May 28, 2026 • 46 mins
Wrapping up the discussion of the MAGA narrative surrounding the SPLC indictment, Molly addresses the question of money. If the administration is implying the SPLC fully funded the 2017 Unite the Right rally, what would that mean? How much does something like that cost? And who actually paid for it?
Sources & Additional Reading:
https://www.integrityfirstforamerica.org/exhibits
https://discordleaks.unicornriot.ninja/discord/server/4
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/02/patriot-front-recruits-members-young-pyramid-scheme
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/59680212/united-states-v-hiles/
https://vault.unicornriot.ninja/patriotfrontleaks/
National Policy Institute Form 990s
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/521259838
Mary Noel Kershaw Foundation Form 990s
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/621608693
Charles Martel Society Form 990s
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/364397594
https://www.fec.gov/data/committee/C00583658/?tab=filings&cycle=2018
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
It was an unseasonably chilly, rainy Saturday at the beach
this Memorial Day weekend. Tourists cooped up their hotel rooms
at the Virginia Beach ocean Front probably felt cheated out
of the long weekend they'd had in mind when they
booked their trip. One of those tourists was perhaps staring
longingly at his hotel room window at the empty beach
(00:29):
when he spotted them. A few dozen identically dressed men
marching two by two down Atlantic Avenue, khaki pants, brown boots,
navy blue shirts, tan baseball caps, and faces completely obscured
by white cloth coverings and dark sunglasses. The tourists snapped
a photo through his hotel room window just as the
(00:52):
little group passed through the pair of stone obelisks that
marked the entrance to the Naval Aviation Memorial on the Boardwalk.
On Reddit, he posted white supremacists invading the Boardwalk today,
captioning the photo. Just saw these masked morons march over
to one of the veterans monuments for a photo. Now
(01:12):
they're having some kind of clan meeting or something disgusting.
The photo shows a column of masked men several carrying
flags Revolutionary War era American flags, Confederate flags, and a
third flag. All three designs are red, white, and blue,
(01:35):
and all three flags have thirteen white stars, but the
third flag is one of their own design bearing of
fascis at the center of the ring of stars. They
marched around for a bit, but the effect was ruined.
The beach was empty, there were no crowds of vacationing
(01:58):
families to horrify. It was cold, wet, and really no
fun at all without any spectators. So they marched back
to their cars and unfurled the banner on the highway
overpass near the top Gulf and the suburbs, and they
called it a day. I wonder if they felt discouraged
as they trudged across the overpass and climbed up onto
(02:20):
the five gallon plastic buckets they brought with them so
they could hoist the little banner high enough to be seen.
Before they even had time to change out of their
matching outfits. People were talking about them online, but they
weren't impressed, and they weren't scared. They were accusing the
(02:41):
group of being fake racists. I'm Molly Coonger, and this
is where the Little Guys. The subject of this week's
(03:10):
episode didn't change. After I wasted most of Saturday looking
for more footage of racists marching down the Virginia Beach
boardwalk was fitting, really. I was sitting at my computer
pulling together my notes to finish up the story we've
been talking about the last couple of weeks. As a
(03:31):
quick refresher, the Trump administration has indicted the Southern Poverty
Law Center on charges of wire fraud and conspiracy related
to alleged inappropriate handling of payments made to sources within
the white nationalist movement. And as I've said, I do
not doubt that the SBLC has paid informants, and it
(03:53):
wouldn't be illegal for them to do that legally speaking.
The allegation is not that they paid informants, because they're
allowed to do that. The government is alleging that they
went about it in a way that violated banking laws,
among other things. The technical ins and outs of a
(04:13):
wire fraud indictment aren't the point, not just because I
think that's very boring, but because the government does too.
They don't care about that. The actual legal theory of
the case is functionally irrelevant, because this isn't about the law,
It's about propaganda. They care about shaping the public perception
(04:39):
of white nationalism and undermining the credibility of organizations like
the SPLC that raise public awareness about the existence and
actions of violent hate groups. They want you to think
that liberals made up Nazis as some kind of scary
bedtime story. The most damaging claim at the center of
(05:04):
all this rhetoric surrounding that indictment is that one of
the Southern Poverty Law Centers paid informants was involved in
the planning of the twenty seventeen Unite the Right rally
in Charlottesville. So two weeks ago we talked a bit
about how some of the language and the indictment is
being twisted to spread the claim that the entire rally
(05:24):
was organized and funded by the Southern Poverty Law Center
as some kind of hoax. And last week we heard
from some of the men who actually did organize that rally,
and they're very offended that the president is telling people
they aren't real Nazis. But the president's very stupid plan
(05:47):
is working, I mean, at least a little bit. It's
working on the people. It's supposed to work on anyway.
