. Anyway,
I was gonna say the NSM at one point go,
(17:31):
we're not neo Nazis, were National Socialists.
Speaker 5 (17:34):
I was like, get the fuck out of here, like really, like,
come all, your flag is a swastikonic ah. I mean,
this is absurd, but people will do that, right, It's
like the Dead Parents skit in Monty Python.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
If people know this and so. But Mason stands out
because he's always been very upfront about his views. He's
very proud of them. He's not ashamed. And if this
is embarrassed other people, they didn't belong He's as he
told to me, they didn't believe in the one true
really religion. So I asked him about these counterculture figures
who have denied they were ever involved in this stuff.
At the time, he was convinced they were national socialists,
(18:09):
and he was like, well, they believed in something else
other than the one True faith. I think that's the
word he used. So yeah, he is nothing to hide.
He's very open about it, very open about promoting terrorism,
as you know, and maybe some of the listeners do.
Young neo Nazis go to his apartment and he tutors them.
They take pictures with him. This included Sam Woodward, who
(18:29):
murdered a young gay Jewish man Blaze Bernstein, recently sentenced
to life in prison. There's pictures a Woodward in Mason's apartment.
So yeah, I mean he wants as he's proud of
his lineage and he wants it documented. And I know
I did him a favor by writing a book about
his movement. I mean, they don't have the intellectuals and
the resources to in the trained people to write historical books,
(18:51):
and I did it a pretty straight up book. Even
Mason was like, I kept waiting to read the smear.
I kept waiting for the smear. There was no smear.
I was like, yeah, I just wrote it as a
street book. And so in a way, I've given them
an insight into their history, which wouldn't exist otherwise. So
this stuff is always a double edged sword when you
cover as you know, when you cover fascist groups, they
want the publicity by and large. I was told sometimes
(19:15):
at the SPLC, like groups contact them and they're like,
cover us, give us coverage.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
Sending them their press releases.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
But I mean I think someone like Mason, I guess
he doesn't see this mirror because, like you said, he's
proud of himself. So this is I think, is an
honest appraisal of his legacy, and most people would see
that as a smear, but he's proud of it.
Speaker 4 (19:35):
Well, it's not a smear. I don't need to say
anything bad about him. He's he's there promoting Nazi terrorism.
What's the point of, like, you know, denouncing this or something.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
I mean, Whereas I think someone like Pierce, I think
sometimes when people write honestly about Peer, obviously he's been
dead for twenty five years, but he resisted the characterization
that he was inciting terrorism, even though he, like Mays
and very much was.
Speaker 4 (20:01):
Oh well, Pierce is just the liar. I mean, all
these guys.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Exactly, That's what I mean. But I think a book
like this about Pierce.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
I think he would not have enjoyed, whereas Mason is
at least honest about his legacy.
Speaker 4 (20:12):
You know, there is a terrible book about Pierce by
one of the sick of fants who is a professor actually.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Ardess Griffin.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
Yeah, and that again, that is one of those dishonest histories.
I think we were talking before we started recording that
the problem with archival research trying to write a history
of these movements is they are dishonest actors.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
And so Robert S. Griffin, he wrote what is it
the Fame of a dead Man's Deeds?
Speaker 4 (20:35):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (20:35):
Is that what it's called.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
He went into it, you know, saying like, I'm going
to write this neutral appraisal of this figure of the movement,
about Willie Luther Pierce, and over the weeks that he
spent on the compound to write it, and he spent
time with Pierce on the compound in Hillsborough, became radicalized
and is a Nazi.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Now are he still alive?
Speaker 3 (20:54):
I mean, he could take issue with that characterization if
he wants, But yes, I'm sure you've read the book.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
It's not neutral. It's a has giography of Peers.
Speaker 4 (21:03):
Yeah, there's actually a book by Pierce's son too, which
is interesting.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
I've read that it's quite good.
Speaker 4 (21:09):
Well, unfortunately a lot of it's copy pasta.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
But I think his insight into his relationship with his
father is very unique. It is called The Sins of
My Father by Kelvin Pearce. Yeah, I mean that's a
window you don't often get, although I guess now we do.
Also have The Klansman's Son by Don Black's.
Speaker 4 (21:26):
Daughter Black's daughter or son.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
She has transitions.
Speaker 4 (21:29):
Oh, I did not know that, well, Mazeltov. Yeah, yeah,
I remember reading their work before Trump, and they actually
wrote one of the most moving resignations from the movement
that I've read, very much taking you know, being accountable
even though they were raised in it. I feel like
children raised in this are not like as accountable as
adults are, right, especially like they were in college at
(21:51):
the time. But it was like a true interesting working
through it, and I felt like heartfelt apology for it.
And yeah, actually, this is a fun fact. You may
know a member of the Aryan Nationalist Action A and A.
This terrorist is a bank robbing group from the eighties.
I think became the first person to transition gender.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
From Donald Langen.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
Donna Langen was known as pretty Boy Pedro when she
was the head of the Rigan Republican Armies. It a
bank robbery gang out of Allahem City.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
She was the first person to win a battle with
the federal government to transition in.
Speaker 4 (22:27):
Federal prison to get surgery.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
And just recently, actually, there was a filing in her case.
She's trying to get the way the case is titled
in the court records.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
Is still Peter.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
Langen, her dead name, and the judge denied her petition
to retitle the case.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
But she has transitioned and is in a women's prison.
Speaker 4 (22:46):
Is she in Texas?
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Oh gosh, I could look up in the BOP where
she is.
Speaker 4 (22:50):
Texas bands prisoners from changing their names.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
She is in FMC cars.
Speaker 4 (22:56):
That isn't in Dallas, Texas. Yeah, yeah, that's yeah, that's why.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
So she's still in the BOP system under her dead name,
but she was allowed to physically transition. So that's again
just a strange twist of history, right that the person
who won that legal model for us was a Nazi
bank robber.
Speaker 4 (23:14):
Well, she has also long repudiated those politics, so I
think she's been the only person to have surgery, transperson
to have surgery who was imprisoned at the time, because
I think that was recently and then everything, you know,
everything they changed. They I know that they slowed down
their trans policies waiting to see the results of the election.
(23:36):
So for a strange reason, I know, actually a bunch
of the stuff about trans people in prison and.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
So anyway, No, it's I mean, it's a remarkable, remarkable history.
Speaker 4 (23:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
Yeah, So you started writing this book after Unite the
Right because there was this renewed interest in Siege. I mean,
I guess what has the experience been like, you know,
over the course of spending the last six years of
your life working on this, realizing that it is only
because becoming more relevant and not less.
Speaker 4 (24:02):
Well, the problem is is like for people like us
who watch the far right, like our work is only
important or people are only interested in it when there
is a big upswing, and then like that's when people
are interested, and that's when it is more important. So
on one hand, it's good that I didn't spend five
years and then no one remembered what Siege was and
it was just a blip. I mean, that's good for me,
(24:23):
But I have to say what's good for me is
bad for society, and so, I mean.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
I think it would have been an important work of
history regardless. But I guess as you're working on it,
realizing that the body count is only growing.
Speaker 4 (24:33):
Yeah, it's it's I don't know, I don't really you know,
what do you say about that? I call these people
empty people spreading emptiness. Like it's hard for me even
to get mad at the more aggressive neo Nazis and
white supremacists, Like often they're young, and I just see
like sad young people who can't deal with their problems,
(24:57):
engaged in like hurting other people who are often not
so different than them, you know. I mean there's a
trans man who was in Adam. Often, you know, like
they're numerous stories of people being you know, of not
white descent, either they're hiding that they're not, or they're
a mixed race descent and they're sort of passing as
(25:18):
wide of being Jewish, of being queer, all this stuff.
The movement's filled with these people. Sometimes it's the people
are even like how many straight white men are there
in the movement, Like and it's just sad. You're like,
I see you're being attracted to this because you're so alienated,
or you're so your identity is so shaky that you
are attracted to this idea of a firm, strong identity.
(25:40):
And I mean sometimes people forget fascism in Italy and
Germany arose and basically the last two countries that arose
and solidified in Europe, like those were countries that wasn't
clear what Italy was going to be. There's such differences
between the north and the south. There's no reason, Like
it was unclear originally whether Germany was going to be
Austria too, you know, and so they were. It's a
(26:01):
way part of fascism is shoring up that national identity
which was very fragmented, and it works the same I
think with people's identities. And one of the things that
attracts people to neo Nazism, I think is this strong
affirmation of an identity, and people with mixed identities or
conflicted about it or filled with self loathing are drawn
(26:22):
to this for that reason. One of the many reasons
people get drawn into these things.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
And they recruit so young.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
I mean, I think in the book you're talking about this,
you know, all the way back to James Mason's origins
that he became interested in the Nazi Party as a
fourteen year.
