Introducing: Weird Little Guys

Weird Little Guys is a weekly show that gives you an uncomfortably close look at the worst people you’ve never heard of. Molly Conger takes a closer look at the far right extremists trying to unravel the fabric of our society. It turns out, they’re all just some weird guy. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media. Hey, welcome to Weird Little Guys, a
weekly show about the worst people you've never heard of.
I'm your host, Molly Conger. I spent years researching and
writing about far right extremism. I hang out in their
chat rooms, watch their live streams, follow their court cases.
I've stared deep into the abyss, pouring over court documents,

(00:23):
reading manifestos, and listening to some of the worst podcasts
ever made. And I've sat in the silence of a
mostly empty courtroom, feet away from men whose hateful ideology
spurred them on to acts of shocking violence. And you
know what, They're all just some guy, however heinous the act,
whoever hideous the rhetoric, no matter how dark their desires.

(00:45):
It's like the end of an episode of Scooby Doo.
There never was a ghost or a swamp creature. There
is no supernatural villain. It's some guy. Dick Gerald. For example,
back in twenty seventeen, Daryl Drake's started sending letters. His
first letter, sent just weeks after the deadly Nazi rally
in Charlesville, Virginia, demanded the cancelation of an annual Civil

(01:08):
War reenactment and threatened that the Unite the Right rally
would look like a Sunday picnic by comparison if they
didn't heed his demand. But they didn't cancel, so he
put a pipe bomb in a tent. The bomb didn't
go off, but the letters continued, and for over a year,
members of the board at the Cedar Creek Battlefield Foundation

(01:29):
received letters with increasingly frightening threats. The letter writer said
he'd kill one man's mother with a car bomb. He
made graphic sexual threats towards someone's doughs. He threatened to
feed ground up glass to the horses ridden by the
Cavalry reenactors and drive trucks through parades. And all the
letters were from Antifa, or so the envelope said. But

(01:51):
they weren't from Antifa. They were from a weird little
guy named Gerald. He'd been kicked out of his Civil
War reenactment unit a few years earlier, and like the
Confederate soldier he dressed up as he just couldn't let
go of losing. He capitalized on the political tensions of
twenty seventeen, exploiting the hysteria around anti fascist activism to
get a very personal kind of revenge. The race warriors

(02:14):
and ethno state enthusiasts who spend their day's brainstorming ways
to unravel the fabric of our society are a threat
to be taken seriously. That's why I've spent years researching them.
But this won't just be a parade of horrors. I mean,
it'll definitely kind of be that, but we're gonna laugh too.
I think we have to. Darrel dropped his first letter
in the mail on his way to the airport for

(02:35):
a solo European vacation. So the day somebody opened that
letter threatening to shoot up the fake Civil War, he
was writing a five star review of the Burger King
who went to in Madrid. In the day the FBI
raided his house, he was posting on a sex doll forum.
These are the weird little guys trying to ruin our lives,
and I hope you'll join me for a little peak

(02:56):
under their hoods. Listen to Weird Little Guys every Thursday
on the iHeart You app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts.