August 28, 2025 • 41 mins
After the 2012 election, the American Third Position Party rebranded. Not because their candidate lost, they expected that. But probably because their candidate didn't know what the party's name meant.
Sources:
https://www.fec.gov/resources/cms-content/documents/federalelections2012.pdf
https://politicalresearch.org/2016/12/19/what-third-position
https://www.splcenter.org/resources/reports/neofascism-european-style/
Winkler, Martin M. Arminius the Liberator: Myth and Ideology. Oxford University Press, 2016.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Col Zone Media. In March of twenty twenty five, a
few dozen white nationalists from across the country gathered at
a castle in the mountains. The meeting itself wasn't really
a secret, it had been announced months ahead of time,
but it was a private event, and the location was
(00:22):
a closely guarded secret, shared only with those on the
invite list at elector and adorned with a golden eagle
and flanked by flags bearing fascies and lightning bolts. Speeches
were made by movement leaders spanning generations, men in their
seventies nearing the end of their decades long careers as
white nationalist organizers, and men in their twenties looking ahead
(00:45):
to the movement's future. During an afternoon break between speeches,
the keynote speaker took off a suit jacket in bolow
tie to oversee a shirtless, bare knuckle boxing match on
the lawn. The American Freedom Party has changed its logo,
its leadership, and even its name over the fifteen years
since it was first founded as the American Third Position Party,
(01:07):
but they are still who they've always been, a handful
of racists and suits whose inability to properly fill out
paperwork keeps getting in the way of their dreams of
a white ethno state. I'm Molly Conker. This this weird
little guy. When we left off last week, we were
(01:42):
talking about the strange winding road that led a white
nationalist group called the American Third Position Party to run
a failed filmmaker for president in twenty twelve. By his
own account, Merilyn Miller had never been all that interested
in politics, that is, until he had his political awakening
after nine to eleven. He'd been trying unsuccessfully to sell
(02:03):
the distribution rights to his second film, a western called Jericho,
when he met a man who had served aboard the
U s S. Liberty in nineteen sixty seven when the
ship was bombed by the Israeli Air Force. Batman introduced
Merlin Miller to the wide world of conspiracy theory surrounding
the incident and connected him with Richard Thompson, a Navy
(02:23):
veteran who had recently helped finance a documentary about it.
For several years, Thompson and Miller discussed making a movie
about the US Liberty, not another documentary that had been done,
but an action thriller set in the modern day, connecting
the conspiracy theories that have grown up around that incident
with those About nine to eleven, the screenplay was written
(02:47):
and ready to go. The movie was going to be
called False Flag. Miller would direct and produce it, and
Thompson was going to be the moneyman. When Richard Thompson
died unexpectedly in the summer of tearwo thousand and seven,
the project stalled out. Without funding, he couldn't make the movie,
and it looks like he redirected some of that energy
(03:09):
into the Ron Paul campaign. Federal Election Commission records show
that Merlin Miller made his first ever federal campaign contribution
in November of two thousand and seven when he gave
Ron Paul one hundred dollars. He even threw his hat
into the ring to be a Ron Paul delegate in Tennessee,
but doesn't look like he was chosen. But he made
(03:30):
a lot of new friends through the Paul campaign. Admittedly,
there's a bit of a blank space in my research here.
I couldn't tell you exactly what path he took down
the road to political extremism between two thousand and two
and two thousand and seven. That part of the timeline
is pretty sparse. It's entirely possible that his descent into
(03:52):
USS liberty conspiracy theories brought him into contact with the
political fringe long before he got involved with the Paul
campaign in two thousand and seven, but that's the point
in time where he reappears in any record I can find.
By two thousand and eight, Merlin Miller was rubbing elbows
with some of the big names in American racism. That summer,
(04:12):
he was a speaker at the Council of Conservative Citizens
National Conference. The archived version of that racist group's website
shows that at some point all of that year's speeches
were uploaded, but the files haven't survived, and the attendee
who uploaded some of them to YouTube must not have
thought Merlin Miller's speech was very interesting, because it isn't there.
(04:35):
Other speakers at that event included Drew Lackey, the police
officer who was famously photographed fingerprinting Rosa Parks after her
arrest in Montgomery in nineteen fifty five, and he was
also the officer who booked Martin Luther King after his
arrest in nineteen fifty six. Lackey's speech, too, seems lost
to the sands of time, but according to a write
(04:57):
up on AlterNet, he talked about his book Bok called
Another View of the Civil Rights Movement, in which he
calls Rosa Parks a communist agitator and dismisses the entire
civil rights movement as a farce designed to intimidate and
demoralize the police. In America, Alabama State Senator Charles Bishop's
keynote speech was a rambling racist rant about Mohammed Obama
(05:24):
and Several of the other speakers listed on the website
are men who would go on to serve together on
the board of the American Third Position Party, Paul Frome,
Tom Sunich, and James Edwards. And a few months after that,
Merlin Miller packed a suitcase for another trip.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
September second, two thousand and eight. You remember what you
were doing that day, September second, two thousand and eight.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
Yes, up in Minneapolis.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Merlin Miller and another man who will come to these microphones,
William Daniel Johnson, the chairman of the American Free Party,
and yours truly, all three of us were in the
Target Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
This one came as a bit of a surprise to me.
None of the write ups I could find about the
early days of the party led me to believe that
Merlin Miller had been involved with the group's actual founding,
let alone hanging out with its founders more than a
year before the group even existed. But there it is
in his own words. In May of twenty thirteen, he
(06:32):
appeared on an episode of the American Freedom Party's new podcast.
It was a project they'd launched that spring as part
of their rebranding after they changed the name from American
Third Position to American Freedom Party. And the man he's
talking to is Jamie Kelso, one of the party's founders.
Kelso is I know. I say this all the time.
(06:54):
He's the guy that's going to get his own episodes.
He is an incredibly odd man. Before he was on
the board of the American Third Position Party, he was
a member of National Alliance for years. In the early
two thousands, he was David Duke's live in personal assistant.
He was a moderator on Stormfront for a decade, and
when he was a much younger man, he was a
(07:16):
member of Scientology's Sea Org. And in two thousand and eight,
Jamie Kelso was traveling all over the country attending Ron
Paul campaign events because he recognized their value as a
recruitment pool for white nationalism. And I guess he wasn't
attending those events alone. Like I said, I can't find
(07:39):
much evidence that still exists online about the nature of
Merlin Miller's relationship with the movement during those early years,
but he was close enough to Jamie Kelso and William
Daniel Johnson by the fall of two thousand and eight
to be traveling with them.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
Now.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
Ron Paul did not become the president in two thousand obviously,
but Miller's involvement in the campaign had introduced him to
new friends and new possibilities. He'd failed to gain the
support of Tennessee Republicans to become a primary delegate, just
like he'd failed to make films in Hollywood. This system
seemed designed to prevent white men with traditional values from
(08:20):
succeeding in anything, and in that spirit, Merlin Miller founded
a new film production company in two thousand and nine.
He'd produced his first film, A Place to Grow, in
nineteen ninety five through his company Ozark Pictures. His second film, Jericho,
premiered in two thousand and one through his company Black
Knight Productions, But his new vision was going to require
(08:44):
a new production company, Americana Pictures, a film company dedicated
to making movies that promote quote, traditional American ideals. He
announced the new venture in an essay on The Occidental Observer,
a far right publication edited by Kevin mac donald, another
future founding member of the American Third Position Party. In
(09:07):
the essay, Miller asks where are the good stories? Where
have our heroes gone? Writing quote At one time, we
could discern right from wrong because stories promoted truth, justice,
and liberty. The world felt good when they ended happily,
or inspired us to overcome when they did not. They
(09:28):
made us want to be better people and live in
a better world, a world built by our European American brethren.
But after working in Hollywood, he came to realize that
Hollywood was in the business of killing those heroes, of
killing that American dream and propagandizing for a new world order.
(09:49):
Hollywood doesn't represent traditional Americans. Instead, it quote seeks to
destroy our European American heritage and our Christian based traditional values,
place them with values that debase these traditional values and
elevate minorities as paragons of virtue and wisdom. He complains
(10:09):
that despite graduating from a prestigious film school program, the
industry had no place for people like him, people with
traditional values who refused to denigrate Christianity and participate in
the Jewish controlled media. Americana Pictures could be an alternative
to Hollywood, making pro white movies for pro wide audiences,
(10:30):
developing their own talent by running screenwriting workshops. When Americana
Pictures launched in two thousand and nine, Miller had two
projects in mind, that unfunded film about the USS liberty
that he'd been working on for years, and one that
he tentatively titled The Liberator. The Liberator was a retelling
(10:53):
of the story of Arminius, the Germanic chieftain who commanded
a coalition of forces against the Romans at the Battle
of tutors Forrest in nine AD. As part of an
effort to drum up financial support for the films, Miller
published a piece in The Barnes Review later that same year.
I know I'm always telling you about this seemingly infinite
(11:14):
number of conspiracy theory blogs and Nazi newsletters and racist magazines,
and they all probably run together. But the Barnes Review
has been described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as
one of the most virulent anti Semitic organizations around, and
most issues feature several articles devoted to Holocaust denial. I mean,
(11:36):
you'd think you'd run out of ways to talk about it,
but they haven't. This particular issue included the text of
a speech made by Hitler in nineteen forty one, two
articles about Hitler, an interview with the founder of a
Greek fascist party, and an essay by Ingrid Zundel, wife
of famous Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel. Miller's piece was about
(11:58):
the historical figure of our Minius, and there was just
a little box of text on the side of one
page announcing that he would be making a film to
tell this incredible story. Okay, I'll admit I don't ever
think about the Roman Empire. That's just never on my mind.
I don't know the story of Arminius. I don't have
(12:20):
the tiniest bit of interest in knowing more about how
Publius Quintilius Verus committed suicide out of shame at having
lost three Roman legions at the Battle of Tuteburg Forest.
I couldn't tell you if Merlin Miller's retelling of those
events is historically accurate. Maybe he's a Roman history buff.
I don't know, but I do think it's worth considering
(12:42):
that his interest in the story of Arminius might be
less about a love of two thousand year old Roman
history and more about an interest in some slightly more
recent history. Arminius has long been a symbol of German
national identity and German nationalism. Two plays written in the
(13:19):
nineteenth century dramatizing the events of the Battle of Tuderberg Forest, confusingly,
both called the Hermannschlacht, were so wildly popular in Germany
in the nineteen thirties and forties that it was shameful
and scandalous to put them on stage for decades after
the war. In January of nineteen thirty three, just weeks
(13:40):
before Hitler was appointed Chancellor, a party official gave him
a gift, an illustrated copy of The Hermannschlacht. Hitler not
only loved the gift, but he responded, that's the idea
a second Battle of Tudeberg Forest. That same week, Hitler
(14:01):
gave a speech comparing himself to Arminius, and when the
text of that speech was published at a Nazi Party newspaper.
It was accompanied by a picture of a statue of
Arminius surrounded by swastikas. Nazi Party election posters in nineteen
thirty three feature this imagery prominently, along with slogans like
(14:22):
Machtrei dos Hermannsland free Hermann's country. Hermann is the German
variation of Arminius. I picked up a copy of Arminius
the Liberator, Myth and Ideology, a book by Martin Winkler,
a classics professor at George Mason University, to get a
better idea of where Arminius lives in the nationalist imagination.
(14:48):
It's four hundred pages long. I didn't have time to
do more than skim it, admittedly, but it seems pretty
clear the popularity of this story was at an all
time high when it was rep purist in Nazi propaganda
in nineteen thirties Germany. I found what I needed in
the book, but as I was flipping to the back
(15:09):
to see if the last chapter was a convenient summary,
which is often the case in academic texts, I found
something else.
Speaker 4 (15:16):
Entirely.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
The final chapter of Winkler's book is not a summary.
It's called arminious and white supremacy, and it's about this.
It's about this article by Merlin Miller. There's a picture
of the front cover of this two thousand and nine
issue of The Barnes Review. Winkler writes of Miller's article, quote,
(15:42):
Miller explicitly but unconvincingly rejects propagandizing by means of falsehood,
But he also implies that Miller himself doesn't seem to
realize that he's building his own story on a foundation
of propagandized false hoods. In comparing Miller's use of the
(16:03):
story to that Nazi propaganda, Winkler writes, quote, the similarities
are astonishing or rather predictable. The only difference is that
Nazis saw Jews as the root of all their evils,
while Miller is obsessed with non white and racially mixed globalism.
To the Nazis, as to Miller, Arminius had laid the
(16:24):
foundation of a superior West. Later generations, especially contemporary ones,
have lost this heritage and become victims of decadence and
domination by others. That spring two thousand and nine issue
of The Barnes Review is dedicated almost entirely to Arminius.
It's not just Merlin Miller's article. Immediately following Miller's piece
(16:47):
is the one by Ingrid Zundel. In two thousand and nine,
her husband, Ernst Zundel was still in a German prison.
He'd been convicted of incitement of racial hatred, and she
writes that during his imprisonment, she felt moved to rekindle
the spiritual flame by reviving the story of Arminius, and
her company, Soaring Eagles Studios, published a book about Arminius
(17:11):
that had come out that year, and it wasn't just
a book project. I didn't find an actual copy of
this book, but I found one for sale on eBay,
and I saw a picture of the cover, and the
cover bears a picture of that Arminia statue, the same
one featured in Nazi propaganda posters in nineteen thirty three.
(17:32):
But across Arminius's chest there's text that reads soon to
be a major motion picture. Ingrid Zundel wrote in that
Barnes Review article that she'd been having intense meetings with
Merlin Miller and they were collaborating on the film adaptation
of the book. In December two thousand and nine, he
(17:53):
even scouted locations. The pair hoped to film in Herman, Missouri,
a small town settled by German immigrants and named after Arminius.
Locals and Herman were horrified to learn that the independent
filmmaker wandering around town was a member of the Council
of Conservative Citizens, and the local newspaper printed a quote
(18:14):
from Miller about his opposition to interracial marriage. They didn't
really need to worry, though. The movie never got made.
Americana Pictures never made any movies at all. Both of
the projects he'd hoped to produce, False Flag and The
Liberator were someone else's idea. They were someone else's obsession.
(18:38):
He wasn't a subject matter expert on the USS liberty,
he didn't have any meaningful connection to Arminius as a
symbol of German nationalism. But he presented himself in these
circles as someone who was going to break the system
and make propaganda films for the white supremacist movement. And
I think he really wanted to. He wanted to make movies.
(19:01):
It had been his dream since childhood. It just never
came together. But what I've been trying to get to
all this time was his run for president. On January third,
twenty twelve, he posted a candidate statement on Merlin Miller
twenty twelve dot com. It's nothing special. He's fighting back
(19:24):
against the new World Order and the global elites. He's
very concerned about the ongoing demographic assault against traditional America,
which is just a few extra words for white genocide.
He's outraged that patriots are being silenced by political correctness,
et cetera. At the bottom of the statement, he links
(19:46):
to the party's website, but only after dropping a link
to the site for Americana Pictures. A week later, the
party's chairman, William Daniel Johnson, issued the party's official press relief.
His language is more explicit, writing the American Third Position
Party believes the time has come for a strong political
(20:08):
party that explicitly advocates for the interests of white Americans.
And posts started popping up on stormfront, but it wasn't
really a hot topic. Most of the people posting enthusiastically
about his candidacy on those stormfront threads are people I
can identify as party members, like a thread from Harry Bertram,
(20:31):
the party's frequent candidate in West Virginia, offering to pay
Stormfront members a dollar per name if they'll go out
and collect signatures for the campaign. In February of twenty twelve,
a month into the campaign's existence online, the party filed
paperwork with the Federal Election Commission, or at least they
tried to. They filed a statement of organization for a
(20:54):
committee called Merlin Miller for President twenty twelve, but they
failed to fill out the part of the form where
you say who the candidate is and on the page
where you check a box to indicate whether the committee
is a candidate committee or a party committee. They checked both.
The FEC responded with aid request for additional information, and
(21:15):
they tried again. It wasn't until April that they filed
forms to register the party itself with the FEC, and
they didn't actually file a statement of candidacy for Miller
until July. It's a bit of a mess. Almost everything
they've ever filed is quickly followed by a reply from
the FEC that they've done it wrong and they only
(21:38):
ever raised eighty seven hundred dollars. As the party is
fumbling with the paperwork, behind the scenes, Merlin Miller is
out there as the face of the party. The American
third position party is running for president. In every campaign
interview I listened to, he talks about himself a lot.
(22:00):
That's normal for a candidate, right, I mean, who is
this guy? Why should I vote for him? But someone
should have sat him down and broken the news that
making two independent films over a decade ago and being
really mad about the Federal Reserve aren't enough. And it's
just confusing that you keep rambling on about how you
(22:22):
knew David Petraeus in college, but he does it every time.
Most of these interviews are with friendly outlets, white nationalist
fringe podcasts and conspiracy theorists who make Alex Jones look
like a level headed and professional broadcaster, so he can
regurgitate the talking points from the website without really getting cornered.
(22:43):
For the most part, no one's asking him hard questions.
But in one interview in February, someone does ask a
question that I'd actually spend hours searching for an answer
to on the party's website. Why third position?
Speaker 5 (23:02):
Tell us a little bit about the third position? You know,
I think some people might be a little confused by
that term. I know when I hear third position, I
almost think third way or takes me back to the
nineteen thirties or twenties or something. But I don't know.
I mean, why did you choose that name? And what
(23:22):
are you trying to evoke by calling yourself a third position?
Speaker 1 (23:29):
That's Richard Spencer. By twenty twelve, he was already the
director of the National Policy Institute, and he was the
editor of his Alternative Right dot com website, having coined
the term alright a few years earlier, at least by
his account, and for all the evil that man has
visited upon this world and my hometown in particular, he's
(23:52):
not stupid. I mean, he's not the brilliant philosopher he
believes himself to be, don't get me wrong, But he's
read some books. He is at least conversant in the
political theory he's working with. This is a question with
an actual answer, And Merlin Miller didn't know that.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
You know, actually the founding members of Bill Johnson William Johnson,
an LA attorney, as the chairman of the American Third
Position Party, and I believe it was a bill that
came up with the name American Third Position, and a
year and a half, two years ago, I actually recommended
he used the Americana Party because I didn't actually understand
his reasoning for the American third at that time. I've
(24:38):
since grown not only accustomed to it, but I do
like it because I see the Republican and the Democratic
parties as really being two heads of the same monster.
And we really don't have a voice party that represents
the interests of the American people anymore.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
Oh, dear, no, No, that wasn't the end, Sir Richard
Spencer was looking for. It wasn't the answer I was
looking for. Third position isn't just some generic term for
third party. It doesn't mean the party is offering itself
up just generally is some kind of third option. He
(25:18):
seems to think that third position just means not Republican,
not Democrat, but a secret third thing. I guess, come
to think of it, you know, in the spirit of
the secret third thing meme kind of does the secret
third thing? Here is fascism. Here's another member of the
(25:41):
party offering his definition.
Speaker 4 (25:46):
Third positionism is not centrism. Third positionists understand the false
dialectic that liberal capitalist regimes established to split the electorate
and maintain their all holigarchic rule through fiscal power. This
capitalist dialectic separates nationalism from socialism, ensuring that two positions
(26:10):
are never united under one political party.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
Now, I think he probably thinks he sounds very clever here,
but I'm not sure he actually comprehends the words he's using.
But it is closer, He's a little closer. That's Nathan
Dimigo speaking at the party's national convention earlier this year.
And if you're familiar with Nathan Dimigo's name, you may
(26:40):
remember him as the founder of Identity Europa, the neo
Nazi organization that started popping up on college campuses and
was marching here in Charlottesville in their white polo shirts
in twenty seventeen. But he actually has a very long
history with the American Third Position Party. But that's something
we'll get to itother day. The problem that Nathan Dimigo
(27:04):
and Merlin Miller and others in the party are running
into when they try to define third positionism is that
most people aren't using it sincerely. I mean, maybe they
don't actually know what it means at all, like Merlin Miller,
or they're just using it as a branding strategy because
it sounds more intellectual and more rooted in history and
(27:26):
tradition and less crude than saying I'm an ultra nationalist
neo fascist. And you'll also see a lot of disingenuous
descriptions of the third position as being a sort of
ideological melding of both left wing and right wing ideas.
It's not a left or right wing ideology. It combines
a bit of both. Like Merlin Miller was saying, it's
(27:49):
not aligned with either of the two traditional polls. It's
not democrat or republican. It's neither left nor right. But
that's a lie. It is. I'm sorry it is, and
I think most people who say that know it. I'm
no political theorist, but advocating for policies that benefit the
working class, but only the white working class, because everyone
(28:12):
else is dead, deported, disenfranchised, or enslaved. That's not a
left wing policy idea. The anti capitalism and anti imperialism
of a third positionist isn't inherently left wing. It's in
service of nationalism. The socialism in national socialism wasn't sincere,
(28:35):
and it wasn't for everyone. When these people say that
they aren't left or right, they mean they're so far
right you can't see them on the spectrum anymore. They're fascists.
(29:00):
American fascists like Tom Metzger in the eighties and Matthew
Heinbach in the twenty tens both pushed ideas that you
could describe as third positionist, though I believe Heinbach specifically
called himself a Strostrist, which I guess is technically a
slightly separate thing. It's sometimes described as a precursor to
(29:22):
third positionism, but they're used so interchangeably by guys who
are trying to bring an air of intellectualism to their
ethno state manifestos that honestly, I don't think it matters.
Don't email me about it. At the nineteen eighty seven
Aryan World Congress, Tom Metzger, the leader of White Arian Resistance,
was talking about third positionism when he said this quote.
(29:46):
War is dedicated to the white working people, the farmers,
the white poor. This is a working class movement. Our
problem is with monopoly capitalism. The Jews first went with
capitalism and then created their Marxist game. You go for
the throat of the capitalist. You must go for the
throat of the corporates. You take the game away from
the left. It's our game. We're not going to fight
(30:06):
your whore wars anymore. We've got one war, and that's
right here, the same war the essay fought in Germany,
right here in the streets of America. There's plenty to
be written on the actual historical origin of the term.