Speaker 4 (26:36):
Old, joined it, joined it at fourteen.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
So he's a child, right getting into this movement, and
now that he is an old man, he is in
turn in doctrinating children. Right that Adam Woffen members are
very young, I guess were Adam Woffin technically doesn't exist anymore,
but most of the most of the young men who
spilled blood for Adam Waffen were twenty years old years old.
Speaker 4 (27:00):
And you know, someone pointed out the founder of the
feuer Krieg Division when he founded it was twelve. He
was arrested when he was thirteen or fourteen, but he
founded it at twelve.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
And which tragic, obviously tragic, heartbreaking, disgusting. But imagine being
one of the adults who was in that group and
finding out that your fear was twelve.
Speaker 4 (27:23):
I grew up in the South in an extremely Protestant
area at the height of that like eighties fundamentals Christian
Christian right thing, and there were I knew about. These
are kind of an older thing. Child preachers. Have you
ever heard of child preachers? This was a big thing during.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
The Yeah, they speak in tongues and they sort of
parrot the cadence of the way adults speak.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
But if you listen carefully, they're not saying anything.
Speaker 4 (27:48):
If they've memorized the way that adults give these barn
burning you know, adult Protestants evangelicals give these barn burning sermons,
but they don't necessarily understand what they're saying. And so,
I mean, I think it's pretty common people adults will
do this and believe in what they're saying. Maybe they
understand it a little better. I think there's a bunch
(28:10):
of post structuralist academics who don't even understand what they're saying.
But that can happen too, And so I think people
like well, I don't know, I was a pretty smart
twelve year old. Maybe I would understand it better. But
you just need somebody repeating it. It's the slogans and
the narratives have already been formed by others. You're not
necessarily innovating on it. As long as you can repeat
the dogma, it doesn't really matter who's saying. It doesn't
(28:32):
matter if you're if the person is gay or Jewish.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
And I mean the Estonian twelve year old was not
a one off.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
You know. In the Ethan Melzer case a year or
two ago, Ethan Melzer was a US Army private who
was trying to set up his unit in Turkey to
be attacked by Middle Eastern terrorist groups. And the person
he was communicating with online sort of goading him into
these acts was a child.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
It was a child.
Speaker 4 (28:55):
He was the Order of Nine Angles though right he
was on. He wasn't a near Nazi, right. I always
try to distinguish there's some nine A's who are not.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
He was at the bleed point of Adam Waffin's splinter
group and Ona. He was involved with rape Waffen, was he? Yeah,
The lineage of these groups is so messy. I think
some of them don't even understand the ideological lineage of
the sect they've ended up in. But but Melzer was
at that sort of bleed point where Adam Woffin was
becoming ONA.
Speaker 4 (29:24):
But I think what we're seeing now, and definitely in
these last two school shootings in the last month, is
a syncretic murder cull. The guy who just did the
Naspau one was black. But if you start looking at
both of their manifestos. They're referring to all different kinds
of things, some of whom are white supremacists and neo Nazis,
many of whom aren't just other school shooters, and they
(29:46):
don't seem to have a real ideological, necessarily connection to
some of this the political stuff. It's not become. And
nine A they are founded by neo Nazi and many
of them are neo Nazis. And so I was going
to say they're not. They don't have to and all
the people are it, and even if you are supposed
to be, they aren't all. And so we're just getting
through these various online forums on Telegram and elsewhere. Sometimes
(30:12):
they just spread over all kinds of the different platforms.
We're getting just this syncretic mix of these things. And
this is one of the things that made nine A
and Siege Culture a parallel Mason's ideas, because Mason's not
a Satanist, and in fact he's recently denounced ordered at
angles and when he was around Satanists, they were atheist
(30:33):
Satanists around the Church of Satan. That when you start saying, hey,
we need to commit random murders in this goal of
destroying the suppose the Jewish controlled society, so there could
be a white arian revolution. Like, it doesn't matter if
you have a really political reason or if you're thinking
that these heretical acts will destroy somehow the consensus. Reality.
(30:53):
You're just trying to go people into these violent, random
acts of terrorism and more random murders.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
Right, and the end result is the same they're.
Speaker 4 (31:01):
Thinking is the same, and the end results is the same.
So they start cross pollinating. And then what's the difference
between the school shooter cults? You know, and now we
have groups like the Maniac murder cult who are ostensibly political,
ostensibly neo Nazi and Order of nine angle has been
a reality or just like go attack old people from behind.
I mean it's just pathetic stuff. Go, you know, beat
(31:24):
up homeless people and stab them. It's like at some
point often say this and my speeches, and it's become
more and more real. Is like everything blends together in
our society, I think. You know, you start with like
school shooters, and it's hard to distinguish them from like
a political mass shooters and from political mass shooters. Right
(31:44):
at one point, it just becomes this one thing that's
like all mixed together because we're having in the United States,
we're having these constant attacks and constant that often the
body account is very high. Like what becomes the difference anymore?
Does it really matter? Like the Allen Texas gott who
was a Latino neo Nazi who killed a bunch of
people in an outlet mall, this is really a neo
(32:05):
Nazi action, like he was, like clearly if you look
at his stuff or an article called Nazis of color
about this dynamic. But was his action how was his
action necessarily any different than like a school shooting or whatever,
or just like you know, it's just like he's going
somewhere and killing random people, Like what is this about?
So I think we're seeing this syncretic murdercal is really
(32:28):
I know, other people have different ways of posing this
that is sprawling out on different online platforms and appealing
to very young, alienated people, probably whose whole lives are
you know, online. I think, especially younger people who went
through COVID zoomers and I guess people younger than that
would be Generation Alpha spend more time online than any
other generation. Obviously they must, and this becomes especially when
(32:51):
they're much younger. The horizon other world, right, And if
they're in cells and they're not really connected to other
people and they're not connected to their family, like it
just it just dry gives these impulses more and more,
and they don't have the maturity to look outside of
it or to think about the repercussions of it, or
think of have the empathy to think about how it's
going to affect other people in their families.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
And so when it comes to Siege, what would you
say its current role in this sort of evolving syncretic
murder culture that we have, is it is Siege's legacy
now just that it's ideological lineage lives on in sort
of the terogram milieu, or is it still itself influential?
Speaker 4 (33:43):
Well, some of this is a question of ideas. I
think sometimes Siege acts as a symbol. People can gesture
that their neo Nazis is a serious neo Nazi four
hundred and fifty page tone.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
They didn't read it, They didn't all read it.
Speaker 4 (33:59):
Yeah, I know, just like how many of you have
read Siege? And I found out doing the work that
there's like an edited one hundred page version and then
there's like a little pocket version and then someone even
made the ten Tenants of Siege.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
There's this the spark Notes murder called.
Speaker 4 (34:15):
Well Adam often division apparently had a test on siege
to get in. And I'm like, I know these people
didn't write. They're like a lot of very disturbed or
you know, people who aren't gonna like it's a boring text.
I mean I read it twice in like.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
I've read portions, but I'm not going to sit here
and say I read the whole book.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
It's four hundred and fifty page.
Speaker 4 (34:33):
Man, I read every newsletter and the book and it's yes, no. Oh,
So it acts as the symbol to be like, look,
we have a serious intellectual thing. How many Christians have
read the Bible. Let's be really sorting.
Speaker 3 (34:43):
I think, yeah, I think that's the right analogy, right,
that it is a foundational text. But they're not all
sitting down and digesting or even understanding it.
Speaker 4 (34:52):
Yeah, I mean, how many Communists have read Dos Capital No,
even just volume one, which I have I would like
to say I have, Actually, is it more or less
boring than Siege? It's more intellectual? And so there's that,
and there's also like the conclusions are there, right, the
whole argument is developed in siege. But you really just
need to take the conclusions, which is you can't do
(35:15):
any political work. It's hopeless. You need to go out
and commit dramatic acts of violence to help inspire people,
and then you know, maybe afterwards there'll be some aaran
blah blah blah. Frankly, that's all you need to know
about it, because that's what it advocates. You just need
the praxie that it concludes. And most activists aren't intellectuals.
(35:36):
Like I always say, like a movement can have three
slogans and what you need to do on the left,
you need to make sure those are the right slogans
pointing in the right direction. Because somebody who flows into
activism who's young, it doesn't matter if they're young, doesn't
have a background of politics, is going to take the
thing seriously that you say. And you can only say
so many things to people. Political movements are stupid. I mean,
(35:57):
this is why we are the ninety nine percent was great?
It was it was great, wasn't true? I mean half
of Americans are like it, you know, support the Republicans,
but like it's like one thing and then the person
can think about those things. They're not going to have
complicated ideas. So what is what are the slogans that
come out of something? What are the basic what does
it boil down to the things you're saying? And people
have inherited that from Siege or inherited it secondhand, you know,
(36:20):
because Terogram is very well versed in what Siege is about.
I mean, Adam often had to read it, so they
were more I think, into it as a text. And
then as it's gone out, you know, Tarogram people, the
Teogram collective certainly knew what was in it and stuff,
and so people are being affected by it even if
they don't know, even if they haven't read, or even
(36:42):
if they don't know, that's the origin of those.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
Ideas, right. So Tterogram is directly downstream of Siege.