At the top of the episode, I described an event
that took place on the Saturday Memorial Day weekend this year,
just the other day. If you're listening to this episode,
the day it showed up on your feed, thirty or
(06:09):
forty members of the white nationalist group Patriot Front held
the Brief March of the Virginia Beach Ocean Front. It
was one of several pop up type events the group
put on over the holiday weekend, including one in Idaho
and another in Texas. Pictures and videos of Patriot Front's
demonstration in Virginia Beach showed up on social media, and
(06:30):
they are littered with dismissive comments. What do you so
worked up about? That's not even a real hate group.
Those aren't even real racist. This is just an SPLC hoax,
And these people are saying these things because they've been
primed by this news story that the Unite the Right
rally was fake. A brief survey of the social media
(06:53):
reactions doesn't reveal anything shocking. A real estate agent named
Barry hosted a Democratic group called the Southern Poverty Law
Center paid for the Charlesville rally to promote racism. Democrats
fund this group to supposedly fight against racism, and you
got caught funding it. You can't make this up. You can,
(07:17):
of course they are making it up. Rachel, who runs
a multi level marketing company that sells holistic healing seamoss
Gel wrote, probably Antifa. A Republican political consultant named Brian
called the Marcher's Democrats. A brief tour of the Facebook
profiles of many of the people posting things like this
(07:40):
show that more often than not, they were posting dozens
upon dozens of anti mask memes a couple of years ago,
which I find to be an interesting correlation. One comment
caught my eye because the name sounded so familiar. A
man named Jake Hyles wrote, these are left wing extremists
(08:03):
funded by left wing NGOs like the SPLC, pretending to
be right wingers to create racial tensions. I'm a right
winger j sixer, MAGA, and I know plenty of other
right wingers, and myself and every right winger I know
despise racism. You're being played. That's why his name sounds familiar.
(08:26):
He was one of the earliest arrests in the J
six cases. His case was filed just days after the
government announced their intention to charge hundreds of rioters. And
he's from my hometown. I'm also from Virginia Beach. Now,
I don't care enough about Jake to tell you whether
or not he was actually a member of the Proud Boys,
(08:49):
but he did enjoy the group's message enough to buy
their merch. When he entered the United States Capitol Building
on January sixth, twenty twenty one, he was wearing a
sweat that said fuck Antifa, with the Proud Boys signature
laurel wreath motif. Hyles cooperated fully. He provided evidence against
(09:11):
his own cousin and testified before a grand jury against
other rioters, and he turned over evidence against the police
officer who was charged with obstruction of justice. He never
got any jail time as part of his plea agreement,
and he has of course been pardoned by the President
along with everybody else. But his comment kind of gives
(09:34):
the game away. You know, I'm a real Maga patriot.
I'm proud of my participation in the January sixth riot.
All my friends are extremely right wing, and we all
know that the Democrats invented racism to cause problems. It's
not real. Real right wingers don't do stuff like this.
(09:56):
He's saying that left wingers stoke racial tension where none
would otherwise exist. If they weren't doing it, it wouldn't
be a problem. And this is actually not a new
thought process. During the Civil rights movement in the sixties,
right wingers would say things like, well, if it weren't
(10:17):
for those damn communists stoking this racial tension, there wouldn't
be any Racism doesn't exist. It's just those terrible left
wingers making stuff up to rile up the minorities. What
we're doing isn't wrong. You're wrong for seeing it. It's
(10:37):
the same sort of feeling repackaged for the Facebook fried
conspiracy brain of the twenty first century. Now, not all
of the commenters bought into the administration's narrative. Of course,
there were some brave souls futilely arguing with the hordes
of fifty five year old white men with perpetual sunburns
(10:59):
who seem to dominate the comment section of every local
news outlet in the country. But this conspiracy is working
with their base people who want to believe the lie.
