September 11, 2025 • 56 mins
The American Freedom Party and the American Fart party have a couple things in common - the acronym, for one thing. They've also both filed paperwork with the federal election commission claiming to be a national political party. One is a silly little joke about farts, the other is a group of white nationalists who don't know how to do paperwork.
Sources:
https://www.splcenter.org/resources/extremist-files/american-freedom-party/
https://www.splcenter.org/resources/extremist-files/identity-evropaamerican-identity-movement/
https://www.splcenter.org/resources/extremist-files/kyle-bristow/
https://www.lansingcitypulse.com/stories/white-nationalists-seeking-to-rent-msu-facilities,1820
https://www.antihate.ca/neo_nazi_hate_group_distribute_flyers_outside_canadian_university
https://taskandpurpose.com/news/airman-white-supremacist-group-discharge/
https://accollective.noblogs.org/post/2023/01/30/gordon-kahl/
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/forrest-gump-fake-presidential-candidates-days-numbered/story
https://www.fec.gov/data/committee/C00917005/
https://www.newsweek.com/university-tennessee-protest-white-nationalist-rick-tyler-1437527
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-american-freedom-party-emails_n_5702b470e4b0a06d580659c7
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
In nineteen ninety five, a middle aged former marine decided
to go back to school. He'd been out of the
service for years. He had already had an entire second
career as a mining engineer, but he was having trouble
finding a job. On the eve of the dot com boom,
he saw an opportunity for a new direction. He enrolled
(00:28):
at Arizona State University to study computers. That first semester,
he enrolled in a class called Introduction to Macintosh. Through
the university, he had unlimited access to the World Wide Web,
accessible twenty four to seven at the school's on campus
computer center. By day, he learned the basics of computer programming,
(00:52):
but at night, alone in the computer lab, he browsed
the web. It was there that he first discovered websites
devoted to white nationalism. He devoured the writings of doctor
William Luther Pierce, the leader of the neo Nazi group
National Alliance. He created an account on a forum for
followers of the World Church of the Creator, and within
(01:15):
months he was invited to meet in person with the
leadership of the local chapters of both organizations. Ralph Brandt
enrolled in computer classes looking for a third act, and
I guess he got one. I don't know how proficient
he ever got at computer programming, but in the thirty
years since he first stumbled upon an online forum for racists,
(01:38):
he's found purpose. Now, at nearly seventy six years old,
he's the chairman of white nationalist group angling for a Comeback.
I'm Molly Conger, and this is weird, Little guys. This week,
(02:12):
more than ever, I have felt overwhelmed by the realization
that this show doesn't really have individual episodes. There are
no self contained stories with beginnings, middles, and ends. This
has all just been one really long story that I'm
telling out of order. The last two main Feed episodes,
(02:36):
I told you a story about Merlin Miller, a failed
filmmaker who fell down a rabbit hole after nine to eleven,
became obsessed with conspiracy theories, and ran for president in
twenty twelve on the ticket of an openly white supremacist,
fascist eugenicis political party called the American Third Position Party.
And in that second episode, I hinted that the group
behind his candidacy hasn't really gone away. In the aftermath
(03:02):
of Merlin Miller's disastrous run for president, the party rebranded. Remember,
the group originally formed out of the collapse of a
California group called the Golden State Party, so named because
it was mostly made up of members of the neo
Nazi skinhead group, the Golden State Skinheads. So the Golden
State Party collapsed in two thousand and nine, and they
(03:24):
regrouped as the American Third Position Party in twenty ten,
and then the group rebranded again as the American Freedom
Party in December of twenty twelve. And my plan for
the next episode, this one, the one you're listening to now,
was just to speed run through the party's activities over
the decade that followed, bringing us all the way back
(03:45):
up to the present day, and then be done with it.
But I think we're going to have to revisit some
parts of this story in more depth some other time,
maybe not next week. As I was scrounging around and
compiling my notes and collecting filings from failed campaigns, and
watching grainy old videos of speeches at White Nationalists summits
(04:07):
held in hotel conference rooms, and listening to Nazi podcasts
at double speed, just wishing that they would get to
the point, I started to feel a little bit crazed.
I mean that's not unusual, to be honest, that happens
a lot. It's maddening work for a variety of reasons.
But I kept coming across familiar names, familiar organizations, people
(04:32):
and places and things that I didn't expect to see
in this story, finding connections to past episodes and to
stories I haven't written yet. There's a psychological phenomenon called apophenia.
It's a tendency to see patterns where they don't exist,
to find connections between unrelated things, to see meaning in
(04:56):
random stimuli. In its most extreme, it can be a
symptom of mental illnesses like schizophrenia or obsessive compulsive disorder.
But you also see it on display in the writings
of conspiracy theorists, and you've definitely seen it at work
if you know someone with a gambling problem. But it's
(05:16):
a cognitive bias we all experience from time to time,
seeing shapes in the clouds, seeing a man in the moon,
finding meaning, and coincidentally looking at your watch at eleven eleven.
We all get a little apophenia now and then, and
it's something I try to be really vigilant about. Am
(05:36):
I seeing connections in my research because they're real, or
am I just getting that rush of recognition because at
this point I have at least a few pages of
notes on almost every prominent white supremacist active in the
United States for the last five decades, and everything just
feels a little familiar. And theirs really is a small world.
(05:59):
Sometimes the same guy pops up in a few seemingly
unrelated places, because there's only so many places for that
guy to be if he's been active in the movement
over the course of many years. I try to keep
that pretty front of mind so I don't drive myself
completely mad, you know, But sometimes sometimes it feels like
(06:22):
everything is connected because it is. It's not a coincidence.
It's not apophenia, it's not conspiratorial thinking. It's not my
mind finally buckling under the weight of the horrors. Sometimes
if you dig down deep enough, it's the same guy's
name on all the paperwork. Remember earlier this year when
(06:47):
I accidentally spent three months writing about white supremacist terrorism
and apartheid South Africa, if you can remember back that far.
Those episodes started with vignette about this series of rallies
held in twenty twelve, organized by Monica Huggett Stone's South
Africa Project. But the main rally, the big one, the
(07:08):
one in Sacramento, Monica wasn't actually there. The actual on
the ground organizers in Sacramento were the Golden State Skinheads,
the same group that originally approached William Daniel Johnson to
remake their Golden State Party into the American Third Position Party.
(07:29):
And here's Mike Myers, the leader of the Golden State Skinheads,
whose name is actually Michael SESAMs, taking credit for that
pro apartheid rally when he gave a speech at the
American Freedom Party conference a year later.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
We've thrown rallies, filed for in game permits, and dealt
with the logistics of planning many successful protests, like the
National South Africa Project last year in Sacramento, the NTI
League Immigration protests in Sacramento this year. And that's a
nation about happy dozen or so other activism related events.
And just as pasture of the law.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
And when I went back and looked at the pictures
of those rallies in twenty twelve, there's William Daniel Johnson
in photos of the South Africa Project rally held in
Los Angeles in February of twenty twelve. And it's no
coincidence that William Daniel Johnson was a member of the
board of directors at the Foundation for the Marketplace of Ideas,
(08:32):
a nonprofit founded by white supremacist lawyer Kyle Bristow with
the goal of being an ACLU for the alt right.
The foundation raised the money for the series of lawsuits
that Bristow filed against colleges and universities in twenty seventeen
to force them to allow Richard Spencer to speak on campus.
When that foundation fell apart, one of its other board members,
(08:56):
a man whose name you've heard before, Augustus solen Victus,
tried to start something similar, and he called it the
Conservative Legal Defense Fund. That too, is now defunct, But
the incorporation paperwork for that group shows that American Freedom
Party board members Jamie Kelso and William Daniel Johnson were
(09:17):
not only involved, but they were using Johnson's law office
as the mailing address. And it's no coincidence that Nathan
Dimigo was invited to speak at the party's conference earlier
this year. He actually got his start in organized racism
a decade ago as a member of the American Freedom Party.
(09:39):
Before he founded Identity Europa in twenty sixteen, he was
leading the American Freedom Party's short lived youth division, a
group called National Youth Front. Identity Europa didn't publicly maintain
ties to the American Freedom Party, but it does appear
to have originally just been a rebranding of National Youth
(09:59):
Front after a similarly named but not racist group threatened
to sue over the use of the name. And here's
Nathan Dimigo in December of twenty fifteen talking to Richard
Spencer about the upcoming launch of a renamed National Youth Front.
This is just three months before he re emerged as
(10:20):
the leader of Identity Europa.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
We're going to be looking at relaunching in a few
months from now, and it's going to be, in a
way a much.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
More mature organization.
Speaker 4 (10:30):
It's going to be a European rights organization explicitly.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Nathan Dimigo's reappearance at this year's American Freedom Party conference
was a little bit of a surprise to me. He'd
mostly stepped back from active organizing since the twenty seventeen
United the Right rally. He filed for bankruptcy to try
to get out from under a lawsuit filed against him
and the other organizers of that deadly rally, but he
(11:00):
lost the lawsuit in twenty twenty one, and a bankruptcy
court ruled just last week that the judgment is not
dischargeable in his bankruptcy case. He is currently appealing that
decision with the help of movement lawyer Glen Allen. Glen Allen,
you may recall from the last episode, was the Nazi
lawyer who helped Merlin Miller start his American Eagle Party
(11:24):
after he left the American Freedom Party. And Nathan Dimigo
isn't the only Identity Europa member to resurface in connection
with the American Freedom Party. After Identity Europa collapsed for
good in twenty twenty, some former members were turned to
the group that spawneded, joining the American Freedom Party. Notably,
(11:45):
the party's current executive director is a former Identity Europa
member who calls himself John Fassbender. So there are a
lot of threads to pull here, and there's no way
to unravel the whole ball of yarn today. So I
suppose we should start with what the American Freedom Party
(12:06):
even is, or rather what it is not.