Speaker 5 (36:47):
Right.
Speaker 3 (36:47):
So Siege was a newsletter that became a book. People
read the book, and the people who read that book
turned it back into a zine. Right, So it's it's
sort of oh to someone, right, it's moving through its
phases and now it's regressed sing back into sort of
mimetic zine form.
Speaker 4 (37:03):
But people who join these movements who want something more
intellectual because everyone who joins a religious or political movement.
Some people want a more rigorous They're like, well, what's
the reason for this? Well, I have these questions. How
do you answer them? What is why are we doing this?
Want more rigorous? Some people want a more rigorous background
can turn to siege, and as they get older, will
turn to siege or move out of it. And they're like,
(37:25):
what were the ideas behind this? Why did we have
these ideas? And I think that's it's normal. I mean,
there are all kinds of weird intellectual groundings for white supremacists.
A lot of it is theology, which is sort of curious.
And I kind of concluded at some point that you
just needed something complicated because they couldn't use race science anymore,
and they weren't people who developed social science other than
(37:46):
someone like a Londebenoist who's saying something much more complicated
than most white supremacis are. And so like theology just
allowed something intellectual for people to chew on, you know
what I mean, Like people are real smart who aren't
very analytical, one something to chew on with the ideas,
whether it really changes their practice or not. And I
think there has to be something that serves that need.
Speaker 3 (38:07):
And so I guess wrapping up because we're supposed to
keep these daily shows short. What is the takeaway that
you want people to come away from this book with?
I guess, especially in this political moment.
Speaker 4 (38:17):
I think there's two things. The book has two things. One,
I just want to have people have a better understanding
of neo Nazism in the US and how it developed.
It's just one big blur. It's part of other things,
and I see it as a distinct strain, and I
want people to have a just a better understanding of
that political movements origins, which is maybe a more scholarly thing.
(38:39):
And I am my next book, I hope if I
can get a contract, is to write a history of
national socialism in America, because again there's not a single
book that describes that, which is very strange. Certainly not
a history post war, and there may be a pre
war one, but not one that puts it all together.
So there's a lot of ignorance about this movement. And
the second part about the cultural actors is about the
danger of taking a radical culture movement and to use
(39:01):
impulses like transgression and turn them into the very toxic
politics into terrorist politics. At the end of the day,
I had a discussion on Blue Sky. It was amazing.
You could see. It wasn't Twitter. I had a useful
discussion on Blue Sky and where I learned something. It
was just fabulous, And it was this woman posted that
(39:21):
which was like essentially in Matzau I read it. In
the twentieth century, there was always this assumption that transgressive art,
avant garde art was implicitly progressive. Sometimes it was ideological,
but even when it wasn't, even when it had some
dodgy elements, the impulse of it led to progressive, left
(39:42):
leaning politics, and it's very transgression was progressive. And I
mean these guys I'm looking at are and working in
the eighties and you see it now. We've all seen
it with four Chan like that was never that isn't true,
and that was never true, never true, right, I mean,
those of us in the punk scene in the eighties
and nineties could see this, and if we certainly didn't
put it that way. With like Skinheads in particular, it
(40:03):
was contested terrain where people were trying to take the
subculture and pull it to the left and right right.
There were so many Nazis, but there were anti fascist
skinheads too, Sharps. Sharps to some extent, Sharps were a
lot of them are rightling nationalists, they just weren't just Nazis.
This is a common There was grips like rash Red
and anarchist skinheads who still exist. But there was a
(40:23):
contested terrain where people trying to pull it in different directions.
This is still the case in neo folk and heathen
religious circles, and that's sort of you There's an implication
which I don't think I can only like put it
into words now, that like the transgressive elements of these
subcultures didn't necessarily go one way or the other, and
it was something you'd have to fight over, Like they
(40:44):
could go and have any direction. And I think it
was clear in four Chan early on. I once was
mentioned very early on in four Chan and someone chimed
in and they're like, leave them alone. He's my friend,
And I'm like, which of my friends are on four
Chan and defending me? But like four Chan didn't have
to end up the way it did. You know, the
earlier Internet culture wasn't like this. It was progressive or
(41:05):
libertarian or a more decent libertarian for reading of libertarianism
than we have now. So that's the second part. I mean,
other than these guys, if you ever were in the
industrial or neo folk scene and you heard about there's Nazis,
I have all of the receipt in detail in the book.
If that's of interest to you.
Speaker 3 (41:22):
Yeah, Boyd Rice will tell you he never meant it,
but I've read some of the primary documents that lead
me to believe otherwise.
Speaker 5 (41:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (41:29):
And I even made a video of him creatively entitled
Boyd Rice New Nazi Collaborator. And I know you're like, Spencer,
what are you really getting at here? And I show
the letters and stuff, and just if you're not familiar
with these figures, I know a lot of people there
were very obscure movements at the time, and you know,
people are not familiar with them. But I think are
familiar enough with this idea of like a super radical
(41:49):
cultural movement about step by step I show how it
can move into fully politicized a transgressive movement can move
into a fully politicized super time neo Nazism that is
espousing terrorism, and that that this is something that we
always have to watch out for in our own religious
movements and our own cultural movements and occult circles. I
(42:10):
just did a podcast with some you know, occult style
esoteric podcast and I was talking about Satanists to become Nazis.
Satanists are sort of, I would say, split these days,
but there's definitely a Nazi, you know, peace in there
are a very visible one. And so some of it's just
about these things.
Speaker 3 (42:27):
That's an important takeaway too that you know, in any subculture,
especially these sort of transgressive subcultures like you know, counterculture
music and art and you know, occult spaces, you have
a magical practice.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
That you engage in. People who engage in you know,
practice pagan faiths and all these subcultures.
Speaker 3 (42:45):
You need to call out these bad actors early and
often push back, don't let them bully you, and push
them out of your spaces.
Speaker 4 (42:52):
Absolutely, and Nazis ruin everything. They intentionally go into all
these spaces and sometimes don't intentionally. Actually this was a
comment on Stormfront I learned from talking about Nazis in
the animal rights movement, and they're like, Spencer doesn't understand.
We're not infiltrating these movements. We're just vegans. We're just
also Nazis. Like, but we're not vegans because we're Nazis.
(43:16):
We're not coming here from some other reason.
Speaker 2 (43:19):
Well, you can't let them sit with you either way.
Speaker 4 (43:22):
Well, this is a funny story. I don't know if
you have tied, but I heard this story from a
friend of mine that they were in a vegan group
in southern California, I think, and they had a unofficial party,
like a barbecue. It's people from the group, you know,
from the group doing it. People brought their partners. It
wasn't an official group function. But this white member of
the group brought her husband, who was Kevin McDonald. Oh,
(43:43):
and they were vegetarians or vegans, and people were like
holy fuck. And he was like, I mean, I feel
a little sympathetic to me. He's like, hey, man, I
don't know. I'm just I'm a I'm a vegetarian or whatever.
I'm here with my wife. She's going to a party.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
Like, no, you're not allowed to have friends. You're not
allowed to have friends, you're not allowed to have hobbies.
You can't be here.
Speaker 4 (44:02):
Yeah, But he's like, I'm not here to recruit anyone.
I'm here. You know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (44:07):
It's the barbecue is over with the race scientist shows up.
Speaker 4 (44:10):
Well, this became a big discussion in the group about
whether to push him out or not. But you have
to do these things. And if you even if you
don't want to, they're my friend or everyone's welcome or whatever.
What is gonna end up happening if you don't push
the Nazi out is that more Nazis show up. Well,
if you if it's a single person, people are gonna
start leaving. People of color are gonna leave, Jews are
gonna leave, LGBTQ plus people are gonna leave, and you're
(44:33):
gonna end up defending this one person losing many more. So,
even just on your own, you know, enlightened self interest,
if you want to keep your group together. I've seen
this again and again and again, and then they're like,
you're defending a Nazi, so you're one too, So yeah,
you got to kick these people out, even just for
practical reasons. I have a very low bar for people
these days, and I try to I try to appeal.
(44:54):
I try to appeal to the baser reasons sometimes with people,
you know.
Speaker 3 (44:58):
Well, if you would like to learn more about how
a couple of guys in the counterculture movement in the
eighties are responsible for the publication of the book that
serves as the bible for modern Nazi terrorism. You can
pick up a copy of Neo Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism,
The Origins and Afterlife of James Mason's Siege by Spencer
Sunshine from Routlige Press is available I think wherever books
(45:21):
are sold. I bought my copy directly from the publisher
Routledge Press. I think it was only twenty seven dollars.
Speaker 2 (45:27):
You know, a bargain and.
Speaker 3 (45:28):
A steal, So pick up a copy of that and
where else can people find your work?
Speaker 2 (45:34):
Spencer?