In post war Europe. There are third positionist fascist nationalist
groups in Italy, the UK, Germany, and France, and it's
(30:29):
a little bit different everywhere you go. For the most part,
it's branding. I think if you had to trace an
ideological lineage, the American Third Position is most closely connected
to the British fascist group International Third Position. That group
was founded by Nick Griffin after he split with National Affront,
though he eventually left Third Position two had joined the
(30:51):
British National Party, but in the early days of the
American Third Position Party, Nick Griffin was on their conference calls.
When Merlin Miller was asked about the party's name again
in an interview with Russian Tabloid a week before the election,
he said they were thinking of changing it as soon
as the election was over, and that did end up happening.
(31:12):
They rebranded as the American Freedom Party just a few
months later. All that to say, Merlin Miller is hardly
some innocent rube who got tricked into joining a Nazi party.
He knew what he was doing. He hung around with
these people for years before he put his name on
that paperwork. He's willing to say that he's a nationalist,
(31:35):
and he openly advocates for all of the race based
nationalist policies that would make someone a white nationalist, but
he said that he doesn't care for the label because
it has too much baggage. I'm not saying he doesn't
know what he's advocating for. He does, but I do
(31:56):
think that he did not know that third position was
an actual political ideology and not just a fun name.
I mean, he wanted to call the party the Americana Party,
the same name he gave his pro white film company,
and I think that tells us something too, that one
little comment he thought the party should have the same
(32:18):
name as his film company. He links to his film
company website. On his official campaign materials, he mentions that
he's looking for funding for his movie False Flag. In
every interview. In September of twenty twelve, when he was
in the home stretch of his presidential campaign, he spent
a week in Tehran trying to pitch the movie to
(32:38):
Iranian investors. In a segment on Iranian TV that week,
he spent more time talking about the movie than the
party he wanted to sell the movie. This was a
convenient press junket. That's the vibe I get anyway. I
don't know, n surprised he did not win. He only
(33:03):
made it onto the ballot as the American third position
party candidate in Colorado and New Jersey, but he appeared
on ballots in Tennessee as an independent candidate. He also
got a handful of write in votes in Maryland and
New York. All told, Merlin Miller was the preferred presidential
candidate of two thousand, seven hundred and one people. That's
(33:27):
zero point zero percent of the vote. The FEC only
calculates it to one decimal place. A month after the election,
Merlin Miller was invited to speak to a student group
at a university campus in Maryland. Matthew Heinbach was a
senior at Towson University and he'd recently formed a white
(33:48):
student union. It wasn't his first foreign into white nationalism,
and I wish it had been his last. He was
already a member of the American Third Position Party, and
he would go on to and lead the Traditionalist Worker Party,
perhaps following in this group's footsteps by actually registering his
Nazi group with the Federal Election Commission. You can look
(34:11):
at committee filings on the FEC's website to show that
they expensed to the party the helmets that they wore
to the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. But again
a story for another day. But after all this, Merlin
Miller sort of drifted away from this now rebranded American
(34:32):
Freedom Party. He appeared on an episode of the party's
official podcast in May of twenty thirteen. When the party
held a conference in July, I don't think he was there.
His absence wasn't specifically noted, but I found video of
quite a few of the speeches, and not only was
he not one of them, but I was kind of
(34:54):
surprised that the speeches didn't really talk about the campaign.
Even a failed campaign is something to talk about, you know,
A good leader would praise members of the organization for
their hard work and a tough situation, talk about lessons
learned and what they'll do differently next time. Appreciate the
sacrifice made by your candidate something I don't know. It
(35:17):
struck me as odd, but maybe I'm reading too much
into it. By twenty fourteen, Merlin Miller had officially parted
ways with the American Freedom Party. He formed his own party,
calling it the American Eagle Party. There's no public animosity here.
In a few speeches during this time period, Miller mentions
(35:40):
in passing that he left his old party, which he
doesn't usually name, because their focus was too narrow. In
one video, American Freedom Party chairman William Johnson says pretty
plainly that his party speaks explicitly, and Miller wanted to
be more implicit about the same ideas. So it's not
(36:01):
an ideological shift. He's just using a different communication style.
But the American Eagle Party was not long for this world.
It never ran a candidate, and the only money had
ever raised came in the form of a couple of
donations from friends. An overwhelming majority of the funds raised
by the group in its less than two years of
(36:23):
existence was from one man, an attorney in Baltimore named
Glenn Keith Allen. In the summer of twenty sixteen, as
he's involved in Miller's American Eagle Party and making donations.
The Southern Poverty Law Center wrote an article about Glen Allen.
(36:44):
He'd been in the movement for years, but he'd never
been publicly identified before. The SBLC had obtained internal accounting
records from the neo Nazi organization National Alliance, and those
documents included receipts showing that Glenn Allen had been a
dues pay member for years. At the time they published
(37:05):
the article, Allen was working as an attorney for the
Baltimore Police Department, a job he quickly lost. And this
is actually when I first encountered Merlin Miller. It wasn't
in the context of the American Third Position Party or
the American Freedom Party or the American Eagle Party. I
saw Merlin Miller's name for the first time years ago
(37:28):
while I was putting together notes about Glenn Allen. Merlin
Miller is on the board of directors at a nonprofit
Allan founded in twenty eighteen with the stated purpose of
providing legal assistance to victims of the thought Police. His words,
not mine. As an attorney, Glenn Allen has bravely defended
(37:49):
the free speech rights of clients like Warren Baylaw, the
Nazi who tried to sue the City of Charlottesville for
failing to roll out the red carpet for his Nazi rally,
members of Patriot Front who were sued for defacing a
mural of black Tennis legend Arthur Ashe members of the
Goham Defense League, and he wrote amicus briefs for members
(38:10):
of the Rise Above movement. His foundation has also been
used to solicit donations for legal defense in cases they
didn't officially take on, like the criminal prosecution of Patriot
Front leader Thomas Rousseau here in Albmarole County, Virginia last year.
Allan is currently representing Nathan Dimigo in his bankruptcy court
battle to discharge the debt from a civil court judgment,
(38:33):
a lawsuit filed against him as an organizer of the
deadly Unite the Right rally. And I actually mentioned Glenn
Allen briefly last week. He's co counsel on William Daniel
Johnson's dried seaweed tariff case. I am on the edge
of my seat waiting for a ruling on that one.
Merlin Miller is to this day on the board of
(38:56):
directors at Allen's Foundation, where his bio describes him as
a filmmaker. He never did make any more movies, but
according to his personal website, he still hopes to make
False Flag of Reality someday. Merlin Miller ran for president
on the ticket of a Nazi party in twenty twelve,
(39:18):
but his heart was never really in it. I don't think.
I think he just wanted to get on TV and
talk about how the Jewish controlled media wouldn't let him
make his movies. The American Freedom Party, though, they moved
on too. When I started researching these episodes, all the
articles about the group were old. It looked like they
(39:41):
were more or less defunct, but I just wasn't looking
in the right places. Admittedly, I wasted a lot of
time this week reading about Arminius, so I didn't get
as far into the story as I'd intended. But what
I actually spent most of this week doing was listening
to interviews with the new generation of the party's leadership.
(40:05):
In March of this year, the American Freedom Party recommitted.
They gathered at the castle in West Virginia owned by
white nationalists publisher Peter Brimlaw and they're talking about making
a real comeback.
Speaker 5 (40:35):
Weed.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
Little Guys is a production of Polso Media and iHeart Radio.
It's researched, written and recorded by me, Molly Conger. Our
executive producers are Sophie Litcherman and Robert Evans. The show
is edited by the wildly talented Bory Gaigan. That theme
music was composed by Brad Dickard. You can email me
at Riddula Guys Podcast at gmail dot com. I would
definitely read it by I probably won't answer, it's nothing personal.