Do it feels good to say it? It feels good
to wash their hands of those nasty Nazis who believe
(11:19):
all the same things they do, but in such an
uncomfortable way. Now again, we're sort of having these conversations
in parallel. Right, We're talking about this conspiracy theory that
Unite the Right was fake because the SPLC paid Field
Source thirty seven, who was there, And we're also talking
(11:41):
about this rally last week by Patriot Front. Patriot Front
didn't exist in August of twenty seventeen. Patriot Front was
formed in reaction to the Unite the Right rally by
Thomas Rousseau, who was at the Unite the Right rally
as the ground commander for the group Vanguard America. And
so a lot of public speculation around this conspiracy is
(12:04):
that Thomas Rousseau is Field Source thirty seven. But as
I've mentioned in prior discussions, Field Source thirty seven isn't
Thomas rousso it can't be. He was fifteen years old
when Field Source thirty seven started trading intel for money.
But the truth doesn't really matter, especially not when people
(12:28):
are just really eager to believe that the Southern Poverty
Law Center paid to send forty guys in white masks
to the beach and the rain. But that's what I
want to talk about this week money, specifically the money
spent to put on events like this, the money that
(12:49):
was spent to organize Unite the Right. But this digression
about Patriot Front's tripped to the beach this weekend wasn't
just me getting distrusted by something I saw online while
I was writing. It's a little bit that, but it's connected,
and I think it's a good place to start. People
(13:10):
assuming that this kind of thing must be bankrolled by
some shadowy, ill intentioned figure. I don't think they understand
how these groups work or what this kind of thing
actually costs, and then they let their imaginations run wild
instead of trying to find an actual answer, because actual
(13:33):
answers do in fact exist, and we don't need the
government's subpoena power to get them. We already have them. Remember,
Back in January, I interviewed Chris Matthias about his new
book about anti fascists who infiltrate hate groups. Maybe you don't,
(13:53):
that's okay, but it was a fun episode. And one
of the most fun parts of my conversation with Chris,
yes was about Patriot Front specifically about I run in
that I had with Patriot Front founder Thomas Russo back
in January of twenty twenty two. I had the incredibly
funny privilege of being the one to tell Russo in
(14:18):
person that his organization's entire internal communications log had been
leaked and published online. Hey guys, your rocket Chat just
got leaked on DA Secrets.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
Unicorn.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Ryant just dropped your rocket Chat everything, all your dms,
all your dms, the Metadeia tech, the video. We're just
gonna make fun of you. The videos that you send
your network leaders, those all have Metadeia and Unicorn. Ryan
is posting them right now. That is me and my
(14:57):
buddy Goad in DC back in January of twenty twenty two.
You can't see the video, but it's a bunch of
Patriot Front guys just standing very still, like deer in
the headlights, because they aren't allowed to speak while they're
in uniform, and they aren't allowed to bring their phones
with them when they go out on demonstrations like this.
(15:20):
So I'm telling them that all of their shit got leaked,
and they're very far away from their phones. They cannot
get into their phones and start frantically deleting things. It
was very funny. And Chris's book, which you can and
should buy, it's called to Catch a Fascist. The book
includes the other side of that story. He spoke to
(15:43):
the anti fascist who infiltrated the group and leaked those chats,
and what those chats revealed was a lot everything. A
ton of guys got doxed. They got sued also, they lost,
by the way, but buried in those thousands and thousands
(16:08):
of documents and chats, there were a lot of complaints.
Guys were complaining constantly about how goddamn expensive it is
to be a member of Patriot Front. There are complaints
from guys who have to take off work to go
to these marches. There are audio recordings of meetings where
(16:32):
Thomas Rousseau is scolding them for failing to get time
off from their jobs to travel across the country for
these marches. They are coordinating with each other about who
will pay for gas, who can rent a car, whose
dad will let them borrow a van, who can afford
to put up the cost of an airbnb upfront, and
everybody will send him twenty dollars later. They're paying, they're
(16:54):
paying to participate, and they're not just being forced to
miswork so that Thomas Rousseau can show off that he
has fifty men in his beck and call. They're not
just paying for their own travel costs. It's also a
pyramid scheme. Members are required to meet certain benchmarks. They
(17:30):
have to meet a so called activism quota, and for
Patriot Front, activism means going out and defacing public property
with racist stickers and flyers. They have to buy the stickers.
They have to buy the posters. They have to buy
the stencils. They cannot make them, they cannot reproduce them.