Speaker 4 (45:34):
Thank you for now that you mentioned that. I am
on all of the socials usually at Transform sixt seven,
eight nine. Have a web page if you want, if
you have an RSS fee. If someone said this recently,
they're like, it's actually one of the better ways to
keep track of people, as like this is your follow
rezillion people anyway, Spencersunshine dot com. Also, if you'd like
to support anti fascist research and get a warm, fuzzy feeling,
(45:56):
you should sign up for my Patreon for as little
as two dollars a month. You can help me out
with the rent and get some exclusive contact.
Speaker 2 (46:04):
So yep, well hell yeah, thank you so much for
joining us today.
Speaker 4 (46:07):
Yeah, thanks for having me on the show. It's been great.
Speaker 1 (46:12):
It Could Happened Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
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Speaker 2 (46:24):
Listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1 (46:25):
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Colson Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hello, and welcome back to it could happen here. I
am once.
Speaker 3 (00:08):
Again your occasional host, Molly Conker, and I am joined
today by Spencer Sunshine, the author of Neo Nazi Terrorism
and Countercultural Fascism, The Origins and Afterlife of James Mason's Siege.
It's available now in paperback. I have my paperback copy
from Routledge Press. So, Spencer, I guess let's get right
into it. What is Siege and why should we still
(00:30):
be talking about it?
Speaker 4 (00:31):
Well, unfortunately, we should still be talking about it because
it's still influential. It was a book originally published in
nineteen ninety three, but that is an edited version of
newsletters published in the eighties by a fellow named James Mason,
who is a lifelong neo Nazi. He joined the American
Nazi Party at age fourteen in nineteen sixty six. He
is still an active ideological believer in national socialism. It's
(00:56):
a book that in it he makes the argument that
any kind of normal legal political activity was pointless for
Neo Nazis to engage in and like forming organizations, holding marches,
making the traditional propaganda, trying to build up parties even
guerrilla warfare. At the end of it, he becomes very
cynical about and he says, through what are essentially dramatic
(01:21):
random acts of violence, of terrorism or murder. He even
goes into praising serial killers like Joseph Paul Franklin, we
can destabilize the government and society and after this neo
Nazis can come to power. This has become a very
influential idea. More recently he was rediscovered. It was a
pretty obscure The newsletters were very unpopular that he never
(01:43):
made more than one hundred copies. The original book had
a print run of one thousand, so it was a
sort of obscure text. It was known amongst neo Nazi
circles for some unusual reasons. It became mixed up with
some countercultural figures and that was actually what made up
more well known. But it was revived in twenty fifteen.
It was found by these younger aspiring terrorists, let's say
(02:06):
at the time, around a message board called Iron March.
It became the bible of the adamoff And Division, this
new Nazi group that its members and associates killed five
people and out of that everyone in the Adam offf
and Division had to read siege, which became the hashtag,
and out of that grew this whole sort of network,
(02:27):
first of groups and now really totally decentralized, like propaganda
channels on telegram to Terogram promoting these same ideas, and
so it's become very influential today. It gets named in
like terrorist manifestos. The school shooter I think it was
in Nashville, Tennessee that just happened. He makes a reference
(02:48):
to people who are into siege in his writings, and
more and more I've documented before him at least twelve
murders that are either by the Adam Waffin Division, by
people inspired by siege culture, or by people directly linked
to Terogram. So if we want to look at the
main text animating neo Nazi terrorism today, which has now
spread around the globe, of this groups in Latin America,
(03:09):
there's groups in eastern Western Europe. It's even influencing groups
in the Middle East or people in the Middle East.
They're called accelerationists. They want to accelerate the collapse of things.
And if there's a single ideological text today that's influential
on this scene, it is by easily James Mason Siege.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
And what I particularly am enjoying about the book I
just told you before we started recording.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
I haven't finished it yet.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
What I'm enjoying about this book is so you know,
you were saying that James Mason started writing this in
the eighties, right, but nobody was reading it. It was
very sort of niche. It wasn't popular, even within its
own niche. He was not a popular man. He had
a lot of beefs with other leaders in the movement.
It's rediscovered in the twenty tens. It's big on Iron March.
It's the animating force behind Adam Waffin, and so all
(03:51):
of a sudden in the last ten years, people like us,
you know, researchers of the far right, mainstream journalists, people
are talking about Siege, they're talking about me. But this,
I think, correct me if I'm wrong, is the only
book sort of tracing it back to its root. James
Mason did not come into existence in twenty fifteen on
the pages of Iron March, right, they sort of dug
(04:13):
back up this writing that was at that point thirty
years old. But this book, I mean, it's an incredible
work of research. But it's also sort of a picuresque, right.
It follows James Mason through decades of Nazi history.
Speaker 4 (04:27):
Right.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
He wasn't just a guy who wrote a newsletter. He
was a guy who was in a lot of rooms.
He knew a lot of people. So through the lens
of James Mason's life, you can follow the origins of
the modern neo Nazi movement back to the sort of
splinters and sects and rival personalities of the seventies. Right
that you can't understand modern neo Nazi organizing if you
(04:50):
don't know the history that goes back to the sixties
and seventies.
Speaker 4 (04:53):
Well, thank you for getting that. I had someone write
a review and it was an interesting view from the
viewpoint of literary criticism. And he's like, well, this is
one of these books about a book it's not. And
I'm like, yeah, it kind of is, but it's really
and I started after I started writing this which has
an unusual origin, or just maybe it is a usual origin.
Like the first half is about neo Nazism in the
nineteen seventies, which is incredibly undocumented. There's a huge problem
(05:17):
with a documentation about the far right in general before
twenty fifteen. Probably more books have come out in the
last ten years about the far right in the US
before twenty fifteen than came out before, and certainly about
neo Nazis, who are almost always when they are written
about American Neo Nazis, it's usually in a history of
the white supremacist movement, and there's no differentiation made between them,
(05:41):
and I would say the National Socialists are quite different
from other white supremacists for a variety of different reasons.
So there is no book about neo Nazism in the
nineteen seventies in the US at all. There are only
two documents I can really name, and they're both written
by National Socialists actually when in Australia and one the
head of the New Order which used to be the
(06:01):
American Nazi Party. It's actually not bad. It's an eight
part series by Martin Kirk. So the first half is
really reconstructing what happened in the nineteen seventies, because this
is what siege is coming out of. This siege is
an answer to the questions that faced neo Nazis in
the nineteen seventies. And then the second half of the
book is even I would say less about Mason. It's
about these four countercultural figures who discover Mason, helped published him,
(06:24):
and eventually published and disseminated Siege itself. And part of
that is I was just around the scene these people
were part of in the nineteen nineties. Like I saw
one of them, boyd Rice play. I had many mutual
friends with another, the publisher Adam Parfrey of Farrell House.
So like, I was like right around what these people
were doing as part of the nineties counterculture. So I
(06:46):
became very interested in that because these people always denied
their background, you know, or left it off or something.
And I found just so many smoking guns in this.
And so I will say how this started is right
after Charlottesville. The Right rally at Charlottesville. Always you say
these things and just you give the name of the thing,
and people are like, wait a minute, that's like where
(07:06):
I live. You know, we're more than that, you know,
I was in Seattle. I was like, oh, I was
at Seattle, referring to this nineteen ninety nine demonstration, and
I'm like, people are here weren't even necessarily born then,
and just saying at Seattle doesn't mean anything. So after
younit the right, there was a spike in popularity in
Siege and the hashtag read siege because it looked like
(07:26):
the rally followed what he said, and he said, no
one in an American society will allow neo Nazis to succeed.
And a lot of people don't know this, but what
happened at the initial rally is that it wasn't the
street fighting people might be familiar with, even that's fading
from memory. Was before it was supposed to start, And
when it was supposed to start at noon, the police,
who had been standing a block away and letting everything unfold,
(07:49):
marched in and forced everyone out, Meaning the rally never happened.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Nobody ever gave a speech.
Speaker 4 (07:54):
Nobody gave a speech. As as we know, the car
attack happened like an hour or two later. I got
a lot, got a timeline. That's all like garbled now right, Yeah,
that sounds right. And the book is co dedicated to
Heather Hair I just want to point out, so it
seemed to coincide with what Mason said. He's like, you
can't do legal work, you have to do a terrorism right,
(08:15):
And so there was a spike and interest in it,
and Adam often had been doing more and more. Adam
often people are committing murders, strange murders. They're all very
strange murders, which I think speaks to a lot of
the personalities who are involved in this and other forms
of violence, and even in more structured political movements, I
think it does attract tends to attract fringe people, except
(08:36):
at certain times where people are intentionally using it as
a strategy as part of a bigger mass movement. Anyway,
these are questions for terrorism studies, and so there was
a spike of interest in it. So I was going
to write a short article for a think tank I
used to be associated with, which I will not name
because I had such a bad experience with them, and
it was going to be an article. I couldn't get
the facts to line up. As I said, there's terrible
(08:57):
scholarship about this period, and so I used this very
sophisticated research tool called Google, and through that I found
that Mason's papers. There was a huge collection of Mason's
papers at the University of Kansas and Lawrence, Kansas. So
I decided I'd go there. I thought I'd just straightened
these things out there were some documents I needed, some
very obscure fanzines and stuff. That'd be the end of
(09:19):
the day. I got through. Well, first I discovered it's
not easy to get to Lawrence, Kansas. You have to
fly into an airport, and then I think I took
an uber for like an hour. There was like one
bus a day or something. Anyway, I got there and
started poking at the papers. It was sixty boxes of
his correspondence. He had letters incoming and outgoing since the
early nineteen sixties. As you mentioned, he was an insider
(09:40):
to the neo Nazi movement, so it was with all
these people he had kept carbon copies of his outgoing letters.