Speaker 4 (12:13):
These views are not. They're not weird, they're not bad, right,
and they're held by totally normal people.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Okay, we're off to a bad start. That's the party's
executive director, John Fasspender, very unconvincingly claiming that they're not weird.
I don't buy it. But that's not the only lie
he tells on podcasts. The American Freedom Party is not
(12:46):
a duly registered national political party, and that's a very
specific claim that he makes in almost every interview. It
just isn't, but Fastpender is quite adamant that it is.
Here he is boasting about it to Macedonian nationalist podcaster
(13:07):
Nick Gilvie in late twenty twenty three.
Speaker 4 (13:12):
In fact, we are currently the only registered political party
that expeuses pro wide views in the United States right now.
There are plenty of provide organizations, but they do not
have say, valid access, the ability to run candidates and
so on and so forth. So we take great pride
in that it is something we work tirelessly to maintain.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
And when he went on Jilvi's show again in April
of twenty twenty four, he made the same claim.
Speaker 4 (13:46):
Yes, we are a political party. We have gone through
the process we have registered.
Speaker 5 (13:51):
We have obtained the necessary signatures to obtain valid access
in various states across the country.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Here's Fastbender telling Nazi podcaster Nick Gregory about it in
November of twenty twenty four.
Speaker 4 (14:07):
The American Freedom Party is the only duly registered political
party in the United States that is with the ability
to run candidates that is to say, which represents pro
white ideals, that is to say, American nationalist principles, white identitarian ideals.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Back in twenty twenty two, a member of the party's
board told Ryan Sanchez, a Groper aligned Nazi podcaster who
calls himself the Culture War Criminal, that their status as
a federal political party did come with some downsides, like
an inability to accept large anonymous cryptocurrency donations, and as.
Speaker 6 (14:54):
A registered political party with the Feral Elections Commission.
Speaker 5 (15:01):
We.
Speaker 6 (15:04):
Have some issues with crypto as well, in terms of
how much crypto we can take. So crypto is not
something we're doing right now directly through the party.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
I know that's an important point. There are some pretty
specific rules, regulations, and laws about how a political party
handles money. I won't claim to know or understand all
of them. You can get pretty confusing, but surely the
guy running a political party would have a passing familiarity
(15:41):
with at least the broad strokes of how that sort
of thing works.
Speaker 7 (15:45):
Right there. One question was what does it take to
register as a political party? Is the process complicated? And
then another person pointed out that part of the reason
of the LCD is that donations to parties are public record.
Do you have any comments on that, because I know
(16:06):
that's something that people talk about all the time. There
is the op SEC issue of like if I send
you the fifty dollars for the year membership, right, is
that publicly known?
Speaker 4 (16:18):
Sure?
Speaker 5 (16:18):
Well, I'll say this as far as you know the
accounting aspect of it, and as far as you know
how information is, what information is public record and what
information isn't. I couldn't give in accurate answer because it's
just not my my level of understanding on that end
of things in the party. Definitely, when it comes to
(16:39):
finances and so on, I'm pretty pretty much ignorant. That
being said, as far as you know sending in donations
and how it is to register as a political party,
first of all, it is there.
Speaker 4 (16:51):
It is.
Speaker 5 (16:52):
It is a bit complicated, you know, it does require
a lot of you.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
Know, basically a lot of paperwork filing.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Oh dear. In May of twenty twenty three, the party's
executive director had no idea if membership dues are being
reported as donations to a political party. It doesn't sound
like he knows what, if any reporting is being done
at all, But he does know that, despite the immense
(17:25):
complexity of the paperwork, somebody definitely filed that paperwork that
makes them a real political party. And just one more,
This one is both very specific and extremely recent. Fassbender
was interviewed by a Canadian white nationalist and aspiring musician,
Steve Hansen, just a few weeks ago. There's no wiggle
(17:47):
room here, Fassbender clearly says, the organization is a federally
recognized political party.
Speaker 4 (17:56):
Yeah, and you know this is a federal political party, correct, Correct?
Speaker 2 (18:06):
But like I said, no, they're not. I'll admit to
you right now, I don't know how to run a
political party either, but I didn't put my face on
a website claiming to, so I think we can all
agree to cut me some slack on the subject. To
be recognized as a political party, you have to register
(18:31):
for state and local elections that may just be at
the state level, and the rules in every state are different.
There are certain activities and fundraising thresholds where a state
level party committee may have to register with the Federal
Election Commission, but honestly I don't care enough to find
out more about that. And of course, to be a
(18:52):
political party at the national level, well, you've got a
file paperwork with the Federal Election Commission and they did try.
I mean, anyone can fill out a form and send
in a piece of paper. That doesn't mean it worked.
Someone filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission last month
(19:14):
to form the American Fart Party, along with paperwork for
a Fart Party candidate committee running for Senate in Iowa.
That doesn't mean that the Fart Party is real. It
just means technically somebody committed a federal crime, although it's
extremely unlikely to be prosecuted. The Fart Party was obviously
(19:40):
someone's idea of a joke that's actually really common. The
FEC receives mountains of prank filings every year. They revised
the rules in twenty sixteen just to make it a
little bit easier to throw away the ones that were
obviously and intentionally fictitious. They're a wreck high number of
(20:00):
fake filings that election cycle. A teenager in Iowa who
filed a statement of candidacy for D's Nuts told ABC
News in twenty sixteen, one of the main reasons that
I ultimately filed was because I found out they had
little staff, resources or authority, and we're supposed to trust
these guys with our elections. I have made it public
(20:23):
that I've withdrawn from the race, but I do not
apologize for what I did. The FEC is vastly underfunded,
and while it seems like I have a burning hatred
of the FEC, I actually support the FAC getting additional funding.
Thank you, dse Nuts. And like I said, it is
(20:57):
technically against the law to knowingly file paperwork with the
Federal Election Commission that contains false or fictitious information, but
enforcement is vanishingly rare. Investigations tend to be limited to
high profile incidents involving real people, like fake paperwork filed
in twenty twenty claiming to be authorized by Kanye West. So,
(21:20):
whether it's an obvious joke like the Fart Party, or
someone who just honestly doesn't know what they're doing, like
the American Freedom Party. Someone at the Federal Election Commission
is reading every piece of paperwork that gets filed. They're understaffed, underfunded,
under resourced in every way imaginable. But they process the
(21:42):
paperwork and when the paperwork is inadequate, they send back
something called a Request for Additional Information an RFAI. It's
a form letter. It's not really personalized, but there's a
little bit of text in there explaining exactly what was
in SIFIA about your filing. Maybe the committee treasurer forgot
(22:04):
to sign it. Maybe the number at the bottom of
a column of dollar amounts isn't the correct sum. Maybe
they just don't think your name is really Jesus Christ
or Forrest Gump, whatever it is. You'll get the RFAI
and then you have a chance to file a corrected form.
Back in twenty twelve, when Merlin Miller was running for
(22:25):
president on the party's ticket, they did file some paperwork.
In April of that year, party chairman William Daniel Johnson
filled out FEC Form one, the form for a statement
of organization for a committee. Now remember back then they
were called the American Third Position Party, So he's filling
out this form as the American third position National Committee,
(22:52):
things started to go arrived. By page two, there are
checkboxes for different types of committees. Is this a party committee,
a candidate committee. If it's a candidate committee, is it
the candidate's principal fundraising committee? Is it a political action committee.
You have to choose, and you can only choose one.
(23:14):
Johnson checked too many boxes. It took the FEC about
two months to get back to him, but the letter
offered some helpful clarification about which boxes you might check
in different circumstances and explain that you can't check all
of them, and it also referred him to the relevant
federal regulations. Johnson then filed a corrected form indicating that yes,
(23:36):
he was trying to form a national party committee. So
that's it, right, he did it. He filled it out right,
not quite. Now that the form is properly filled out,
it can actually be evaluated on the merits. And it
turns out you can't just get a party started by
(23:57):
filling out a form. The fart party's paperwork was filed,
but it's going to get thrown out. Filling out a
form isn't a golden ticket to party recognition, and the
Federal Election Commission makes the final call on whether an
organization has done enough political party stuff to be considered
(24:19):
a political party, things like do they engage in voter
registration drives? Do they have a national headquarters and state
party committees? Do they hold a national convention? Are they
actively seeking and successfully getting ballot access in multiple states
for multiple candidates for office other than just the presidency.
(24:46):
There's no room for any of that on the form, obviously,
So in order to be recognized as a national party committee,
you have to formally request something called an advisory opinion
from the Federal Election Commission. According to the FEC, quote,
advisory opinions are official commission responses to questions about how
(25:08):
federal campaign finance law applies to specific factual situations. From
the web page about the advisory opinion process quote. Anyone
may request an advisory opinion as long as the request
is affected by the question he or she presents a
requestor cannot ask for an advisory opinion about someone else's activities,
(25:30):
hypothetical situations, or general questions of law. Advisory opinion requests
must be in writing. The request must include a complete
description of all facts relevant to the specific transaction or activity,
and they're all a public record. The FEC's website has
(25:51):
a searchable database of every advisory opinion since nineteen seventy five.
The Commission informed the American Free and Party in July
of twenty twelve that they would need to get an
advisory opinion before calling themselves a national party committee, and
William Daniel Johnson wrote back in September of twenty twelve
(26:13):
that he had requested one and he was just waiting
for a decision. But there's no official record that any
opinion was ever sought by anyone involved. I searched every
combination of words and names. I downloaded a spreadsheet that
almost crashed my computer. I looked at every request filed
(26:34):
since twenty ten, just to be safe. It's not there.