(40:56):
You can exchange conspiracy theories about the show with other
listeners on the Red Lily Guy sub reddit. Just don't
post anything that's gonna make you on my ru Little
Guys h
Col Zone Media. In March of twenty twenty five, a
few dozen white nationalists from across the country gathered at
a castle in the mountains. The meeting itself wasn't really
a secret, it had been announced months ahead of time,
but it was a private event, and the location was
(00:22):
a closely guarded secret, shared only with those on the
invite list at elector and adorned with a golden eagle
and flanked by flags bearing fascies and lightning bolts. Speeches
were made by movement leaders spanning generations, men in their
seventies nearing the end of their decades long careers as
white nationalist organizers, and men in their twenties looking ahead
(00:45):
to the movement's future. During an afternoon break between speeches,
the keynote speaker took off a suit jacket in bolow
tie to oversee a shirtless, bare knuckle boxing match on
the lawn. The American Freedom Party has changed its logo,
its leadership, and even its name over the fifteen years
since it was first founded as the American Third Position Party,
(01:07):
but they are still who they've always been, a handful
of racists and suits whose inability to properly fill out
paperwork keeps getting in the way of their dreams of
a white ethno state. I'm Molly Conker. This this weird
little guy. When we left off last week, we were
(01:42):
talking about the strange winding road that led a white
nationalist group called the American Third Position Party to run
a failed filmmaker for president in twenty twelve. By his
own account, Merilyn Miller had never been all that interested
in politics, that is, until he had his political awakening
after nine to eleven. He'd been trying unsuccessfully to sell
(02:03):
the distribution rights to his second film, a western called Jericho,
when he met a man who had served aboard the
U s S. Liberty in nineteen sixty seven when the
ship was bombed by the Israeli Air Force. Batman introduced
Merlin Miller to the wide world of conspiracy theory surrounding
the incident and connected him with Richard Thompson, a Navy
(02:23):
veteran who had recently helped finance a documentary about it.
For several years, Thompson and Miller discussed making a movie
about the US Liberty, not another documentary that had been done,
but an action thriller set in the modern day, connecting
the conspiracy theories that have grown up around that incident
with those About nine to eleven, the screenplay was written
(02:47):
and ready to go. The movie was going to be
called False Flag. Miller would direct and produce it, and
Thompson was going to be the moneyman. When Richard Thompson
died unexpectedly in the summer of tearwo thousand and seven,
the project stalled out. Without funding, he couldn't make the movie,
and it looks like he redirected some of that energy
(03:09):
into the Ron Paul campaign. Federal Election Commission records show
that Merlin Miller made his first ever federal campaign contribution
in November of two thousand and seven when he gave
Ron Paul one hundred dollars. He even threw his hat
into the ring to be a Ron Paul delegate in Tennessee,
but doesn't look like he was chosen. But he made
(03:30):
a lot of new friends through the Paul campaign. Admittedly,
there's a bit of a blank space in my research here.
I couldn't tell you exactly what path he took down
the road to political extremism between two thousand and two
and two thousand and seven. That part of the timeline
is pretty sparse. It's entirely possible that his descent into
(03:52):
USS liberty conspiracy theories brought him into contact with the
political fringe long before he got involved with the Paul
campaign in two thousand and seven, but that's the point
in time where he reappears in any record I can find.
By two thousand and eight, Merlin Miller was rubbing elbows
with some of the big names in American racism. That summer,
(04:12):
he was a speaker at the Council of Conservative Citizens
National Conference. The archived version of that racist group's website
shows that at some point all of that year's speeches
were uploaded, but the files haven't survived, and the attendee
who uploaded some of them to YouTube must not have
thought Merlin Miller's speech was very interesting, because it isn't there.
(04:35):
Other speakers at that event included Drew Lackey, the police
officer who was famously photographed fingerprinting Rosa Parks after her
arrest in Montgomery in nineteen fifty five, and he was
also the officer who booked Martin Luther King after his
arrest in nineteen fifty six. Lackey's speech, too, seems lost
to the sands of time, but according to a write
(04:57):
up on AlterNet, he talked about his book Bok called
Another View of the Civil Rights Movement, in which he
calls Rosa Parks a communist agitator and dismisses the entire
civil rights movement as a farce designed to intimidate and
demoralize the police. In America, Alabama State Senator Charles Bishop's
keynote speech was a rambling racist rant about Mohammed Obama
(05:24):
and Several of the other speakers listed on the website
are men who would go on to serve together on
the board of the American Third Position Party, Paul Frome,
Tom Sunich, and James Edwards. And a few months after that,
Merlin Miller packed a suitcase for another trip.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
September second, two thousand and eight. You remember what you
were doing that day, September second, two thousand and eight.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
Yes, up in Minneapolis.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Merlin Miller and another man who will come to these microphones,
William Daniel Johnson, the chairman of the American Free Party,
and yours truly, all three of us were in the
Target Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
This one came as a bit of a surprise to me.
None of the write ups I could find about the
early days of the party led me to believe that
Merlin Miller had been involved with the group's actual founding,
let alone hanging out with its founders more than a
year before the group even existed. But there it is
in his own words. In May of twenty thirteen, he
(06:32):
appeared on an episode of the American Freedom Party's new podcast.
It was a project they'd launched that spring as part
of their rebranding after they changed the name from American
Third Position to American Freedom Party. And the man he's
talking to is Jamie Kelso, one of the party's founders.
Kelso is I know. I say this all the time.
(06:54):
He's the guy that's going to get his own episodes.
He is an incredibly odd man. Before he was on
the board of the American Third Position Party, he was
a member of National Alliance for years. In the early
two thousands, he was David Duke's live in personal assistant.
He was a moderator on Stormfront for a decade, and
when he was a much younger man, he was a
(07:16):
member of Scientology's Sea Org. And in two thousand and eight,
Jamie Kelso was traveling all over the country attending Ron
Paul campaign events because he recognized their value as a
recruitment pool for white nationalism. And I guess he wasn't
attending those events alone. Like I said, I can't find
(07:39):
much evidence that still exists online about the nature of
Merlin Miller's relationship with the movement during those early years,
but he was close enough to Jamie Kelso and William
Daniel Johnson by the fall of two thousand and eight
to be traveling with them.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
Now.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
Ron Paul did not become the president in two thousand obviously,
but Miller's involvement in the campaign had introduced him to
new friends and new possibilities. He'd failed to gain the
support of Tennessee Republicans to become a primary delegate, just
like he'd failed to make films in Hollywood. This system
seemed designed to prevent white men with traditional values from
(08:20):
succeeding in anything, and in that spirit, Merlin Miller founded
a new film production company in two thousand and nine.
He'd produced his first film, A Place to Grow, in
nineteen ninety five through his company Ozark Pictures. His second film, Jericho,
premiered in two thousand and one through his company Black
Knight Productions, But his new vision was going to require
(08:44):
a new production company, Americana Pictures, a film company dedicated
to making movies that promote quote, traditional American ideals. He
announced the new venture in an essay on The Occidental Observer,
a far right publication edited by Kevin mac donald, another
future founding member of the American Third Position Party. In
(09:07):
the essay, Miller asks where are the good stories? Where
have our heroes gone? Writing quote At one time, we
could discern right from wrong because stories promoted truth, justice,
and liberty. The world felt good when they ended happily,
or inspired us to overcome when they did not. They
(09:28):
made us want to be better people and live in
a better world, a world built by our European American brethren.
But after working in Hollywood, he came to realize that
Hollywood was in the business of killing those heroes, of
killing that American dream and propagandizing for a new world order.