It was a unique slice of national socialist life in
the United States. Never seen an archive like it. People
didn't keep their papers because they were doing illegal activities.
The government sees them and has them in a warehouse
somewhere or whatever. This is even in the pre Internet.
I can only do this because it was pre Internet
(10:00):
and there were paper copies of stuff, and of the
age where I grew up doing all research on paper
and in archives. And I quickly found out what I had.
And there were two things. One, as I said was
that there was this whole story of American neo Nazism,
of when the American Nazi Party splinters then called the
National Socialistory People's Party in the nineteen seventies, and all
(10:22):
these groups come out of it, many of which we
know parts of, like William Peers who wrote the Turner
Diaries and the Skoky Incident which is parodied, and the
Blues Brothers. Some people don't know this just so Paul
Franklin shooting and paralyzing US publisher Larry Flint, and some
other things. And I was like, Oh, these are all
people who came out of one thing, a splintering of
the party. And I realized that there basically was a
(10:43):
terrorist wing that came out of the splintering. And people
knew Mason and people knew Pierce, but there was like
a couple other groups or people, but people didn't put
it together that they were all like the most radical
wing of these splinter groups. So there was that story.
And then, as I mentioned, there was a second story
about the these countercultural people who had always denied that
they were involved in national socialism or the level of it.
(11:05):
It was just a joke. All these things that we
hear today almost word for word. And so I found
all their letters to James Mason, and they're adorned with
swastikas and eight eights and they're helping him. Had they
reveal the extent that they helped him? And the funny
thing is a lot of this stuff was actually available
and out in the open. It was published books, but
it was like little pieces of flakes of gold scattered
(11:26):
around everything. And I started picking them up because I
realized you could put them together. And so one article
turned out was supposed to be one article, and then
it turns two articles. And I sat down to write
it and turned into a book. And then five years
later I finally had the manuscript done, then took another
year at the publishers, and then it came out last year.
So it's been seven years of work, and I've been
(11:48):
going around doing talks. I did seventeen talks and support
of the book and as many podcasts and stuff. So
I'm still the book is still part of my life,
as much as I would like to sort of put
it down. But thank you Remedy on the podcast this
is not It's great they have me on the podcast
Not Against No diss against you. No shade, no shade no.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
And I'm so I'm so jealous of your trip to
Kansas to see the archives.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
I only recently.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
A year or two, discovered that his papers existed in
those archives, and so I wrote to the archivist and
I said, like, you know, are any of these digitized?
I would love to see them. And they're like, you know,
we've only digitized like one box. And they sent me
a couple of a couple of scans, but most of
it has not been digitized. So you have to go
to Kansas if you want to read this old pedophile
Nazis letters to Charles Manson.
Speaker 4 (12:33):
Well, I do have thousands of pictures I took of
this correspondence. So yeah, if you request digital copies, they
won't tell you what they've digitized. And so it's it's
like you know, trying to like randomly throw darts or something.
If you get the right file, they have them.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
And I was like, I was begging and pleading.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
I was like, please, just like any letters you have
with Bob Hyke, I just I just want the Bob
Hike letters.
Speaker 4 (12:55):
But I can give you the Bob Hike letters.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
I would love those.
Speaker 4 (12:58):
I think they'll they'll digitize stuff for a price.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
Though, Oh I'm sure. I'm sure if I pay for it,
they would do me the favor.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
But that's the thing is that there's so much interconnection
here because these stories always get told episodically, right, like
the story of James Mason and Adam Woffen, the story
of William Luther Peers, the story of the founding of
the National Socialist Movement. But nobody takes those pieces and
slots them together because they interlock. They all interlock, right,
(13:26):
And so this idea of the lone wolf, I mean,
I guess James Mason's life's work is to perpetuate and
motivate the lone wolf, But is it really a lone
wolf if he's training them?
Speaker 4 (13:36):
Well, the lone wolf question is a long question. A
lot of people know Metzger moved to the lone wolf
strategy after a war was sued by the SPLC and collapse,
but Mason was advocating this beforehand and was very tight
with Metzger. So there is actually a book describing what
you've said, putting the pieces together, and it's called Neo
Nazi terrorism and counterculture.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Has exactly the I think which you can buy to.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
I mean, like I said, it's the only book that
I know of that fits these pieces together.
Speaker 4 (14:06):
No, it is the only book. Actually. I've been in
contact with James Mason, and he said when radio interview,
it's not the first of its kind, but it's the
best of its kind.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
A high praise from the book's Nazi pedophile subject. Why
did he donate his papers to the library because, like
you said, most people are not only not preserving these
(14:34):
items where they're not preserving them at all because they
know what they've done is illegal or embarrassing to everyone involved,
and they're intentionally destroying the evidence of these kinds of communications.
But he not only saved them, but he wanted to
make sure we could read them. Did you talk to
him at all about why he did that?
Speaker 4 (14:51):
Well, he sold them. He was a wheeler dealer in
especially American Nazi Party memorabilia. You know, he sold furniture
on the side like antiques. He'd go antiquing and he
if you've seen pictures of his apartment, it's filled with
Nazi nickknacks, right, he's got a knife collection.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
Maybe it looks like it looks like the Area Nation's
booth at the Tulsa Gun Show.
Speaker 4 (15:13):
It looks like my apartment, but like the in the
inverse and fewer plants. So he was a collector, so
he was already on. My understanding is he was already
selling George Lincoln Rockwell Memory of Bilia or whatever papers
in such two Kansas. They have this collection there called
the Wilcox Collection of anti extremist stuff. This guy, Laard
(15:34):
Wilcox had been in early students for Democratic Society before
they took the like Marxist turn, and then decided that
the left and the right were the same, like in
the seventies or something, and started collecting all this material.
So they were one of the they're probably the biggest
collection of far right material. And as I said, at
the time, libraries weren't collecting it, and people weren't writing
about it. They were like, oh, these are just a
(15:55):
bunch of kooks and wing nuts. They're not important. And
some of this is because, like as I say in
the book, the first neo Nazi mass murder wasn't until
the late seventies, like it was what we know as
neo Nazism today really only emerged in the seventies. Is
one of my arguments in the book. So the papers
were there because he sold them. The second thing is
he is unique, I think, not unique, but very uncommon,
(16:19):
because he is an unabashed neo Nazi. He does not
try to hide it. He is not like the NSM,
which is actually a party he co founded, shockingly, but
left over that as they turned, because originally it was
to promote violence, and then as it turned to a
more traditional Hollywood Nazi party, he left. But it's the
same one that was at Charlottesville, and Jeff's Scoop was
(16:40):
the head of I actually taught Jeff Scoop about how
the party was founded. That was very interesting. I interviewed
him for the book.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Another one of those dishonest actors.
Speaker 4 (16:48):
Well, the guy who had made him the head of
the party, who was actually the second head, Harrington, cliff Harrington.
Clifford Harrington did not give him the truthful account of
the parties founding. Harrington claimed he was a co founder,
and he wasn't. He claimed a different date. This is
one reason I spent so much time on stuff. Also
that I found all these things that had been printed that
were wrong by scholars and others that were and it
(17:10):
wasn't their fault. They were taken. It was hard to
get these harder to get these documents, especially when a
group is moving. And so Harrington claimed he had been
a co founder in nineteen seventy four or whatever, but
he was lying. Mason was one of the co founders
and not him. He only became the head in the eighties.
So this is some of this stuff I found. Anyway,
I was gonna say the NSM at one point go,
(17:31):
we're not neo Nazis, were National Socialists.
Speaker 5 (17:34):
I was like, get the fuck out of here, like really, like,
come all, your flag is a swastikonic ah. I mean,
this is absurd, but people will do that, right, It's
like the Dead Parents skit in Monty Python.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
If people know this and so. But Mason stands out
because he's always been very upfront about his views. He's
very proud of them. He's not ashamed. And if this
is embarrassed other people, they didn't belong He's as he
told to me, they didn't believe in the one true
really religion. So I asked him about these counterculture figures
who have denied they were ever involved in this stuff.
At the time, he was convinced they were national socialists,
(18:09):
and he was like, well, they believed in something else
other than the one True faith. I think that's the
word he used. So yeah, he is nothing to hide.
He's very open about it, very open about promoting terrorism,
as you know, and maybe some of the listeners do.