It's possible Johnson made some kind of attempt, like maybe
he did write a letter saying make me a party.
But again, the request must include a complete description of
(26:55):
all facts relevant to the specific transaction or activity, and
the database doesn't include requests that were insufficient for consideration.
So maybe he thinks he asked for an advisory opinion,
but according to the official record, no, he did not.
(27:16):
But like I said, the FEC doesn't really have the
resources to chase down every piece of non compliant paperwork.
The American Freedom Party continued to file as though they
were a national party committee, but they weren't actually raising
any money at least not that they really reported. And
they were kind of halfheartedly running candidates for president in
(27:40):
twenty sixteen, but their paperwork was a mess, and they
weren't doing the work to actually get those candidates on ballots.
I mean, forget trying to convince the voters. The party
couldn't even convince their own candidates to stay in the
race or the party. Their initial nominee was a man
(28:01):
named Ken Givedden, but he dropped out in July of
twenty fifteen, just a few months after being nominated. The
man they'd picked as his VP, Bob Whittaker, stepped up
to take the presidential nomination, but he quit too in
April of twenty sixteen. He was mad that the party
was pouring money into a political action committee to pay
(28:22):
for racist robocalls supporting Donald Trump. Bob Whitaker also died
at age seventy six not long after this, so maybe
he just didn't have the stamina. The next candidate on
the list was Tom Bowie. You might actually remember him
from some viral YouTube videos a few years back in
(28:43):
which he proudly accepts the title of most racist man
in America. There's no evidence that his campaign ever raised
or spent any money at all, so as far as
expending their limited enforcement resources, it was probably just not
worthwhile for the Federal Election Commission to follow up unless
(29:06):
and until there was any actual possibility of this party
being meaningfully engaged in anything you could consider actual electoral activity,
So they just kept filling out their paperwork wrong and
filing it. In twenty nineteen, the party was gearing up
for the twenty twenty presidential election. The candidate they chose
(29:31):
this time around was a Christian identity pastor in Tennessee
named Rick Tyler. Tyler had run for office a handful
of times before, never receiving more than a few thousand votes,
but hope springs eternal, I guess. He announced his candidacy
in May of twenty nineteen in a speech at the
University of Tennessee. The university was very clear with the
(29:55):
press at the time that no one invited Rick Tyler
to speak on campus. He had simply rented out the
alumni hall, which is something any member of the public
can do, and the university had no legal avenue to
refuse to rent it to him. Shortly before Rick Tyler's
poorly attended and heavily protested announcement in Tennessee, William Daniel
(30:18):
Johnson wrote a letter to the Federal Election Commission kind of.
He filed an amended statement of organization for the party
that FEC Form one, but stapled to the front of
the form, he attached a letter. I don't think that's
an accepted form of communication with the Federal Election Commission.
(30:42):
I don't think they'll reply to your letter if you
just staple it to a form, But he tried, and
the letter reads as follows. Gentlemen, the requests of this
correspondence are made in conformity with the Freedom of Information
Act USC Paragraph five to five to two, in accordance
(31:02):
with which obligation of response is twenty days. The American
Freedom Party will be applying for FEC certification as a
political party for the United States of America. In order
for the party to meet FEC legal requirements for certification,
we require the FEC to forward to US post haste
within the twenty days as allocated by statute the exact
(31:24):
requirements necessary to comply for FEC full certification for the
twenty twenty election cycle. We request that the provided FEC
requirements as provided by the FEC be irrevocable and be
used and applied to all applying or already approved political
parties equally for the twenty twenty presidential election cycle. That's
(31:45):
definitely not how it works. The Federal Election Commission doesn't
do that. You can't just write to them and ask
them open ended questions about how you should be doing
election stuff. Besides, why didn't he just google it or
hire a political consultant and didn't he already know the answer? Remember,
(32:09):
back in twenty twelve, seven years before this, they sent
him a letter about the requirements he needs to get
an advisory opinion, and he claimed he was working on it.
The rules had not changed in those seven years. I'm
not sure the FEC replied to his letter, though they did,
(32:31):
however a few months later send another request for Additional
information letter, again informing the organization that what they need
to do is get an advisory opinion before they can
be considered a national party committee and Johnson again used
the Federal Election Commission electronic filing system to send them
(32:52):
a letter, so his letter is preserved in the committee's filings,
and he wrote, I don't understand what you request. We
only take in under ten thousand dollars per year. Do
we need to petition the Commission for an advisory opinion?
Should we check a different box on our forms or
(33:14):
use different forms we file Form three X. Your letter
threatens enforcement action if our response is not adequate. I
don't want that, but I don't understand what the issue is.
And then shortly after he filed that letter, they just
stopped filing entirely, probably in part because they were feeling
(33:38):
discouraged by their paperwork problems and they weren't actually raising
any money to report. But also their candidate got arrested
for tax evasion, so maybe their hearts just weren't in
it anymore. But I just can't wrap my head around
(34:07):
Johnson's confusion here. The guidance available on the FEC's website
is clear enough. He had been personally and directly notified
about the need to request an advisory opinion back in
twenty twelve. He even claimed to have done it so
obviously he knew he needed to do it. But the
(34:30):
most galling thing about this feigned ignorance is he knows
someone who knows how to do this. This isn't foreign territory.
When I was looking through the database of advisory opinions,
I looked specifically for any opinion on this particular subject,
some kind of third party group trying to get recognition
(34:52):
as a national political party. I wanted to see what
those requests look like, how often this is happening, and
how the federal allow commissions evaluating them. The Green Party's
request was initially denied in nineteen ninety six, but when
they reapplied in two thousand and one, they were granted
national party status. The Reform Party went through the process
(35:14):
in nineteen ninety eight. The Constitution Party, which was originally
called the US Taxpayers Party, was denied in nineteen ninety two,
but tried again in nineteen ninety five and gained party status.
So I'm flipping through these opinions and these applications, and
it's clear that the American Freedom Party wouldn't qualify even
(35:34):
if they had tried, But they could have at least
looked to these past applications to see how they were
supposed to structure this and what kinds of party activities
they should be aiming for if they wanted to qualify.
But maybe William Daniel Johnson didn't think to search the
database for inspiration. But why didn't he just ask the
(35:58):
party's executive director, Not John Fasspender. He's still thinking high
school at this point. But from twenty ten to twenty fourteen,
the American Freedom Party's executive director was a man named
Don Wassell, and from nineteen eighty seven until nineteen ninety five,
Don Wassell was the executive director of another party, the
(36:22):
Populist Party. When the Populist Party ran David Duke for
president in nineteen eighty eight, Don Wassell submitted the party's
request for an advisory opinion. So in twenty twelve when
the party got that letter, why was it a shock?
(36:42):
I mean, the Populist Party didn't get national party status.
So I'm not saying Wassall would have been good at it,
or that he would have succeeded, but it does at
least appear as though he successfully stated the party's case
to the degree that was possible. In nineteen eighty eight,
and that's something Johnson doesn't seem to have even tried
(37:02):
to do. By the end of the summer of twenty twenty,
the American Freedom Party had voluntarily terminated their committee with
the Federal Election Commission, and they've never refiled. There is
no currently active committee associated with that name, nor any
committee I can find associated with the names of any
(37:24):
current or former member of their Board of directors. They
never successfully gained federal recognition as a national party, but
at least until twenty twenty, they could point to those
forms and pretend now they're not even trying. I guess
it is possible that Fassbender is telling the truth about
(37:46):
gaining ballot access or party recognition in individual states, although
I can find no evidence of it, and he never
says which states. Every state has its own rules, and
they don't all have good websites. But I dug around
on the Board of Election site for a dozen or
(38:07):
so states that I believe they have some connection to,
and I couldn't find anything recent. In California, the only
state that has easily searchable records of all requests file
with the state for party status, they only ever tried
once in twenty fifteen, in California, a party attempting to
(38:30):
qualify for recognition has to submit signed affidavits from zero
point thirty three percent of the total number of registered
voters in the state. So in twenty sixteen that would
have meant around fifty seven thousand signatures. They submitted five,
not five thousand, not five hundred. Literally one two three
(38:55):
four five they got five signatures. So even though I
don't have numbers that detailed from other states, there's no
state whose rules would reward that level of effort. Every
state requires at least some thousands of signatures, even the Dakotas.
(39:17):
The American Freedom Party doesn't even have a corporate entity
behind it anymore. The party incorporated in North Dakota in
twenty seventeen, but board member Jamie Kelso stopped filing the
paperwork in twenty nineteen, and the state dissolved the corporation
in twenty twenty one. The California brand that Johnson incorporated
(39:37):
in twenty nineteen was forfeited in twenty twenty for a
failure to file reports. They very recently updated their membership
application page, removing any clear reference to how much it
costs or how you can make that payment, but until
June of twenty twenty five, the website instructed applicants to
(39:58):
mail a check for fifty do to a UPS store
mailbox in New York City. They don't sell shirts or
stickers or hats. You can't pay online, you can't make
a donation. They aren't even asking for money, which seems
hard to believe. But I looked everywhere. Aside from that
(40:22):
recently removed page on the website with instructions to make
checks out to the American Freedom Party, there's no publicly
visible information about how you could give them money, even
if you wanted to, And that seems like it would
be a pretty big problem. How can you expect to
recruit younger members if the only way to get involved
is to mail a paper check. That's a real barrier
(40:45):
to entry in the twenty first century. But maybe the
logistics aren't a big deal because there aren't very many
members even trying to pay those dues. They don't hold
public events, so there's there's no way to even guess
how many members they might have. The group's channel on
the messaging app Telegram has about three thousand members, but
(41:09):
that has almost no correlation to actual group membership. Patriot Front,
for example, has seventeen thousand followers on Telegram and probably
just a few hundred members nationwide. In twenty twenty two,
John Fassbender claimed that membership was growing at quote an
alarming rate, but he wouldn't give a number. Charles Lincoln II,
(41:34):
a disbarred attorney who's occasionally listed on the party's FEC
filings as their treasurer, said in a live stream last
year that he'd been involved with the party since its founding,
and he'd actually just come from a board meeting earlier
that day, but he had no idea how many members
the group might have.