(09:49):
Hollywood doesn't represent traditional Americans. Instead, it quote seeks to
destroy our European American heritage and our Christian based traditional values,
place them with values that debase these traditional values and
elevate minorities as paragons of virtue and wisdom. He complains
(10:09):
that despite graduating from a prestigious film school program, the
industry had no place for people like him, people with
traditional values who refused to denigrate Christianity and participate in
the Jewish controlled media. Americana Pictures could be an alternative
to Hollywood, making pro white movies for pro wide audiences,
(10:30):
developing their own talent by running screenwriting workshops. When Americana
Pictures launched in two thousand and nine, Miller had two
projects in mind, that unfunded film about the USS liberty
that he'd been working on for years, and one that
he tentatively titled The Liberator. The Liberator was a retelling
(10:53):
of the story of Arminius, the Germanic chieftain who commanded
a coalition of forces against the Romans at the Battle
of tutors Forrest in nine AD. As part of an
effort to drum up financial support for the films, Miller
published a piece in The Barnes Review later that same year.
I know I'm always telling you about this seemingly infinite
(11:14):
number of conspiracy theory blogs and Nazi newsletters and racist magazines,
and they all probably run together. But the Barnes Review
has been described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as
one of the most virulent anti Semitic organizations around, and
most issues feature several articles devoted to Holocaust denial. I mean,
(11:36):
you'd think you'd run out of ways to talk about it,
but they haven't. This particular issue included the text of
a speech made by Hitler in nineteen forty one, two
articles about Hitler, an interview with the founder of a
Greek fascist party, and an essay by Ingrid Zundel, wife
of famous Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel. Miller's piece was about
(11:58):
the historical figure of our Minius, and there was just
a little box of text on the side of one
page announcing that he would be making a film to
tell this incredible story. Okay, I'll admit I don't ever
think about the Roman Empire. That's just never on my mind.
I don't know the story of Arminius. I don't have
(12:20):
the tiniest bit of interest in knowing more about how
Publius Quintilius Verus committed suicide out of shame at having
lost three Roman legions at the Battle of Tuteburg Forest.
I couldn't tell you if Merlin Miller's retelling of those
events is historically accurate. Maybe he's a Roman history buff.
I don't know, but I do think it's worth considering
(12:42):
that his interest in the story of Arminius might be
less about a love of two thousand year old Roman
history and more about an interest in some slightly more
recent history. Arminius has long been a symbol of German
national identity and German nationalism. Two plays written in the
(13:19):
nineteenth century dramatizing the events of the Battle of Tuderberg Forest, confusingly,
both called the Hermannschlacht, were so wildly popular in Germany
in the nineteen thirties and forties that it was shameful
and scandalous to put them on stage for decades after
the war. In January of nineteen thirty three, just weeks
(13:40):
before Hitler was appointed Chancellor, a party official gave him
a gift, an illustrated copy of The Hermannschlacht. Hitler not
only loved the gift, but he responded, that's the idea
a second Battle of Tudeberg Forest. That same week, Hitler
(14:01):
gave a speech comparing himself to Arminius, and when the
text of that speech was published at a Nazi Party newspaper.
It was accompanied by a picture of a statue of
Arminius surrounded by swastikas. Nazi Party election posters in nineteen
thirty three feature this imagery prominently, along with slogans like
(14:22):
Machtrei dos Hermannsland free Hermann's country. Hermann is the German
variation of Arminius. I picked up a copy of Arminius
the Liberator, Myth and Ideology, a book by Martin Winkler,
a classics professor at George Mason University, to get a
better idea of where Arminius lives in the nationalist imagination.
(14:48):
It's four hundred pages long. I didn't have time to
do more than skim it, admittedly, but it seems pretty
clear the popularity of this story was at an all
time high when it was rep purist in Nazi propaganda
in nineteen thirties Germany. I found what I needed in
the book, but as I was flipping to the back
(15:09):
to see if the last chapter was a convenient summary,
which is often the case in academic texts, I found
something else.
Speaker 4 (15:16):
Entirely.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
The final chapter of Winkler's book is not a summary.
It's called arminious and white supremacy, and it's about this.
It's about this article by Merlin Miller. There's a picture
of the front cover of this two thousand and nine
issue of The Barnes Review. Winkler writes of Miller's article, quote,
(15:42):
Miller explicitly but unconvincingly rejects propagandizing by means of falsehood,
But he also implies that Miller himself doesn't seem to
realize that he's building his own story on a foundation
of propagandized false hoods. In comparing Miller's use of the
(16:03):
story to that Nazi propaganda, Winkler writes, quote, the similarities
are astonishing or rather predictable. The only difference is that
Nazis saw Jews as the root of all their evils,
while Miller is obsessed with non white and racially mixed globalism.
To the Nazis, as to Miller, Arminius had laid the
(16:24):
foundation of a superior West. Later generations, especially contemporary ones,
have lost this heritage and become victims of decadence and
domination by others. That spring two thousand and nine issue
of The Barnes Review is dedicated almost entirely to Arminius.
It's not just Merlin Miller's article. Immediately following Miller's piece
(16:47):
is the one by Ingrid Zundel. In two thousand and nine,
her husband, Ernst Zundel was still in a German prison.
He'd been convicted of incitement of racial hatred, and she
writes that during his imprisonment, she felt moved to rekindle
the spiritual flame by reviving the story of Arminius, and
her company, Soaring Eagles Studios, published a book about Arminius
(17:11):
that had come out that year, and it wasn't just
a book project. I didn't find an actual copy of
this book, but I found one for sale on eBay,
and I saw a picture of the cover, and the
cover bears a picture of that Arminia statue, the same
one featured in Nazi propaganda posters in nineteen thirty three.
(17:32):
But across Arminius's chest there's text that reads soon to
be a major motion picture. Ingrid Zundel wrote in that
Barnes Review article that she'd been having intense meetings with
Merlin Miller and they were collaborating on the film adaptation
of the book. In December two thousand and nine, he
(17:53):
even scouted locations. The pair hoped to film in Herman, Missouri,
a small town settled by German immigrants and named after Arminius.
Locals and Herman were horrified to learn that the independent
filmmaker wandering around town was a member of the Council
of Conservative Citizens, and the local newspaper printed a quote
(18:14):
from Miller about his opposition to interracial marriage. They didn't
really need to worry, though. The movie never got made.
Americana Pictures never made any movies at all. Both of
the projects he'd hoped to produce, False Flag and The
Liberator were someone else's idea. They were someone else's obsession.
(18:38):
He wasn't a subject matter expert on the USS liberty,
he didn't have any meaningful connection to Arminius as a
symbol of German nationalism. But he presented himself in these
circles as someone who was going to break the system
and make propaganda films for the white supremacist movement. And
I think he really wanted to. He wanted to make movies.
(19:01):
It had been his dream since childhood. It just never
came together. But what I've been trying to get to
all this time was his run for president. On January third,
twenty twelve, he posted a candidate statement on Merlin Miller
twenty twelve dot com. It's nothing special. He's fighting back
(19:24):
against the new World Order and the global elites. He's
very concerned about the ongoing demographic assault against traditional America,
which is just a few extra words for white genocide.
He's outraged that patriots are being silenced by political correctness,
et cetera. At the bottom of the statement, he links
(19:46):
to the party's website, but only after dropping a link
to the site for Americana Pictures. A week later, the
party's chairman, William Daniel Johnson, issued the party's official press relief.
His language is more explicit, writing the American Third Position
Party believes the time has come for a strong political
(20:08):
party that explicitly advocates for the interests of white Americans.