Young neo Nazis go to his apartment and he tutors them.
They take pictures with him. This included Sam Woodward, who
(18:29):
murdered a young gay Jewish man Blaze Bernstein, recently sentenced
to life in prison. There's pictures a Woodward in Mason's apartment.
So yeah, I mean he wants as he's proud of
his lineage and he wants it documented. And I know
I did him a favor by writing a book about
his movement. I mean, they don't have the intellectuals and
the resources to in the trained people to write historical books,
(18:51):
and I did it a pretty straight up book. Even
Mason was like, I kept waiting to read the smear.
I kept waiting for the smear. There was no smear.
I was like, yeah, I just wrote it as a
street book. And so in a way, I've given them
an insight into their history, which wouldn't exist otherwise. So
this stuff is always a double edged sword when you
cover as you know, when you cover fascist groups, they
want the publicity by and large. I was told sometimes
(19:15):
at the SPLC, like groups contact them and they're like,
cover us, give us coverage.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
Sending them their press releases.
Speaker 4 (19:21):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
But I mean I think someone like Mason, I guess
he doesn't see this mirror because, like you said, he's
proud of himself. So this is I think, is an
honest appraisal of his legacy, and most people would see
that as a smear, but he's proud of it.
Speaker 4 (19:35):
Well, it's not a smear. I don't need to say
anything bad about him. He's he's there promoting Nazi terrorism.
What's the point of, like, you know, denouncing this or something.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
I mean, Whereas I think someone like Pierce, I think
sometimes when people write honestly about Peer, obviously he's been
dead for twenty five years, but he resisted the characterization
that he was inciting terrorism, even though he, like Mays
and very much was.
Speaker 4 (20:01):
Oh well, Pierce is just the liar. I mean, all
these guys.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Exactly, That's what I mean. But I think a book
like this about Pierce.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
I think he would not have enjoyed, whereas Mason is
at least honest about his legacy.
Speaker 4 (20:12):
You know, there is a terrible book about Pierce by
one of the sick of fants who is a professor actually.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Ardess Griffin.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
Yeah, and that again, that is one of those dishonest histories.
I think we were talking before we started recording that
the problem with archival research trying to write a history
of these movements is they are dishonest actors.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
And so Robert S. Griffin, he wrote what is it
the Fame of a dead Man's Deeds?
Speaker 4 (20:35):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (20:35):
Is that what it's called.
Speaker 3 (20:37):
He went into it, you know, saying like, I'm going
to write this neutral appraisal of this figure of the movement,
about Willie Luther Pierce, and over the weeks that he
spent on the compound to write it, and he spent
time with Pierce on the compound in Hillsborough, became radicalized
and is a Nazi.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Now are he still alive?
Speaker 3 (20:54):
I mean, he could take issue with that characterization if
he wants, But yes, I'm sure you've read the book.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
It's not neutral. It's a has giography of Peers.
Speaker 4 (21:03):
Yeah, there's actually a book by Pierce's son too, which
is interesting.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
I've read that it's quite good.
Speaker 4 (21:09):
Well, unfortunately a lot of it's copy pasta.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
But I think his insight into his relationship with his
father is very unique. It is called The Sins of
My Father by Kelvin Pearce. Yeah, I mean that's a
window you don't often get, although I guess now we do.
Also have The Klansman's Son by Don Black's.
Speaker 4 (21:26):
Daughter Black's daughter or son.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
She has transitions.
Speaker 4 (21:29):
Oh, I did not know that, well, Mazeltov. Yeah, yeah,
I remember reading their work before Trump, and they actually
wrote one of the most moving resignations from the movement
that I've read, very much taking you know, being accountable
even though they were raised in it. I feel like
children raised in this are not like as accountable as
adults are, right, especially like they were in college at
(21:51):
the time. But it was like a true interesting working
through it, and I felt like heartfelt apology for it.
And yeah, actually, this is a fun fact. You may
know a member of the Aryan Nationalist Action A and A.
This terrorist is a bank robbing group from the eighties.
I think became the first person to transition gender.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
From Donald Langen.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
Donna Langen was known as pretty Boy Pedro when she
was the head of the Rigan Republican Armies. It a
bank robbery gang out of Allahem City.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
She was the first person to win a battle with
the federal government to transition in.
Speaker 4 (22:27):
Federal prison to get surgery.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
And just recently, actually, there was a filing in her case.
She's trying to get the way the case is titled
in the court records.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
Is still Peter.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
Langen, her dead name, and the judge denied her petition
to retitle the case.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
But she has transitioned and is in a women's prison.
Speaker 4 (22:46):
Is she in Texas?
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Oh gosh, I could look up in the BOP where
she is.
Speaker 4 (22:50):
Texas bands prisoners from changing their names.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
She is in FMC cars.
Speaker 4 (22:56):
That isn't in Dallas, Texas. Yeah, yeah, that's yeah, that's why.
Speaker 3 (23:02):
So she's still in the BOP system under her dead name,
but she was allowed to physically transition. So that's again
just a strange twist of history, right that the person
who won that legal model for us was a Nazi
bank robber.
Speaker 4 (23:14):
Well, she has also long repudiated those politics, so I
think she's been the only person to have surgery, transperson
to have surgery who was imprisoned at the time, because
I think that was recently and then everything, you know,
everything they changed. They I know that they slowed down
their trans policies waiting to see the results of the election.
(23:36):
So for a strange reason, I know, actually a bunch
of the stuff about trans people in prison and.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
So anyway, No, it's I mean, it's a remarkable, remarkable history.
Speaker 4 (23:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
Yeah, So you started writing this book after Unite the
Right because there was this renewed interest in Siege. I mean,
I guess what has the experience been like, you know,
over the course of spending the last six years of
your life working on this, realizing that it is only
because becoming more relevant and not less.
Speaker 4 (24:02):
Well, the problem is is like for people like us
who watch the far right, like our work is only
important or people are only interested in it when there
is a big upswing, and then like that's when people
are interested, and that's when it is more important. So
on one hand, it's good that I didn't spend five
years and then no one remembered what Siege was and
it was just a blip. I mean, that's good for me,
(24:23):
But I have to say what's good for me is
bad for society, and so, I mean.
Speaker 3 (24:27):
I think it would have been an important work of
history regardless. But I guess as you're working on it,
realizing that the body count is only growing.
Speaker 4 (24:33):
Yeah, it's it's I don't know, I don't really you know,
what do you say about that? I call these people
empty people spreading emptiness. Like it's hard for me even
to get mad at the more aggressive neo Nazis and
white supremacists, Like often they're young, and I just see
like sad young people who can't deal with their problems,
(24:57):
engaged in like hurting other people who are often not
so different than them, you know. I mean there's a
trans man who was in Adam. Often, you know, like
they're numerous stories of people being you know, of not
white descent, either they're hiding that they're not, or they're
a mixed race descent and they're sort of passing as
(25:18):
wide of being Jewish, of being queer, all this stuff.
The movement's filled with these people. Sometimes it's the people
are even like how many straight white men are there
in the movement, Like and it's just sad. You're like,
I see you're being attracted to this because you're so alienated,
or you're so your identity is so shaky that you
are attracted to this idea of a firm, strong identity.
(25:40):
And I mean sometimes people forget fascism in Italy and
Germany arose and basically the last two countries that arose
and solidified in Europe, like those were countries that wasn't
clear what Italy was going to be. There's such differences
between the north and the south. There's no reason, Like
it was unclear originally whether Germany was going to be
Austria too, you know, and so they were. It's a
(26:01):
way part of fascism is shoring up that national identity
which was very fragmented, and it works the same I
think with people's identities. And one of the things that
attracts people to neo Nazism, I think is this strong
affirmation of an identity, and people with mixed identities or
conflicted about it or filled with self loathing are drawn
(26:22):
to this for that reason. One of the many reasons
people get drawn into these things.
Speaker 2 (26:26):
And they recruit so young.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
I mean, I think in the book you're talking about this,
you know, all the way back to James Mason's origins
that he became interested in the Nazi Party as a
fourteen year.
Speaker 4 (26:36):
Old, joined it, joined it at fourteen.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
So he's a child, right getting into this movement, and
now that he is an old man, he is in
turn in doctrinating children. Right that Adam Woffen members are
very young, I guess were Adam Woffin technically doesn't exist anymore,
but most of the most of the young men who
spilled blood for Adam Waffen were twenty years old years old.
Speaker 4 (27:00):
And you know, someone pointed out the founder of the
feuer Krieg Division when he founded it was twelve. He
was arrested when he was thirteen or fourteen, but he
founded it at twelve.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
And which tragic, obviously tragic, heartbreaking, disgusting. But imagine being
one of the adults who was in that group and
finding out that your fear was twelve.
Speaker 4 (27:23):
I grew up in the South in an extremely Protestant
area at the height of that like eighties fundamentals Christian
Christian right thing, and there were I knew about. These
are kind of an older thing. Child preachers. Have you
ever heard of child preachers? This was a big thing during.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
The Yeah, they speak in tongues and they sort of
parrot the cadence of the way adults speak.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
But if you listen carefully, they're not saying anything.