Speaker 1 (41:55):
AFP. I don't know how to introduce the AFP except
it's a very small It's basically the board and a
few members Beside the board. I don't know what our
membership is.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
Not only can he not even begin to guess how
many members there might be, He's never met one. They
might not exist.
Speaker 1 (42:23):
Again. I can speak mostly for the board rather than
the membership. I don't really know any members who are
not members of the board.
Speaker 2 (42:34):
This was in February of twenty twenty four. Lincoln claims
to have been involved with the organization for fourteen years,
he's attending board meetings, he was responsible for the party's
campaign finance reports when they were trying to run a
candidate for president, and he's never actually met a member
(42:56):
of the party aside from the board of directors. In
another one of Lincoln's streams that same month, he had
party chairman William Daniel Johnson on and he characterized the
number of members only as quote, not a whole lot.
So they're not really running candidates, they're not really registered
(43:20):
as a political party. They don't want your money. And
their own chairman said last year that there aren't very
many members, So what are they doing. I listened to
every crumb of audio I could find from the last
four years. There's not a ton, but it's still more
(43:42):
than I would have preferred to listen to. The party
went sort of dormant in twenty twenty after they terminated
their committee with the FEC, their presidential candidate got arrested,
and their corporate entity was involuntarily dissolved. They didn't do
much for a while. In the fall of twenty twenty one,
(44:03):
they were ready to announce to the world that they
were back from their hiatus.
Speaker 4 (44:10):
The reason being is We've been on a hiatus for
a long time now, while we completely overhauled and relaunched
the party, it is completely unrecognizable from what it was
a year ago.
Speaker 2 (44:24):
Well maybe not the world, but a conference room full
of racists attending the American Renaissance anual conference. Anyway, the
group had a new website, a couple new board members
under forty and they were ready to try again. I
felt like I was missing something. I kept triple checking
(44:44):
the dates on these videos because it just didn't make
any sense. From the fall of twenty twenty one through
interviews recorded this year in twenty twenty five, they seem
to be just constantly announcing that they're it's happening any
day now. We're just about to announce something new and exciting.
(45:05):
We're back from our hiatus. You haven't seen us in years,
and we're back now, and it never happens. In two
interviews given over a year apart, Fastbender boasts that the
party is just about to launch a nationwide campus organization,
a wing of the party for college students. The plan
(45:27):
was so close to being implemented three years ago. The
website hasn't had a new article at almost a year
They sometimes have a Twitter account, but it keeps getting
banned for hate speech. They hid information about their national
convention behind a password on the website and never publicly
(45:48):
posted any information about how an interested prospective member might
inquire about attending. That's not how political parties behave, but
it isn't out of step with the standard mo of
a group whose members don't want to be publicly associated
with it. Their executive director isn't even using his real name.
(46:12):
Jonathan Magnano started using the name Johann Fassbender in twenty
eighteen in private chats for Identity Europa members. And aside
from that smattering of candidates in the twenty tens, you
know Merlin Miller in twenty twelve, Harry Bertram for some
state level offices in West Virginia twenty eleven, twenty twelve,
(46:33):
that disastrous revolving door of candidates for president in twenty sixteen.
The party doesn't really run candidates. Most of the campaigns
publicly associated with the party aren't even on the ballot
as American Freedom Party candidates, if they got on the
ballot at all. Current party chairman Ralph Brandt tried to
(46:57):
run for city Council in Mesa, Arizona, and twenty tive twelve,
but he failed to collect the two hundred and thirty
three signatures required to get his name on the ballot.
When Harry Bertram ran for office in West Virginia, he
was usually just listed on the ballot as an independent
candidate and instead of receiving funds labeled as being from
(47:20):
his party. One significant cash and fusion related to Bertram's
twenty eleven campaign came in as an independent expenditure from
the party's chairman in his personal capacity, which, again, I
don't know a lot about elections, but that doesn't seem
entirely in line with my understanding of campaign finance law.
(47:44):
I can't actually find anyone publicly claiming to be running
as a member of the American Freedom Party at any
time in any place in the last five years since
their big relaunch and recommitment, but Fastpender is constantly claiming
it's happening. He just can't tell you who the candidates are,
(48:07):
or where they live, or what they're running for. So
the party is fielding candidates, but only secretly. When he
was asked last month how many candidates the party ran
in the most recent election cycle, he finally gave a number.
Speaker 4 (48:27):
Three, so we had three. Typically, the AFP holds our
candidates identities and their ties to the party relatively close
for obvious reasons, because.
Speaker 3 (48:41):
No, we don't.
Speaker 4 (48:42):
That's not to say that we don't run some candidates
very openly as AFP, though we do. There's stratton, there's
validity in both. But as far as we're concerned, it's
about winning first and foremost. If you need to run
as a Democrat in an area, run as a Democrat.
If you need to run as a Republican, run as
a Republican. If the viability is they are to run
as the American Freedom Party openly, run as the American
(49:04):
Freedom Party.
Speaker 2 (49:08):
So what does it mean to be a political party
If you can't accept or spend money. The board members
don't even know if there are members of the party,
and it's so toxic to be associated with the brand
that you can't even say the names of your own candidates,
(49:30):
In what way is that a political party? Honestly, I
don't know. I'm trying so hard to figure out some
kind of plausible theory of what's going on here to
offer you, because usually the answer is grift, plain and simple.
But they aren't asking for money. I don't get it.
(49:55):
The party does seem to be making another attempt to
move forward a national convention in March of this year,
again because they can't convince their own members to publicly
associate with the party. Even the very limited number of
carefully curated photos of the event have all of the
attendee's faces blurret out. On social media. They posted videos
(50:19):
of just four speakers, and none of those speakers are
in the party leadership, at least not publicly. There's no
indication that they're current chairman Ralph Brandt even attended. It's
not who was missing that really intrigued me, though, it's
who was there. The keynote speaker at the party's convention
(50:43):
wasn't a member of the board of directors. It wasn't
a past or current candidate for office on the party's ticket.
It was Thomas Rousseau, the leader of Patriot Front. I
couldn't tell you how many members of the American Free
Edom Party attended the convention, but photos show a contingent
(51:04):
of about a dozen members of Patriot Front. In December
of twenty twenty four, just a few months before that convention,
in March, the American Freedom Party issued an official statement
endorsing Patriot Front, declaring their values to be in seamless
harmony and pledging to stand shoulder to shoulder united by
(51:25):
their shared vision. This is perhaps a return to their roots.
The party originally grew out of a group of skinheads
trying to find a way to look legitimate. The white
power movement has always had suits and boots. That is
your respectable intellectual types, your Richard Spencer, dapper Nazi kind
(51:48):
of guys, your hotel conference rooms full of middle aged
men watching a PowerPoint about the genetic superiority of the
Aryan race. Then it has their counterparts, the street fighters,
the black shirts, the men who hide their faces and
wrap their knuckles. The two groups often find themselves at odds,
(52:09):
disagreeing about tactics and optics, but they need each other
and they know it all the way Back in twenty
thirteen at the American Freedom Party conference, board member Tom
Sunich stood up to say something after the leader of
the Golden State Skinheads finished his remarks.
Speaker 8 (52:34):
I would like to thank this young gentleman. This is
what I keep saying. It is a very good people.
I can do my job with my pen, with my cravat,
with my suit, and he can do his job. But
I know first hand there's a frontman, there's a good people,
and certainly you can come in in just as we
can be coming in so folks to religious service, thank
(52:55):
you very much.
Speaker 2 (53:03):
I can do my job with my pen, with my suit,
and he can do his job. Everyone in the room
knows what that job is. The job of the Nazi
skinhead is violence. Patriot Fronts aesthetic is obviously very different
(53:28):
from the classic neo Nazi skinhead. They aren't bald and tattooed,
they've abandoned the Doc Martins. Culturally, they're very different from
skinheads in their clean cut khaki pants and matching jackets.
But politically, I think the symbiosis proposed here is similar.
(53:51):
We'll do the paperwork and give speeches, and you will
march in the streets. The American Freedom Party has never
once succeeded in any of its endeavors, and it's unclear
what their future plans are at this point, but it
does look a little bit like there are some groups
out there trying to once again unite the right. Hopefully
(54:18):
this isn't a story we have to come back to,
at least not with a new ending. I do hope
to circle back on some of those intriguing loosens in
the middle eventually. For now, though, I'll leave you with
this inspiring statement made by one of the speakers at
that convention in March. Sam Dixon has long since retired
(54:39):
from his career as a lawyer for the Klan. These days,
he makes the rounds speaking at white nationalist events all
over the country, and he runs a lucrative real estate business,
purchasing property tax debt and forcing old people out of
their homes for pennies on the dollar. He gave a
rambling thirty minute speech, managing to impart absolutely no wisdom
(55:01):
gleaned from his sixty years in the movement, but he
had one very important message for the white nationalists attending
that Ethno State Party conference at a mysterious castle in
West Virginia.
Speaker 4 (55:16):
We are not weird of us.
Speaker 5 (55:17):
We are normal.