And posts started popping up on stormfront, but it wasn't
really a hot topic. Most of the people posting enthusiastically
about his candidacy on those stormfront threads are people I
can identify as party members, like a thread from Harry Bertram,
(20:31):
the party's frequent candidate in West Virginia, offering to pay
Stormfront members a dollar per name if they'll go out
and collect signatures for the campaign. In February of twenty twelve,
a month into the campaign's existence online, the party filed
paperwork with the Federal Election Commission, or at least they
tried to. They filed a statement of organization for a
(20:54):
committee called Merlin Miller for President twenty twelve, but they
failed to fill out the part of the form where
you say who the candidate is and on the page
where you check a box to indicate whether the committee
is a candidate committee or a party committee. They checked both.
The FEC responded with aid request for additional information, and
(21:15):
they tried again. It wasn't until April that they filed
forms to register the party itself with the FEC, and
they didn't actually file a statement of candidacy for Miller
until July. It's a bit of a mess. Almost everything
they've ever filed is quickly followed by a reply from
the FEC that they've done it wrong and they only
(21:38):
ever raised eighty seven hundred dollars. As the party is
fumbling with the paperwork, behind the scenes, Merlin Miller is
out there as the face of the party. The American
third position party is running for president. In every campaign
interview I listened to, he talks about himself a lot.
(22:00):
That's normal for a candidate, right, I mean, who is
this guy? Why should I vote for him? But someone
should have sat him down and broken the news that
making two independent films over a decade ago and being
really mad about the Federal Reserve aren't enough. And it's
just confusing that you keep rambling on about how you
(22:22):
knew David Petraeus in college, but he does it every time.
Most of these interviews are with friendly outlets, white nationalist
fringe podcasts and conspiracy theorists who make Alex Jones look
like a level headed and professional broadcaster, so he can
regurgitate the talking points from the website without really getting cornered.
(22:43):
For the most part, no one's asking him hard questions.
But in one interview in February, someone does ask a
question that I'd actually spend hours searching for an answer
to on the party's website. Why third position?
Speaker 5 (23:02):
Tell us a little bit about the third position? You know,
I think some people might be a little confused by
that term. I know when I hear third position, I
almost think third way or takes me back to the
nineteen thirties or twenties or something. But I don't know.
I mean, why did you choose that name? And what
(23:22):
are you trying to evoke by calling yourself a third position?
Speaker 1 (23:29):
That's Richard Spencer. By twenty twelve, he was already the
director of the National Policy Institute, and he was the
editor of his Alternative Right dot com website, having coined
the term alright a few years earlier, at least by
his account, and for all the evil that man has
visited upon this world and my hometown in particular, he's
(23:52):
not stupid. I mean, he's not the brilliant philosopher he
believes himself to be, don't get me wrong, But he's
read some books. He is at least conversant in the
political theory he's working with. This is a question with
an actual answer, And Merlin Miller didn't know that.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
You know, actually the founding members of Bill Johnson William Johnson,
an LA attorney, as the chairman of the American Third
Position Party, and I believe it was a bill that
came up with the name American Third Position, and a
year and a half, two years ago, I actually recommended
he used the Americana Party because I didn't actually understand
his reasoning for the American third at that time. I've
(24:38):
since grown not only accustomed to it, but I do
like it because I see the Republican and the Democratic
parties as really being two heads of the same monster.
And we really don't have a voice party that represents
the interests of the American people anymore.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
Oh, dear, no, No, that wasn't the end, Sir Richard
Spencer was looking for. It wasn't the answer I was
looking for. Third position isn't just some generic term for
third party. It doesn't mean the party is offering itself
up just generally is some kind of third option. He
(25:18):
seems to think that third position just means not Republican,
not Democrat, but a secret third thing. I guess, come
to think of it, you know, in the spirit of
the secret third thing meme kind of does the secret
third thing? Here is fascism. Here's another member of the
(25:41):
party offering his definition.
Speaker 4 (25:46):
Third positionism is not centrism. Third positionists understand the false
dialectic that liberal capitalist regimes established to split the electorate
and maintain their all holigarchic rule through fiscal power. This
capitalist dialectic separates nationalism from socialism, ensuring that two positions
(26:10):
are never united under one political party.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
Now, I think he probably thinks he sounds very clever here,
but I'm not sure he actually comprehends the words he's using.
But it is closer, He's a little closer. That's Nathan
Dimigo speaking at the party's national convention earlier this year.
And if you're familiar with Nathan Dimigo's name, you may
(26:40):
remember him as the founder of Identity Europa, the neo
Nazi organization that started popping up on college campuses and
was marching here in Charlottesville in their white polo shirts
in twenty seventeen. But he actually has a very long
history with the American Third Position Party. But that's something
we'll get to itother day. The problem that Nathan Dimigo
(27:04):
and Merlin Miller and others in the party are running
into when they try to define third positionism is that
most people aren't using it sincerely. I mean, maybe they
don't actually know what it means at all, like Merlin Miller,
or they're just using it as a branding strategy because
it sounds more intellectual and more rooted in history and
(27:26):
tradition and less crude than saying I'm an ultra nationalist
neo fascist. And you'll also see a lot of disingenuous
descriptions of the third position as being a sort of
ideological melding of both left wing and right wing ideas.
It's not a left or right wing ideology. It combines
a bit of both. Like Merlin Miller was saying, it's
(27:49):
not aligned with either of the two traditional polls. It's
not democrat or republican. It's neither left nor right. But
that's a lie. It is. I'm sorry it is, and
I think most people who say that know it. I'm
no political theorist, but advocating for policies that benefit the
working class, but only the white working class, because everyone
(28:12):
else is dead, deported, disenfranchised, or enslaved. That's not a
left wing policy idea. The anti capitalism and anti imperialism
of a third positionist isn't inherently left wing. It's in
service of nationalism. The socialism in national socialism wasn't sincere,
(28:35):
and it wasn't for everyone. When these people say that
they aren't left or right, they mean they're so far
right you can't see them on the spectrum anymore. They're fascists.
(29:00):
American fascists like Tom Metzger in the eighties and Matthew
Heinbach in the twenty tens both pushed ideas that you
could describe as third positionist, though I believe Heinbach specifically
called himself a Strostrist, which I guess is technically a
slightly separate thing. It's sometimes described as a precursor to
(29:22):
third positionism, but they're used so interchangeably by guys who
are trying to bring an air of intellectualism to their
ethno state manifestos that honestly, I don't think it matters.
Don't email me about it. At the nineteen eighty seven
Aryan World Congress, Tom Metzger, the leader of White Arian Resistance,
was talking about third positionism when he said this quote.
(29:46):
War is dedicated to the white working people, the farmers,
the white poor. This is a working class movement. Our
problem is with monopoly capitalism. The Jews first went with
capitalism and then created their Marxist game. You go for
the throat of the capitalist. You must go for the
throat of the corporates. You take the game away from
the left. It's our game. We're not going to fight
(30:06):
your whore wars anymore. We've got one war, and that's
right here, the same war the essay fought in Germany,
right here in the streets of America. There's plenty to
be written on the actual historical origin of the term.
In post war Europe. There are third positionist fascist nationalist
groups in Italy, the UK, Germany, and France, and it's
(30:29):
a little bit different everywhere you go. For the most part,
it's branding. I think if you had to trace an
ideological lineage, the American Third Position is most closely connected
to the British fascist group International Third Position. That group
was founded by Nick Griffin after he split with National Affront,
though he eventually left Third Position two had joined the
(30:51):
British National Party, but in the early days of the
American Third Position Party, Nick Griffin was on their conference calls.