Speaker 4 (27:48):
If they've memorized the way that adults give these barn
burning you know, adult Protestants evangelicals give these barn burning sermons,
but they don't necessarily understand what they're saying. And so,
I mean, I think it's pretty common people adults will
do this and believe in what they're saying. Maybe they
understand it a little better. I think there's a bunch
(28:10):
of post structuralist academics who don't even understand what they're saying.
But that can happen too, And so I think people
like well, I don't know, I was a pretty smart
twelve year old. Maybe I would understand it better. But
you just need somebody repeating it. It's the slogans and
the narratives have already been formed by others. You're not
necessarily innovating on it. As long as you can repeat
the dogma, it doesn't really matter who's saying. It doesn't
(28:32):
matter if you're if the person is gay or Jewish.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
And I mean the Estonian twelve year old was not
a one off.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
You know. In the Ethan Melzer case a year or
two ago, Ethan Melzer was a US Army private who
was trying to set up his unit in Turkey to
be attacked by Middle Eastern terrorist groups. And the person
he was communicating with online sort of goading him into
these acts was a child.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
It was a child.
Speaker 4 (28:55):
He was the Order of Nine Angles though right he
was on. He wasn't a near Nazi, right. I always
try to distinguish there's some nine A's who are not.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
He was at the bleed point of Adam Waffin's splinter
group and Ona. He was involved with rape Waffen, was he? Yeah,
The lineage of these groups is so messy. I think
some of them don't even understand the ideological lineage of
the sect they've ended up in. But but Melzer was
at that sort of bleed point where Adam Woffin was
becoming ONA.
Speaker 4 (29:24):
But I think what we're seeing now, and definitely in
these last two school shootings in the last month, is
a syncretic murder cull. The guy who just did the
Naspau one was black. But if you start looking at
both of their manifestos. They're referring to all different kinds
of things, some of whom are white supremacists and neo Nazis,
many of whom aren't just other school shooters, and they
(29:46):
don't seem to have a real ideological, necessarily connection to
some of this the political stuff. It's not become. And
nine A they are founded by neo Nazi and many
of them are neo Nazis. And so I was going
to say they're not. They don't have to and all
the people are it, and even if you are supposed
to be, they aren't all. And so we're just getting
through these various online forums on Telegram and elsewhere. Sometimes
(30:12):
they just spread over all kinds of the different platforms.
We're getting just this syncretic mix of these things. And
this is one of the things that made nine A
and Siege Culture a parallel Mason's ideas, because Mason's not
a Satanist, and in fact he's recently denounced ordered at
angles and when he was around Satanists, they were atheist
(30:33):
Satanists around the Church of Satan. That when you start saying, hey,
we need to commit random murders in this goal of
destroying the suppose the Jewish controlled society, so there could
be a white arian revolution. Like, it doesn't matter if
you have a really political reason or if you're thinking
that these heretical acts will destroy somehow the consensus. Reality.
(30:53):
You're just trying to go people into these violent, random
acts of terrorism and more random murders.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
Right, and the end result is the same they're.
Speaker 4 (31:01):
Thinking is the same, and the end results is the same.
So they start cross pollinating. And then what's the difference
between the school shooter cults? You know, and now we
have groups like the Maniac murder cult who are ostensibly political,
ostensibly neo Nazi and Order of nine angle has been
a reality or just like go attack old people from behind.
I mean it's just pathetic stuff. Go, you know, beat
(31:24):
up homeless people and stab them. It's like at some
point often say this and my speeches, and it's become
more and more real. Is like everything blends together in
our society, I think. You know, you start with like
school shooters, and it's hard to distinguish them from like
a political mass shooters and from political mass shooters. Right
(31:44):
at one point, it just becomes this one thing that's
like all mixed together because we're having in the United States,
we're having these constant attacks and constant that often the
body account is very high. Like what becomes the difference anymore?
Does it really matter? Like the Allen Texas gott who
was a Latino neo Nazi who killed a bunch of
people in an outlet mall, this is really a neo
(32:05):
Nazi action, like he was, like clearly if you look
at his stuff or an article called Nazis of color
about this dynamic. But was his action how was his
action necessarily any different than like a school shooting or whatever,
or just like you know, it's just like he's going
somewhere and killing random people, Like what is this about?
So I think we're seeing this syncretic murdercal is really
(32:28):
I know, other people have different ways of posing this
that is sprawling out on different online platforms and appealing
to very young, alienated people, probably whose whole lives are
you know, online. I think, especially younger people who went
through COVID zoomers and I guess people younger than that
would be Generation Alpha spend more time online than any
other generation. Obviously they must, and this becomes especially when
(32:51):
they're much younger. The horizon other world, right, And if
they're in cells and they're not really connected to other
people and they're not connected to their family, like it
just it just dry gives these impulses more and more,
and they don't have the maturity to look outside of
it or to think about the repercussions of it, or
think of have the empathy to think about how it's
going to affect other people in their families.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
And so when it comes to Siege, what would you
say its current role in this sort of evolving syncretic
murder culture that we have, is it is Siege's legacy
now just that it's ideological lineage lives on in sort
of the terogram milieu, or is it still itself influential?
Speaker 4 (33:43):
Well, some of this is a question of ideas. I
think sometimes Siege acts as a symbol. People can gesture
that their neo Nazis is a serious neo Nazi four
hundred and fifty page tone.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
They didn't read it, They didn't all read it.
Speaker 4 (33:59):
Yeah, I know, just like how many of you have
read Siege? And I found out doing the work that
there's like an edited one hundred page version and then
there's like a little pocket version and then someone even
made the ten Tenants of Siege.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
There's this the spark Notes murder called.
Speaker 4 (34:15):
Well Adam often division apparently had a test on siege
to get in. And I'm like, I know these people
didn't write. They're like a lot of very disturbed or
you know, people who aren't gonna like it's a boring text.
I mean I read it twice in like.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
I've read portions, but I'm not going to sit here
and say I read the whole book.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
It's four hundred and fifty page.
Speaker 4 (34:33):
Man, I read every newsletter and the book and it's yes, no. Oh,
So it acts as the symbol to be like, look,
we have a serious intellectual thing. How many Christians have
read the Bible. Let's be really sorting.
Speaker 3 (34:43):
I think, yeah, I think that's the right analogy, right,
that it is a foundational text. But they're not all
sitting down and digesting or even understanding it.
Speaker 4 (34:52):
Yeah, I mean, how many Communists have read Dos Capital No,
even just volume one, which I have I would like
to say I have, Actually, is it more or less
boring than Siege? It's more intellectual? And so there's that,
and there's also like the conclusions are there, right, the
whole argument is developed in siege. But you really just
need to take the conclusions, which is you can't do
(35:15):
any political work. It's hopeless. You need to go out
and commit dramatic acts of violence to help inspire people,
and then you know, maybe afterwards there'll be some aaran
blah blah blah. Frankly, that's all you need to know
about it, because that's what it advocates. You just need
the praxie that it concludes. And most activists aren't intellectuals.
(35:36):
Like I always say, like a movement can have three
slogans and what you need to do on the left,
you need to make sure those are the right slogans
pointing in the right direction. Because somebody who flows into
activism who's young, it doesn't matter if they're young, doesn't
have a background of politics, is going to take the
thing seriously that you say. And you can only say
so many things to people. Political movements are stupid. I mean,
(35:57):
this is why we are the ninety nine percent was great?
It was it was great, wasn't true? I mean half
of Americans are like it, you know, support the Republicans,
but like it's like one thing and then the person
can think about those things. They're not going to have
complicated ideas. So what is what are the slogans that
come out of something? What are the basic what does
it boil down to the things you're saying? And people
have inherited that from Siege or inherited it secondhand, you know,
(36:20):
because Terogram is very well versed in what Siege is about.
I mean, Adam often had to read it, so they
were more I think, into it as a text. And
then as it's gone out, you know, Tarogram people, the
Teogram collective certainly knew what was in it and stuff,
and so people are being affected by it even if
they don't know, even if they haven't read, or even
(36:42):
if they don't know, that's the origin of those.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
Ideas, right. So Tterogram is directly downstream of Siege.
Speaker 5 (36:47):
Right.
Speaker 3 (36:47):
So Siege was a newsletter that became a book. People
read the book, and the people who read that book
turned it back into a zine. Right, So it's it's
sort of oh to someone, right, it's moving through its
phases and now it's regressed sing back into sort of
mimetic zine form.
Speaker 4 (37:03):
But people who join these movements who want something more
intellectual because everyone who joins a religious or political movement.
Some people want a more rigorous They're like, well, what's
the reason for this? Well, I have these questions. How
do you answer them? What is why are we doing this?
Want more rigorous? Some people want a more rigorous background
can turn to siege, and as they get older, will
turn to siege or move out of it. And they're like,
(37:25):
what were the ideas behind this? Why did we have
these ideas? And I think that's it's normal. I mean,
there are all kinds of weird intellectual groundings for white supremacists.
A lot of it is theology, which is sort of curious.
And I kind of concluded at some point that you
just needed something complicated because they couldn't use race science anymore,
and they weren't people who developed social science other than
(37:46):
someone like a Londebenoist who's saying something much more complicated
than most white supremacis are. And so like theology just
allowed something intellectual for people to chew on, you know
what I mean, Like people are real smart who aren't
very analytical, one something to chew on with the ideas,
whether it really changes their practice or not. And I
think there has to be something that serves that need.
Speaker 3 (38:07):
And so I guess wrapping up because we're supposed to
keep these daily shows short. What is the takeaway that
you want people to come away from this book with?
I guess, especially in this political moment.
Speaker 4 (38:17):
I think there's two things. The book has two things. One,
I just want to have people have a better understanding
of neo Nazism in the US and how it developed.
It's just one big blur. It's part of other things,
and I see it as a distinct strain, and I
want people to have a just a better understanding of
that political movements origins, which is maybe a more scholarly thing.
(38:39):
And I am my next book, I hope if I
can get a contract, is to write a history of
national socialism in America, because again there's not a single
book that describes that, which is very strange. Certainly not
a history post war, and there may be a pre
war one, but not one that puts it all together.
So there's a lot of ignorance about this movement. And
the second part about the cultural actors is about the
danger of taking a radical culture movement and to use
(39:01):
impulses like transgression and turn them into the very toxic
politics into terrorist politics. At the end of the day,
I had a discussion on Blue Sky. It was amazing.
You could see. It wasn't Twitter. I had a useful
discussion on Blue Sky and where I learned something. It
was just fabulous, And it was this woman posted that
(39:21):
which was like essentially in Matzau I read it. In
the twentieth century, there was always this assumption that transgressive art,
avant garde art was implicitly progressive. Sometimes it was ideological,
but even when it wasn't, even when it had some
dodgy elements, the impulse of it led to progressive, left
(39:42):
leaning politics, and it's very transgression was progressive. And I
mean these guys I'm looking at are and working in
the eighties and you see it now. We've all seen
it with four Chan like that was never that isn't true,
and that was never true, never true, right, I mean,
those of us in the punk scene in the eighties
and nineties could see this, and if we certainly didn't
put it that way. With like Skinheads in particular, it
(40:03):
was contested terrain where people were trying to take the
subculture and pull it to the left and right right.
There were so many Nazis, but there were anti fascist
skinheads too, Sharps. Sharps to some extent, Sharps were a
lot of them are rightling nationalists, they just weren't just Nazis.
This is a common There was grips like rash Red
and anarchist skinheads who still exist. But there was a
(40:23):
contested terrain where people trying to pull it in different directions.
This is still the case in neo folk and heathen
religious circles, and that's sort of you There's an implication
which I don't think I can only like put it
into words now, that like the transgressive elements of these
subcultures didn't necessarily go one way or the other, and
it was something you'd have to fight over, Like they
(40:44):
could go and have any direction. And I think it
was clear in four Chan early on. I once was
mentioned very early on in four Chan and someone chimed
in and they're like, leave them alone. He's my friend,
And I'm like, which of my friends are on four
Chan and defending me? But like four Chan didn't have
to end up the way it did. You know, the
earlier Internet culture wasn't like this. It was progressive or
(41:05):
libertarian or a more decent libertarian for reading of libertarianism
than we have now. So that's the second part. I mean,
other than these guys, if you ever were in the
industrial or neo folk scene and you heard about there's Nazis,
I have all of the receipt in detail in the book.
If that's of interest to you.
Speaker 3 (41:22):
Yeah, Boyd Rice will tell you he never meant it,
but I've read some of the primary documents that lead
me to believe otherwise.
Speaker 5 (41:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (41:29):
And I even made a video of him creatively entitled
Boyd Rice New Nazi Collaborator. And I know you're like, Spencer,
what are you really getting at here? And I show
the letters and stuff, and just if you're not familiar
with these figures, I know a lot of people there
were very obscure movements at the time, and you know,
people are not familiar with them. But I think are
familiar enough with this idea of like a super radical
(41:49):
cultural movement about step by step I show how it
can move into fully politicized a transgressive movement can move
into a fully politicized super time neo Nazism that is
espousing terrorism, and that that this is something that we
always have to watch out for in our own religious
movements and our own cultural movements and occult circles. I
(42:10):
just did a podcast with some you know, occult style
esoteric podcast and I was talking about Satanists to become Nazis.
Satanists are sort of, I would say, split these days,
but there's definitely a Nazi, you know, peace in there
are a very visible one. And so some of it's just
about these things.
Speaker 3 (42:27):
That's an important takeaway too that you know, in any subculture,
especially these sort of transgressive subcultures like you know, counterculture
music and art and you know, occult spaces, you have
a magical practice.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
That you engage in. People who engage in you know,
practice pagan faiths and all these subcultures.
Speaker 3 (42:45):
You need to call out these bad actors early and
often push back, don't let them bully you, and push
them out of your spaces.
Speaker 4 (42:52):
Absolutely, and Nazis ruin everything. They intentionally go into all
these spaces and sometimes don't intentionally. Actually this was a
comment on Stormfront I learned from talking about Nazis in
the animal rights movement, and they're like, Spencer doesn't understand.
We're not infiltrating these movements. We're just vegans. We're just
also Nazis. Like, but we're not vegans because we're Nazis.
(43:16):
We're not coming here from some other reason.
Speaker 2 (43:19):
Well, you can't let them sit with you either way.
Speaker 4 (43:22):
Well, this is a funny story. I don't know if
you have tied, but I heard this story from a
friend of mine that they were in a vegan group
in southern California, I think, and they had a unofficial party,
like a barbecue. It's people from the group, you know,
from the group doing it. People brought their partners. It
wasn't an official group function. But this white member of
the group brought her husband, who was Kevin McDonald. Oh,
(43:43):
and they were vegetarians or vegans, and people were like
holy fuck. And he was like, I mean, I feel
a little sympathetic to me. He's like, hey, man, I
don't know. I'm just I'm a I'm a vegetarian or whatever.
I'm here with my wife. She's going to a party.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
Like, no, you're not allowed to have friends. You're not
allowed to have friends, you're not allowed to have hobbies.
You can't be here.
Speaker 4 (44:02):
Yeah, But he's like, I'm not here to recruit anyone.
I'm here. You know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (44:07):
It's the barbecue is over with the race scientist shows up.
Speaker 4 (44:10):
Well, this became a big discussion in the group about
whether to push him out or not. But you have
to do these things. And if you even if you
don't want to, they're my friend or everyone's welcome or whatever.
What is gonna end up happening if you don't push
the Nazi out is that more Nazis show up. Well,
if you if it's a single person, people are gonna
start leaving. People of color are gonna leave, Jews are
gonna leave, LGBTQ plus people are gonna leave, and you're
(44:33):
gonna end up defending this one person losing many more. So,
even just on your own, you know, enlightened self interest,
if you want to keep your group together. I've seen
this again and again and again, and then they're like,
you're defending a Nazi, so you're one too, So yeah,
you got to kick these people out, even just for
practical reasons. I have a very low bar for people
these days, and I try to I try to appeal.
(44:54):
I try to appeal to the baser reasons sometimes with people,
you know.
Speaker 3 (44:58):
Well, if you would like to learn more about how
a couple of guys in the counterculture movement in the
eighties are responsible for the publication of the book that
serves as the bible for modern Nazi terrorism. You can
pick up a copy of Neo Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism,
The Origins and Afterlife of James Mason's Siege by Spencer
Sunshine from Routlige Press is available I think wherever books
(45:21):
are sold. I bought my copy directly from the publisher
Routledge Press. I think it was only twenty seven dollars.
Speaker 2 (45:27):
You know, a bargain and.
Speaker 3 (45:28):
A steal, So pick up a copy of that and
where else can people find your work?
Speaker 2 (45:34):
Spencer?
Speaker 4 (45:34):
Thank you for now that you mentioned that. I am
on all of the socials usually at Transform sixt seven,
eight nine. Have a web page if you want, if
you have an RSS fee. If someone said this recently,
they're like, it's actually one of the better ways to
keep track of people, as like this is your follow
rezillion people anyway, Spencersunshine dot com. Also, if you'd like
to support anti fascist research and get a warm, fuzzy feeling,
(45:56):
you should sign up for my Patreon for as little
as two dollars a month. You can help me out
with the rent and get some exclusive contact.
Speaker 2 (46:04):
So yep, well hell yeah, thank you so much for
joining us today.
Speaker 4 (46:07):
Yeah, thanks for having me on the show. It's been great.
Speaker 1 (46:12):
It Could Happened Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you.
Speaker 2 (46:24):
Listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1 (46:25):
You can now find sources for It could Happen Here,
listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
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Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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