Speaker 2 (55:33):
Weird Little Guys is a production of Cool Zone Media
and iHeartRadio. It's research, written and recorded by me Lollie Conger.
Our executive producers are Sophie Leutman and Robert Evans. The
show is edited by the wildly talented Rory Gigan. The
theme music was composed by Brad Dickert. You can email
me at Weirdly Guys podcast at gmail dot com. I
will definitely read it, but I probably won't answer it.
It's nothing personal. You can exchange conspiracy theories about the
(55:57):
show with other listeners on the weird Little Guys subredd.
It just don't post anything that's gonna make you one
of my word Little Guys
Cool zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
In nineteen ninety five, a middle aged former marine decided
to go back to school. He'd been out of the
service for years. He had already had an entire second
career as a mining engineer, but he was having trouble
finding a job. On the eve of the dot com boom,
he saw an opportunity for a new direction. He enrolled
(00:28):
at Arizona State University to study computers. That first semester,
he enrolled in a class called Introduction to Macintosh. Through
the university, he had unlimited access to the World Wide Web,
accessible twenty four to seven at the school's on campus
computer center. By day, he learned the basics of computer programming,
(00:52):
but at night, alone in the computer lab, he browsed
the web. It was there that he first discovered websites
devoted to white nationalism. He devoured the writings of doctor
William Luther Pierce, the leader of the neo Nazi group
National Alliance. He created an account on a forum for
followers of the World Church of the Creator, and within
(01:15):
months he was invited to meet in person with the
leadership of the local chapters of both organizations. Ralph Brandt
enrolled in computer classes looking for a third act, and
I guess he got one. I don't know how proficient
he ever got at computer programming, but in the thirty
years since he first stumbled upon an online forum for racists,
(01:38):
he's found purpose. Now, at nearly seventy six years old,
he's the chairman of white nationalist group angling for a Comeback.
I'm Molly Conger, and this is weird, Little guys. This week,
(02:12):
more than ever, I have felt overwhelmed by the realization
that this show doesn't really have individual episodes. There are
no self contained stories with beginnings, middles, and ends. This
has all just been one really long story that I'm
telling out of order. The last two main Feed episodes,
(02:36):
I told you a story about Merlin Miller, a failed
filmmaker who fell down a rabbit hole after nine to eleven,
became obsessed with conspiracy theories, and ran for president in
twenty twelve on the ticket of an openly white supremacist,
fascist eugenicis political party called the American Third Position Party.
And in that second episode, I hinted that the group
behind his candidacy hasn't really gone away. In the aftermath
(03:02):
of Merlin Miller's disastrous run for president, the party rebranded. Remember,
the group originally formed out of the collapse of a
California group called the Golden State Party, so named because
it was mostly made up of members of the neo
Nazi skinhead group, the Golden State Skinheads. So the Golden
State Party collapsed in two thousand and nine, and they
(03:24):
regrouped as the American Third Position Party in twenty ten,
and then the group rebranded again as the American Freedom
Party in December of twenty twelve. And my plan for
the next episode, this one, the one you're listening to now,
was just to speed run through the party's activities over
the decade that followed, bringing us all the way back
(03:45):
up to the present day, and then be done with it.
But I think we're going to have to revisit some
parts of this story in more depth some other time,
maybe not next week. As I was scrounging around and
compiling my notes and collecting filings from failed campaigns, and
watching grainy old videos of speeches at White Nationalists summits
(04:07):
held in hotel conference rooms, and listening to Nazi podcasts
at double speed, just wishing that they would get to
the point, I started to feel a little bit crazed.
I mean that's not unusual, to be honest, that happens
a lot. It's maddening work for a variety of reasons.
But I kept coming across familiar names, familiar organizations, people
(04:32):
and places and things that I didn't expect to see
in this story, finding connections to past episodes and to
stories I haven't written yet. There's a psychological phenomenon called apophenia.
It's a tendency to see patterns where they don't exist,
to find connections between unrelated things, to see meaning in
(04:56):
random stimuli. In its most extreme, it can be a
symptom of mental illnesses like schizophrenia or obsessive compulsive disorder.
But you also see it on display in the writings
of conspiracy theorists, and you've definitely seen it at work
if you know someone with a gambling problem. But it's
(05:16):
a cognitive bias we all experience from time to time,
seeing shapes in the clouds, seeing a man in the moon,
finding meaning, and coincidentally looking at your watch at eleven eleven.
We all get a little apophenia now and then, and
it's something I try to be really vigilant about. Am
(05:36):
I seeing connections in my research because they're real, or
am I just getting that rush of recognition because at
this point I have at least a few pages of
notes on almost every prominent white supremacist active in the
United States for the last five decades, and everything just
feels a little familiar. And theirs really is a small world.
(05:59):
Sometimes the same guy pops up in a few seemingly
unrelated places, because there's only so many places for that
guy to be if he's been active in the movement
over the course of many years. I try to keep
that pretty front of mind so I don't drive myself
completely mad, you know, But sometimes sometimes it feels like
(06:22):
everything is connected because it is. It's not a coincidence.
It's not apophenia, it's not conspiratorial thinking. It's not my
mind finally buckling under the weight of the horrors. Sometimes
if you dig down deep enough, it's the same guy's
name on all the paperwork. Remember earlier this year when
(06:47):
I accidentally spent three months writing about white supremacist terrorism
and apartheid South Africa, if you can remember back that far.
Those episodes started with vignette about this series of rallies
held in twenty twelve, organized by Monica Huggett Stone's South
Africa Project. But the main rally, the big one, the
(07:08):
one in Sacramento, Monica wasn't actually there. The actual on
the ground organizers in Sacramento were the Golden State Skinheads,
the same group that originally approached William Daniel Johnson to
remake their Golden State Party into the American Third Position Party.
(07:29):
And here's Mike Myers, the leader of the Golden State Skinheads,
whose name is actually Michael SESAMs, taking credit for that
pro apartheid rally when he gave a speech at the
American Freedom Party conference a year later.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
We've thrown rallies, filed for in game permits, and dealt
with the logistics of planning many successful protests, like the
National South Africa Project last year in Sacramento, the NTI
League Immigration protests in Sacramento this year. And that's a
nation about happy dozen or so other activism related events.
And just as pasture of the law.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
And when I went back and looked at the pictures
of those rallies in twenty twelve, there's William Daniel Johnson
in photos of the South Africa Project rally held in
Los Angeles in February of twenty twelve. And it's no
coincidence that William Daniel Johnson was a member of the
board of directors at the Foundation for the Marketplace of Ideas,
(08:32):
a nonprofit founded by white supremacist lawyer Kyle Bristow with
the goal of being an ACLU for the alt right.
The foundation raised the money for the series of lawsuits
that Bristow filed against colleges and universities in twenty seventeen
to force them to allow Richard Spencer to speak on campus.
When that foundation fell apart, one of its other board members,
(08:56):
a man whose name you've heard before, Augustus solen Victus,
tried to start something similar, and he called it the
Conservative Legal Defense Fund. That too, is now defunct, But
the incorporation paperwork for that group shows that American Freedom
Party board members Jamie Kelso and William Daniel Johnson were
(09:17):
not only involved, but they were using Johnson's law office
as the mailing address. And it's no coincidence that Nathan
Dimigo was invited to speak at the party's conference earlier
this year. He actually got his start in organized racism
a decade ago as a member of the American Freedom Party.
(09:39):
Before he founded Identity Europa in twenty sixteen, he was
leading the American Freedom Party's short lived youth division, a
group called National Youth Front. Identity Europa didn't publicly maintain
ties to the American Freedom Party, but it does appear
to have originally just been a rebranding of National Youth
(09:59):
Front after a similarly named but not racist group threatened
to sue over the use of the name. And here's
Nathan Dimigo in December of twenty fifteen talking to Richard
Spencer about the upcoming launch of a renamed National Youth Front.
This is just three months before he re emerged as
(10:20):
the leader of Identity Europa.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
We're going to be looking at relaunching in a few
months from now, and it's going to be, in a
way a much.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
More mature organization.
Speaker 4 (10:30):
It's going to be a European rights organization explicitly.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Nathan Dimigo's reappearance at this year's American Freedom Party conference
was a little bit of a surprise to me. He'd
mostly stepped back from active organizing since the twenty seventeen
United the Right rally. He filed for bankruptcy to try
to get out from under a lawsuit filed against him
and the other organizers of that deadly rally, but he
(11:00):
lost the lawsuit in twenty twenty one, and a bankruptcy
court ruled just last week that the judgment is not
dischargeable in his bankruptcy case. He is currently appealing that
decision with the help of movement lawyer Glen Allen. Glen Allen,
you may recall from the last episode, was the Nazi
lawyer who helped Merlin Miller start his American Eagle Party
(11:24):
after he left the American Freedom Party. And Nathan Dimigo
isn't the only Identity Europa member to resurface in connection
with the American Freedom Party. After Identity Europa collapsed for
good in twenty twenty, some former members were turned to
the group that spawneded, joining the American Freedom Party. Notably,
(11:45):
the party's current executive director is a former Identity Europa
member who calls himself John Fassbender. So there are a
lot of threads to pull here, and there's no way
to unravel the whole ball of yarn today. So I
suppose we should start with what the American Freedom Party
(12:06):
even is, or rather what it is not.
Speaker 4 (12:13):
These views are not. They're not weird, they're not bad, right,
and they're held by totally normal people.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Okay, we're off to a bad start. That's the party's
executive director, John Fasspender, very unconvincingly claiming that they're not weird.
I don't buy it. But that's not the only lie
he tells on podcasts. The American Freedom Party is not
(12:46):
a duly registered national political party, and that's a very
specific claim that he makes in almost every interview. It
just isn't, but Fastpender is quite adamant that it is.