When Merlin Miller was asked about the party's name again
in an interview with Russian Tabloid a week before the election,
he said they were thinking of changing it as soon
as the election was over, and that did end up happening.
(31:12):
They rebranded as the American Freedom Party just a few
months later. All that to say, Merlin Miller is hardly
some innocent rube who got tricked into joining a Nazi party.
He knew what he was doing. He hung around with
these people for years before he put his name on
that paperwork. He's willing to say that he's a nationalist,
(31:35):
and he openly advocates for all of the race based
nationalist policies that would make someone a white nationalist, but
he said that he doesn't care for the label because
it has too much baggage. I'm not saying he doesn't
know what he's advocating for. He does, but I do
(31:56):
think that he did not know that third position was
an actual political ideology and not just a fun name.
I mean, he wanted to call the party the Americana Party,
the same name he gave his pro white film company,
and I think that tells us something too, that one
little comment he thought the party should have the same
(32:18):
name as his film company. He links to his film
company website. On his official campaign materials, he mentions that
he's looking for funding for his movie False Flag. In
every interview. In September of twenty twelve, when he was
in the home stretch of his presidential campaign, he spent
a week in Tehran trying to pitch the movie to
(32:38):
Iranian investors. In a segment on Iranian TV that week,
he spent more time talking about the movie than the
party he wanted to sell the movie. This was a
convenient press junket. That's the vibe I get anyway. I
don't know, n surprised he did not win. He only
(33:03):
made it onto the ballot as the American third position
party candidate in Colorado and New Jersey, but he appeared
on ballots in Tennessee as an independent candidate. He also
got a handful of write in votes in Maryland and
New York. All told, Merlin Miller was the preferred presidential
candidate of two thousand, seven hundred and one people. That's
(33:27):
zero point zero percent of the vote. The FEC only
calculates it to one decimal place. A month after the election,
Merlin Miller was invited to speak to a student group
at a university campus in Maryland. Matthew Heinbach was a
senior at Towson University and he'd recently formed a white
(33:48):
student union. It wasn't his first foreign into white nationalism,
and I wish it had been his last. He was
already a member of the American Third Position Party, and
he would go on to and lead the Traditionalist Worker Party,
perhaps following in this group's footsteps by actually registering his
Nazi group with the Federal Election Commission. You can look
(34:11):
at committee filings on the FEC's website to show that
they expensed to the party the helmets that they wore
to the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. But again
a story for another day. But after all this, Merlin
Miller sort of drifted away from this now rebranded American
(34:32):
Freedom Party. He appeared on an episode of the party's
official podcast in May of twenty thirteen. When the party
held a conference in July, I don't think he was there.
His absence wasn't specifically noted, but I found video of
quite a few of the speeches, and not only was
he not one of them, but I was kind of
(34:54):
surprised that the speeches didn't really talk about the campaign.
Even a failed campaign is something to talk about, you know,
A good leader would praise members of the organization for
their hard work and a tough situation, talk about lessons
learned and what they'll do differently next time. Appreciate the
sacrifice made by your candidate something I don't know. It
(35:17):
struck me as odd, but maybe I'm reading too much
into it. By twenty fourteen, Merlin Miller had officially parted
ways with the American Freedom Party. He formed his own party,
calling it the American Eagle Party. There's no public animosity here.
In a few speeches during this time period, Miller mentions
(35:40):
in passing that he left his old party, which he
doesn't usually name, because their focus was too narrow. In
one video, American Freedom Party chairman William Johnson says pretty
plainly that his party speaks explicitly, and Miller wanted to
be more implicit about the same ideas. So it's not
(36:01):
an ideological shift. He's just using a different communication style.
But the American Eagle Party was not long for this world.
It never ran a candidate, and the only money had
ever raised came in the form of a couple of
donations from friends. An overwhelming majority of the funds raised
by the group in its less than two years of
(36:23):
existence was from one man, an attorney in Baltimore named
Glenn Keith Allen. In the summer of twenty sixteen, as
he's involved in Miller's American Eagle Party and making donations.
The Southern Poverty Law Center wrote an article about Glen Allen.
(36:44):
He'd been in the movement for years, but he'd never
been publicly identified before. The SBLC had obtained internal accounting
records from the neo Nazi organization National Alliance, and those
documents included receipts showing that Glenn Allen had been a
dues pay member for years. At the time they published
(37:05):
the article, Allen was working as an attorney for the
Baltimore Police Department, a job he quickly lost. And this
is actually when I first encountered Merlin Miller. It wasn't
in the context of the American Third Position Party or
the American Freedom Party or the American Eagle Party. I
saw Merlin Miller's name for the first time years ago
(37:28):
while I was putting together notes about Glenn Allen. Merlin
Miller is on the board of directors at a nonprofit
Allan founded in twenty eighteen with the stated purpose of
providing legal assistance to victims of the thought Police. His words,
not mine. As an attorney, Glenn Allen has bravely defended
(37:49):
the free speech rights of clients like Warren Baylaw, the
Nazi who tried to sue the City of Charlottesville for
failing to roll out the red carpet for his Nazi rally,
members of Patriot Front who were sued for defacing a
mural of black Tennis legend Arthur Ashe members of the
Goham Defense League, and he wrote amicus briefs for members
(38:10):
of the Rise Above movement. His foundation has also been
used to solicit donations for legal defense in cases they
didn't officially take on, like the criminal prosecution of Patriot
Front leader Thomas Rousseau here in Albmarole County, Virginia last year.
Allan is currently representing Nathan Dimigo in his bankruptcy court
battle to discharge the debt from a civil court judgment,
(38:33):
a lawsuit filed against him as an organizer of the
deadly Unite the Right rally. And I actually mentioned Glenn
Allen briefly last week. He's co counsel on William Daniel
Johnson's dried seaweed tariff case. I am on the edge
of my seat waiting for a ruling on that one.
Merlin Miller is to this day on the board of
(38:56):
directors at Allen's Foundation, where his bio describes him as
a filmmaker. He never did make any more movies, but
according to his personal website, he still hopes to make
False Flag of Reality someday. Merlin Miller ran for president
on the ticket of a Nazi party in twenty twelve,
(39:18):
but his heart was never really in it. I don't think.
I think he just wanted to get on TV and
talk about how the Jewish controlled media wouldn't let him
make his movies. The American Freedom Party, though, they moved
on too. When I started researching these episodes, all the
articles about the group were old. It looked like they
(39:41):
were more or less defunct, but I just wasn't looking
in the right places. Admittedly, I wasted a lot of
time this week reading about Arminius, so I didn't get
as far into the story as I'd intended. But what
I actually spent most of this week doing was listening
to interviews with the new generation of the party's leadership.
(40:05):
In March of this year, the American Freedom Party recommitted.
They gathered at the castle in West Virginia owned by
white nationalists publisher Peter Brimlaw and they're talking about making
a real comeback.
Speaker 5 (40:35):
Weed.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
Little Guys is a production of Polso Media and iHeart Radio.
It's researched, written and recorded by me, Molly Conger. Our
executive producers are Sophie Litcherman and Robert Evans. The show
is edited by the wildly talented Bory Gaigan. That theme
music was composed by Brad Dickard. You can email me
at Riddula Guys Podcast at gmail dot com. I would
definitely read it by I probably won't answer, it's nothing personal.
(40:56):
You can exchange conspiracy theories about the show with other
listeners on the Red Lily Guy sub reddit. Just don't
post anything that's gonna make you on my ru Little
Guys h
Host
Molly Conger
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