Here he is boasting about it to Macedonian nationalist podcaster
(13:07):
Nick Gilvie in late twenty twenty three.
Speaker 4 (13:12):
In fact, we are currently the only registered political party
that expeuses pro wide views in the United States right now.
There are plenty of provide organizations, but they do not
have say, valid access, the ability to run candidates and
so on and so forth. So we take great pride
in that it is something we work tirelessly to maintain.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
And when he went on Jilvi's show again in April
of twenty twenty four, he made the same claim.
Speaker 4 (13:46):
Yes, we are a political party. We have gone through
the process we have registered.
Speaker 5 (13:51):
We have obtained the necessary signatures to obtain valid access
in various states across the country.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Here's Fastbender telling Nazi podcaster Nick Gregory about it in
November of twenty twenty four.
Speaker 4 (14:07):
The American Freedom Party is the only duly registered political
party in the United States that is with the ability
to run candidates that is to say, which represents pro
white ideals, that is to say, American nationalist principles, white identitarian ideals.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Back in twenty twenty two, a member of the party's
board told Ryan Sanchez, a Groper aligned Nazi podcaster who
calls himself the Culture War Criminal, that their status as
a federal political party did come with some downsides, like
an inability to accept large anonymous cryptocurrency donations, and as.
Speaker 6 (14:54):
A registered political party with the Feral Elections Commission.
Speaker 5 (15:01):
We.
Speaker 6 (15:04):
Have some issues with crypto as well, in terms of
how much crypto we can take. So crypto is not
something we're doing right now directly through the party.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
I know that's an important point. There are some pretty
specific rules, regulations, and laws about how a political party
handles money. I won't claim to know or understand all
of them. You can get pretty confusing, but surely the
guy running a political party would have a passing familiarity
(15:41):
with at least the broad strokes of how that sort
of thing works.
Speaker 7 (15:45):
Right there. One question was what does it take to
register as a political party? Is the process complicated? And
then another person pointed out that part of the reason
of the LCD is that donations to parties are public record.
Do you have any comments on that, because I know
(16:06):
that's something that people talk about all the time. There
is the op SEC issue of like if I send
you the fifty dollars for the year membership, right, is
that publicly known?
Speaker 4 (16:18):
Sure?
Speaker 5 (16:18):
Well, I'll say this as far as you know the
accounting aspect of it, and as far as you know
how information is, what information is public record and what
information isn't. I couldn't give in accurate answer because it's
just not my my level of understanding on that end
of things in the party. Definitely, when it comes to
(16:39):
finances and so on, I'm pretty pretty much ignorant. That
being said, as far as you know sending in donations
and how it is to register as a political party,
first of all, it is there.
Speaker 4 (16:51):
It is.
Speaker 5 (16:52):
It is a bit complicated, you know, it does require
a lot of you.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
Know, basically a lot of paperwork filing.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Oh dear. In May of twenty twenty three, the party's
executive director had no idea if membership dues are being
reported as donations to a political party. It doesn't sound
like he knows what, if any reporting is being done
at all, But he does know that, despite the immense
(17:25):
complexity of the paperwork, somebody definitely filed that paperwork that
makes them a real political party. And just one more,
This one is both very specific and extremely recent. Fassbender
was interviewed by a Canadian white nationalist and aspiring musician,
Steve Hansen, just a few weeks ago. There's no wiggle
(17:47):
room here, Fassbender clearly says, the organization is a federally
recognized political party.
Speaker 4 (17:56):
Yeah, and you know this is a federal political party, correct, Correct?
Speaker 2 (18:06):
But like I said, no, they're not. I'll admit to
you right now, I don't know how to run a
political party either, but I didn't put my face on
a website claiming to, so I think we can all
agree to cut me some slack on the subject. To
be recognized as a political party, you have to register
(18:31):
for state and local elections that may just be at
the state level, and the rules in every state are different.
There are certain activities and fundraising thresholds where a state
level party committee may have to register with the Federal
Election Commission, but honestly I don't care enough to find
out more about that. And of course, to be a
(18:52):
political party at the national level, well, you've got a
file paperwork with the Federal Election Commission and they did try.
I mean, anyone can fill out a form and send
in a piece of paper. That doesn't mean it worked.
Someone filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission last month
(19:14):
to form the American Fart Party, along with paperwork for
a Fart Party candidate committee running for Senate in Iowa.
That doesn't mean that the Fart Party is real. It
just means technically somebody committed a federal crime, although it's
extremely unlikely to be prosecuted. The Fart Party was obviously
(19:40):
someone's idea of a joke that's actually really common. The
FEC receives mountains of prank filings every year. They revised
the rules in twenty sixteen just to make it a
little bit easier to throw away the ones that were
obviously and intentionally fictitious. They're a wreck high number of
(20:00):
fake filings that election cycle. A teenager in Iowa who
filed a statement of candidacy for D's Nuts told ABC
News in twenty sixteen, one of the main reasons that
I ultimately filed was because I found out they had
little staff, resources or authority, and we're supposed to trust
these guys with our elections. I have made it public
(20:23):
that I've withdrawn from the race, but I do not
apologize for what I did. The FEC is vastly underfunded,
and while it seems like I have a burning hatred
of the FEC, I actually support the FAC getting additional funding.
Thank you, dse Nuts. And like I said, it is
(20:57):
technically against the law to knowingly file paperwork with the
Federal Election Commission that contains false or fictitious information, but
enforcement is vanishingly rare. Investigations tend to be limited to
high profile incidents involving real people, like fake paperwork filed
in twenty twenty claiming to be authorized by Kanye West. So,
(21:20):
whether it's an obvious joke like the Fart Party, or
someone who just honestly doesn't know what they're doing, like
the American Freedom Party. Someone at the Federal Election Commission
is reading every piece of paperwork that gets filed. They're understaffed, underfunded,
under resourced in every way imaginable. But they process the
(21:42):
paperwork and when the paperwork is inadequate, they send back
something called a Request for Additional Information an RFAI. It's
a form letter. It's not really personalized, but there's a
little bit of text in there explaining exactly what was
in SIFIA about your filing. Maybe the committee treasurer forgot
(22:04):
to sign it. Maybe the number at the bottom of
a column of dollar amounts isn't the correct sum. Maybe
they just don't think your name is really Jesus Christ
or Forrest Gump, whatever it is. You'll get the RFAI
and then you have a chance to file a corrected form.
Back in twenty twelve, when Merlin Miller was running for
(22:25):
president on the party's ticket, they did file some paperwork.
In April of that year, party chairman William Daniel Johnson
filled out FEC Form one, the form for a statement
of organization for a committee. Now remember back then they
were called the American Third Position Party, So he's filling
out this form as the American third position National Committee,
(22:52):
things started to go arrived. By page two, there are
checkboxes for different types of committees. Is this a party committee,
a candidate committee. If it's a candidate committee, is it
the candidate's principal fundraising committee? Is it a political action committee.
You have to choose, and you can only choose one.
(23:14):
Johnson checked too many boxes. It took the FEC about
two months to get back to him, but the letter
offered some helpful clarification about which boxes you might check
in different circumstances and explain that you can't check all
of them, and it also referred him to the relevant
federal regulations. Johnson then filed a corrected form indicating that yes,
(23:36):
he was trying to form a national party committee. So
that's it, right, he did it. He filled it out right,
not quite. Now that the form is properly filled out,
it can actually be evaluated on the merits. And it
turns out you can't just get a party started by
(23:57):
filling out a form. The fart party's paperwork was filed,
but it's going to get thrown out. Filling out a
form isn't a golden ticket to party recognition, and the
Federal Election Commission makes the final call on whether an
organization has done enough political party stuff to be considered
(24:19):
a political party, things like do they engage in voter
registration drives? Do they have a national headquarters and state
party committees? Do they hold a national convention? Are they
actively seeking and successfully getting ballot access in multiple states
for multiple candidates for office other than just the presidency.
(24:46):
There's no room for any of that on the form, obviously,
So in order to be recognized as a national party committee,
you have to formally request something called an advisory opinion
from the Federal Election Commission. According to the FEC, quote,
advisory opinions are official commission responses to questions about how
(25:08):
federal campaign finance law applies to specific factual situations. From
the web page about the advisory opinion process quote. Anyone
may request an advisory opinion as long as the request
is affected by the question he or she presents a
requestor cannot ask for an advisory opinion about someone else's activities,
(25:30):
hypothetical situations, or general questions of law. Advisory opinion requests
must be in writing. The request must include a complete
description of all facts relevant to the specific transaction or activity,
and they're all a public record. The FEC's website has
(25:51):
a searchable database of every advisory opinion since nineteen seventy five.
The Commission informed the American Free and Party in July
of twenty twelve that they would need to get an
advisory opinion before calling themselves a national party committee, and
William Daniel Johnson wrote back in September of twenty twelve
(26:13):
that he had requested one and he was just waiting
for a decision. But there's no official record that any
opinion was ever sought by anyone involved. I searched every
combination of words and names. I downloaded a spreadsheet that
almost crashed my computer. I looked at every request filed
(26:34):
since twenty ten, just to be safe. It's not there.
It's possible Johnson made some kind of attempt, like maybe
he did write a letter saying make me a party.
But again, the request must include a complete description of
(26:55):
all facts relevant to the specific transaction or activity, and
the database doesn't include requests that were insufficient for consideration.
So maybe he thinks he asked for an advisory opinion,
but according to the official record, no, he did not.
(27:16):
But like I said, the FEC doesn't really have the
resources to chase down every piece of non compliant paperwork.
The American Freedom Party continued to file as though they
were a national party committee, but they weren't actually raising
any money at least not that they really reported. And
they were kind of halfheartedly running candidates for president in
(27:40):
twenty sixteen, but their paperwork was a mess, and they
weren't doing the work to actually get those candidates on ballots.
I mean, forget trying to convince the voters. The party
couldn't even convince their own candidates to stay in the
race or the party. Their initial nominee was a man
(28:01):
named Ken Givedden, but he dropped out in July of
twenty fifteen, just a few months after being nominated. The
man they'd picked as his VP, Bob Whittaker, stepped up
to take the presidential nomination, but he quit too in
April of twenty sixteen. He was mad that the party
was pouring money into a political action committee to pay
(28:22):
for racist robocalls supporting Donald Trump. Bob Whitaker also died
at age seventy six not long after this, so maybe
he just didn't have the stamina. The next candidate on
the list was Tom Bowie. You might actually remember him
from some viral YouTube videos a few years back in
(28:43):
which he proudly accepts the title of most racist man
in America. There's no evidence that his campaign ever raised
or spent any money at all, so as far as
expending their limited enforcement resources, it was probably just not
worthwhile for the Federal Election Commission to follow up unless
(29:06):
and until there was any actual possibility of this party
being meaningfully engaged in anything you could consider actual electoral activity,
So they just kept filling out their paperwork wrong and
filing it. In twenty nineteen, the party was gearing up
for the twenty twenty presidential election. The candidate they chose
(29:31):
this time around was a Christian identity pastor in Tennessee
named Rick Tyler. Tyler had run for office a handful
of times before, never receiving more than a few thousand votes,
but hope springs eternal, I guess. He announced his candidacy
in May of twenty nineteen in a speech at the
University of Tennessee. The university was very clear with the
(29:55):
press at the time that no one invited Rick Tyler
to speak on campus. He had simply rented out the
alumni hall, which is something any member of the public
can do, and the university had no legal avenue to
refuse to rent it to him. Shortly before Rick Tyler's
poorly attended and heavily protested announcement in Tennessee, William Daniel
(30:18):
Johnson wrote a letter to the Federal Election Commission kind of.
He filed an amended statement of organization for the party
that FEC Form one, but stapled to the front of
the form, he attached a letter. I don't think that's
an accepted form of communication with the Federal Election Commission.
(30:42):
I don't think they'll reply to your letter if you
just staple it to a form, But he tried, and
the letter reads as follows. Gentlemen, the requests of this
correspondence are made in conformity with the Freedom of Information
Act USC Paragraph five to five to two, in accordance
(31:02):
with which obligation of response is twenty days. The American
Freedom Party will be applying for FEC certification as a
political party for the United States of America. In order
for the party to meet FEC legal requirements for certification,
we require the FEC to forward to US post haste
within the twenty days as allocated by statute the exact
(31:24):
requirements necessary to comply for FEC full certification for the
twenty twenty election cycle. We request that the provided FEC
requirements as provided by the FEC be irrevocable and be
used and applied to all applying or already approved political
parties equally for the twenty twenty presidential election cycle. That's
(31:45):
definitely not how it works. The Federal Election Commission doesn't
do that. You can't just write to them and ask
them open ended questions about how you should be doing
election stuff. Besides, why didn't he just google it or
hire a political consultant and didn't he already know the answer? Remember,
(32:09):
back in twenty twelve, seven years before this, they sent
him a letter about the requirements he needs to get
an advisory opinion, and he claimed he was working on it.
The rules had not changed in those seven years. I'm
not sure the FEC replied to his letter, though they did,
(32:31):
however a few months later send another request for Additional
information letter, again informing the organization that what they need
to do is get an advisory opinion before they can
be considered a national party committee and Johnson again used
the Federal Election Commission electronic filing system to send them
(32:52):
a letter, so his letter is preserved in the committee's filings,
and he wrote, I don't understand what you request. We
only take in under ten thousand dollars per year. Do
we need to petition the Commission for an advisory opinion?
Should we check a different box on our forms or
(33:14):
use different forms we file Form three X. Your letter
threatens enforcement action if our response is not adequate. I
don't want that, but I don't understand what the issue is.
And then shortly after he filed that letter, they just
stopped filing entirely, probably in part because they were feeling
(33:38):
discouraged by their paperwork problems and they weren't actually raising
any money to report. But also their candidate got arrested
for tax evasion, so maybe their hearts just weren't in
it anymore. But I just can't wrap my head around
(34:07):
Johnson's confusion here. The guidance available on the FEC's website
is clear enough. He had been personally and directly notified
about the need to request an advisory opinion back in
twenty twelve. He even claimed to have done it so
obviously he knew he needed to do it. But the
(34:30):
most galling thing about this feigned ignorance is he knows
someone who knows how to do this. This isn't foreign territory.
When I was looking through the database of advisory opinions,
I looked specifically for any opinion on this particular subject,
some kind of third party group trying to get recognition
(34:52):
as a national political party. I wanted to see what
those requests look like, how often this is happening, and
how the federal allow commissions evaluating them. The Green Party's
request was initially denied in nineteen ninety six, but when
they reapplied in two thousand and one, they were granted
national party status. The Reform Party went through the process
(35:14):
in nineteen ninety eight. The Constitution Party, which was originally
called the US Taxpayers Party, was denied in nineteen ninety two,
but tried again in nineteen ninety five and gained party status.
So I'm flipping through these opinions and these applications, and
it's clear that the American Freedom Party wouldn't qualify even
(35:34):
if they had tried, But they could have at least
looked to these past applications to see how they were
supposed to structure this and what kinds of party activities
they should be aiming for if they wanted to qualify.
But maybe William Daniel Johnson didn't think to search the
database for inspiration. But why didn't he just ask the
(35:58):
party's executive director, Not John Fasspender. He's still thinking high
school at this point. But from twenty ten to twenty fourteen,
the American Freedom Party's executive director was a man named
Don Wassell, and from nineteen eighty seven until nineteen ninety five,
Don Wassell was the executive director of another party, the
(36:22):
Populist Party. When the Populist Party ran David Duke for
president in nineteen eighty eight, Don Wassell submitted the party's
request for an advisory opinion. So in twenty twelve when
the party got that letter, why was it a shock?
(36:42):
I mean, the Populist Party didn't get national party status.
So I'm not saying Wassall would have been good at it,
or that he would have succeeded, but it does at
least appear as though he successfully stated the party's case
to the degree that was possible. In nineteen eighty eight,
and that's something Johnson doesn't seem to have even tried
(37:02):
to do. By the end of the summer of twenty twenty,
the American Freedom Party had voluntarily terminated their committee with
the Federal Election Commission, and they've never refiled. There is
no currently active committee associated with that name, nor any
committee I can find associated with the names of any
(37:24):
current or former member of their Board of directors. They
never successfully gained federal recognition as a national party, but
at least until twenty twenty, they could point to those
forms and pretend now they're not even trying. I guess
it is possible that Fassbender is telling the truth about
(37:46):
gaining ballot access or party recognition in individual states, although
I can find no evidence of it, and he never
says which states. Every state has its own rules, and
they don't all have good websites. But I dug around
on the Board of Election site for a dozen or
(38:07):
so states that I believe they have some connection to,
and I couldn't find anything recent. In California, the only
state that has easily searchable records of all requests file
with the state for party status, they only ever tried
once in twenty fifteen, in California, a party attempting to
(38:30):
qualify for recognition has to submit signed affidavits from zero
point thirty three percent of the total number of registered
voters in the state. So in twenty sixteen that would
have meant around fifty seven thousand signatures. They submitted five,
not five thousand, not five hundred. Literally one two three
(38:55):
four five they got five signatures. So even though I
don't have numbers that detailed from other states, there's no
state whose rules would reward that level of effort. Every
state requires at least some thousands of signatures, even the Dakotas.
(39:17):
The American Freedom Party doesn't even have a corporate entity
behind it anymore. The party incorporated in North Dakota in
twenty seventeen, but board member Jamie Kelso stopped filing the
paperwork in twenty nineteen, and the state dissolved the corporation
in twenty twenty one. The California brand that Johnson incorporated
(39:37):
in twenty nineteen was forfeited in twenty twenty for a
failure to file reports. They very recently updated their membership
application page, removing any clear reference to how much it
costs or how you can make that payment, but until
June of twenty twenty five, the website instructed applicants to
(39:58):
mail a check for fifty do to a UPS store
mailbox in New York City. They don't sell shirts or
stickers or hats. You can't pay online, you can't make
a donation. They aren't even asking for money, which seems
hard to believe. But I looked everywhere. Aside from that
(40:22):
recently removed page on the website with instructions to make
checks out to the American Freedom Party, there's no publicly
visible information about how you could give them money, even
if you wanted to, And that seems like it would
be a pretty big problem. How can you expect to
recruit younger members if the only way to get involved
is to mail a paper check. That's a real barrier
(40:45):
to entry in the twenty first century. But maybe the
logistics aren't a big deal because there aren't very many
members even trying to pay those dues. They don't hold
public events, so there's there's no way to even guess
how many members they might have. The group's channel on
the messaging app Telegram has about three thousand members, but
(41:09):
that has almost no correlation to actual group membership. Patriot Front,
for example, has seventeen thousand followers on Telegram and probably
just a few hundred members nationwide. In twenty twenty two,
John Fassbender claimed that membership was growing at quote an
alarming rate, but he wouldn't give a number. Charles Lincoln II,
(41:34):
a disbarred attorney who's occasionally listed on the party's FEC
filings as their treasurer, said in a live stream last
year that he'd been involved with the party since its founding,
and he'd actually just come from a board meeting earlier
that day, but he had no idea how many members
the group might have.
Speaker 1 (41:55):
AFP. I don't know how to introduce the AFP except
it's a very small It's basically the board and a
few members Beside the board. I don't know what our
membership is.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
Not only can he not even begin to guess how
many members there might be, He's never met one. They
might not exist.
Speaker 1 (42:23):
Again. I can speak mostly for the board rather than
the membership. I don't really know any members who are
not members of the board.
Speaker 2 (42:34):
This was in February of twenty twenty four. Lincoln claims
to have been involved with the organization for fourteen years,
he's attending board meetings, he was responsible for the party's
campaign finance reports when they were trying to run a
candidate for president, and he's never actually met a member
(42:56):
of the party aside from the board of directors. In
another one of Lincoln's streams that same month, he had
party chairman William Daniel Johnson on and he characterized the
number of members only as quote, not a whole lot.
So they're not really running candidates, they're not really registered
(43:20):
as a political party. They don't want your money. And
their own chairman said last year that there aren't very
many members, So what are they doing. I listened to
every crumb of audio I could find from the last
four years. There's not a ton, but it's still more
(43:42):
than I would have preferred to listen to. The party
went sort of dormant in twenty twenty after they terminated
their committee with the FEC, their presidential candidate got arrested,
and their corporate entity was involuntarily dissolved. They didn't do
much for a while. In the fall of twenty twenty one,
(44:03):
they were ready to announce to the world that they
were back from their hiatus.
Speaker 4 (44:10):
The reason being is We've been on a hiatus for
a long time now, while we completely overhauled and relaunched
the party, it is completely unrecognizable from what it was
a year ago.
Speaker 2 (44:24):
Well maybe not the world, but a conference room full
of racists attending the American Renaissance anual conference. Anyway, the
group had a new website, a couple new board members
under forty and they were ready to try again. I
felt like I was missing something. I kept triple checking
(44:44):
the dates on these videos because it just didn't make
any sense. From the fall of twenty twenty one through
interviews recorded this year in twenty twenty five, they seem
to be just constantly announcing that they're it's happening any
day now. We're just about to announce something new and exciting.
(45:05):
We're back from our hiatus. You haven't seen us in years,
and we're back now, and it never happens. In two
interviews given over a year apart, Fastbender boasts that the
party is just about to launch a nationwide campus organization,
a wing of the party for college students. The plan
(45:27):
was so close to being implemented three years ago. The
website hasn't had a new article at almost a year
They sometimes have a Twitter account, but it keeps getting
banned for hate speech. They hid information about their national
convention behind a password on the website and never publicly
(45:48):
posted any information about how an interested prospective member might
inquire about attending. That's not how political parties behave, but
it isn't out of step with the standard mo of
a group whose members don't want to be publicly associated
with it. Their executive director isn't even using his real name.
(46:12):
Jonathan Magnano started using the name Johann Fassbender in twenty
eighteen in private chats for Identity Europa members. And aside
from that smattering of candidates in the twenty tens, you
know Merlin Miller in twenty twelve, Harry Bertram for some
state level offices in West Virginia twenty eleven, twenty twelve,
(46:33):
that disastrous revolving door of candidates for president in twenty sixteen.
The party doesn't really run candidates. Most of the campaigns
publicly associated with the party aren't even on the ballot
as American Freedom Party candidates, if they got on the
ballot at all. Current party chairman Ralph Brandt tried to
(46:57):
run for city Council in Mesa, Arizona, and twenty tive twelve,
but he failed to collect the two hundred and thirty
three signatures required to get his name on the ballot.
When Harry Bertram ran for office in West Virginia, he
was usually just listed on the ballot as an independent
candidate and instead of receiving funds labeled as being from
(47:20):
his party. One significant cash and fusion related to Bertram's
twenty eleven campaign came in as an independent expenditure from
the party's chairman in his personal capacity, which, again, I
don't know a lot about elections, but that doesn't seem
entirely in line with my understanding of campaign finance law.
(47:44):
I can't actually find anyone publicly claiming to be running
as a member of the American Freedom Party at any
time in any place in the last five years since
their big relaunch and recommitment, but Fastpender is constantly claiming
it's happening. He just can't tell you who the candidates are,
(48:07):
or where they live, or what they're running for. So
the party is fielding candidates, but only secretly. When he
was asked last month how many candidates the party ran
in the most recent election cycle, he finally gave a number.
Speaker 4 (48:27):
Three, so we had three. Typically, the AFP holds our
candidates identities and their ties to the party relatively close
for obvious reasons, because.
Speaker 3 (48:41):
No, we don't.
Speaker 4 (48:42):
That's not to say that we don't run some candidates
very openly as AFP, though we do. There's stratton, there's
validity in both. But as far as we're concerned, it's
about winning first and foremost. If you need to run
as a Democrat in an area, run as a Democrat.
If you need to run as a Republican, run as
a Republican. If the viability is they are to run
as the American Freedom Party openly, run as the American
(49:04):
Freedom Party.
Speaker 2 (49:08):
So what does it mean to be a political party
If you can't accept or spend money. The board members
don't even know if there are members of the party,
and it's so toxic to be associated with the brand
that you can't even say the names of your own candidates,
(49:30):
In what way is that a political party? Honestly, I
don't know. I'm trying so hard to figure out some
kind of plausible theory of what's going on here to
offer you, because usually the answer is grift, plain and simple.
But they aren't asking for money. I don't get it.
(49:55):
The party does seem to be making another attempt to
move forward a national convention in March of this year,
again because they can't convince their own members to publicly
associate with the party. Even the very limited number of
carefully curated photos of the event have all of the
attendee's faces blurret out. On social media. They posted videos
(50:19):
of just four speakers, and none of those speakers are
in the party leadership, at least not publicly. There's no
indication that they're current chairman Ralph Brandt even attended. It's
not who was missing that really intrigued me, though, it's
who was there. The keynote speaker at the party's convention
(50:43):
wasn't a member of the board of directors. It wasn't
a past or current candidate for office on the party's ticket.
It was Thomas Rousseau, the leader of Patriot Front. I
couldn't tell you how many members of the American Free
Edom Party attended the convention, but photos show a contingent
(51:04):
of about a dozen members of Patriot Front. In December
of twenty twenty four, just a few months before that convention,
in March, the American Freedom Party issued an official statement
endorsing Patriot Front, declaring their values to be in seamless
harmony and pledging to stand shoulder to shoulder united by
(51:25):
their shared vision. This is perhaps a return to their roots.
The party originally grew out of a group of skinheads
trying to find a way to look legitimate. The white
power movement has always had suits and boots. That is
your respectable intellectual types, your Richard Spencer, dapper Nazi kind
(51:48):
of guys, your hotel conference rooms full of middle aged
men watching a PowerPoint about the genetic superiority of the
Aryan race. Then it has their counterparts, the street fighters,
the black shirts, the men who hide their faces and
wrap their knuckles. The two groups often find themselves at odds,
(52:09):
disagreeing about tactics and optics, but they need each other
and they know it all the way Back in twenty
thirteen at the American Freedom Party conference, board member Tom
Sunich stood up to say something after the leader of
the Golden State Skinheads finished his remarks.
Speaker 8 (52:34):
I would like to thank this young gentleman. This is
what I keep saying. It is a very good people.
I can do my job with my pen, with my cravat,
with my suit, and he can do his job. But
I know first hand there's a frontman, there's a good people,
and certainly you can come in in just as we
can be coming in so folks to religious service, thank
(52:55):
you very much.
Speaker 2 (53:03):
I can do my job with my pen, with my suit,
and he can do his job. Everyone in the room
knows what that job is. The job of the Nazi
skinhead is violence. Patriot Fronts aesthetic is obviously very different
(53:28):
from the classic neo Nazi skinhead. They aren't bald and tattooed,
they've abandoned the Doc Martins. Culturally, they're very different from
skinheads in their clean cut khaki pants and matching jackets.
But politically, I think the symbiosis proposed here is similar.
(53:51):
We'll do the paperwork and give speeches, and you will
march in the streets. The American Freedom Party has never
once succeeded in any of its endeavors, and it's unclear
what their future plans are at this point, but it
does look a little bit like there are some groups
out there trying to once again unite the right. Hopefully
(54:18):
this isn't a story we have to come back to,
at least not with a new ending. I do hope
to circle back on some of those intriguing loosens in
the middle eventually. For now, though, I'll leave you with
this inspiring statement made by one of the speakers at
that convention in March. Sam Dixon has long since retired
(54:39):
from his career as a lawyer for the Klan. These days,
he makes the rounds speaking at white nationalist events all
over the country, and he runs a lucrative real estate business,
purchasing property tax debt and forcing old people out of
their homes for pennies on the dollar. He gave a
rambling thirty minute speech, managing to impart absolutely no wisdom
(55:01):
gleaned from his sixty years in the movement, but he
had one very important message for the white nationalists attending
that Ethno State Party conference at a mysterious castle in
West Virginia.
Speaker 4 (55:16):
We are not weird of us.
Speaker 5 (55:17):
We are normal.
Speaker 2 (55:33):
Weird Little Guys is a production of Cool Zone Media
and iHeartRadio. It's research, written and recorded by me Lollie Conger.
Our executive producers are Sophie Leutman and Robert Evans. The
show is edited by the wildly talented Rory Gigan. The
theme music was composed by Brad Dickert. You can email
me at Weirdly Guys podcast at gmail dot com. I
will definitely read it, but I probably won't answer it.
It's nothing personal. You can exchange conspiracy theories about the
(55:57):
show with other listeners on the weird Little Guys subredd.
It just don't post anything that's gonna make you one
of my word Little Guys
Host
Molly Conger
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