(17:53):
They have to purchase them. They aren't provided for free,
and you have to buy them because if you're not
regularly submitting videos of yourself engaging in vandalism to your
network leader using the supplies you paid for, you'll get
in trouble. They have to buy the hats, they have
(18:13):
to buy the jackets, they have to buy the patches.
Patriot Front can afford to put on their little marches
because every guy there has been bullied into paying his
own way and paying into this fascist pyramid scheme that
employs the guy at the top. It doesn't cost a
lot of money to have a group of guys march
(18:34):
around for an hour in outfits they bought themselves. There's
no secret there. You can literally listen to audio recordings
of these events being planned. You can read the private
messages between members where they grouse about having to pay
for their own airbnbes. But that's Patriot Front. We're talking
(18:58):
about Unite the Right, not some pop up rally nine
years later, and a big event like Unite the Right
certainly cost more overall than some dinky little flash mob
at the beach. But we have data here too. We
don't have to invent conspiracy theories about the SPLC funding
(19:19):
fake Nazi rallies because we have actual documentation from real
hate groups that really plan a real Nazi rally. We
have the receipts. When I was collecting right wing news
coverage about the SPLC indictment a few weeks ago, I
(19:40):
spotted an interesting headline from the Washington Examiner SBLC spent
more money on informant infiltrated Unite the Right rally planning
than a top organizing group made that year. Bit of
a mouthful for a headline, But what do I know.
I'm not the editor of a right wing website owned
by the eighty six year old son of an oil
time Haikoon. Remember, the crux of the administration's claim about
(20:05):
Unite the Right being a hoax is the allegation that
Field Source thirty seven was paid two hundred and seventy
thousand dollars by the Southern Poverty Law Center and Field
Source thirty seven was allegedly involved in some capacity in
the planning of the rally, and that has morphed into
the Southern Poverty Law Center paid two hundred and seventy
(20:26):
thousand dollars to plan the rally. So the headline here
is comparing that two hundred and seventy thousand dollars to
the reported annual income of the National Policy Institute. That's
the right wing think tank that employed Richard Spencer in
twenty seventeen. So that headline, which is an astonishing twenty
(20:49):
one words long, is saying the SBLC paid their informant
more money than the National Policy Institute made the the
rally took place. There are a number of problems with
the article's argument, but I'm actually so glad that the
author raised this point because it proves they do understand
(21:13):
their lying. The National Policy Institute was a non profit
organization with tax exempt status from the IRS. That means
they filed a Form nine to ninety with the IRS
every year, and those are public record. And that's where
this journalist is getting that number, because she's right. For
(21:38):
the fiscal year ending December twenty seventeen, the National Policy
Institute reported one hundred and seventy thousand dollars in revenue.
And you got to give it to her. She's right again,
one hundred and seventy thousand is a smaller number than
two hundred and seventy thousand. That's very as due to her.
(21:59):
But remember that two hundred and seventy thousand dollars, according
to the indictment, was paid out between twenty fifteen and
twenty twenty three. That's almost a decade. We don't know
how much of that money was paid in twenty seventeen specifically,
or what any of it was used for, but we
(22:20):
do actually have some idea what the National Policy Institute
was spending money on. Richard Spencer was paid a salary
of forty five thousand dollars. That's in the nine ninety
It's not an impressive salary. Really, but it's stretched further
than you might think. That Form nine ninety isn't the
(22:42):
only source. I have a good samaritan leaked some interesting
documents to me a while back. In one of those
documents is a copy of Richard Spencer's lease from that
year for the home where he lived. He wasn't paying
his own rent. Wiam Regnory was Regnory was actually doing
(23:04):
what the president wants you to think the SPLC was doing.
William Regnory was bankrolling huge portions of the American far
right during this era of the movement. Regnory died in
twenty twenty one, but the networks he spent years cultivating
and funding live on. Put a pin in your red
(23:27):
string board if you're keeping track of recurring characters at home,
because we will come back to William Regnory. I can
promise you that that same Form nine ninety shows that
the National Policy Institute spent one hundred and eighty thousand
dollars that year. So they brought in one hundred and
seventy thousand, and they spent one hundred and eighty thousand,
(23:51):
And the form doesn't provide a full accounting of how
they spent that money. But there are some broad categories.
They claim that they're annual conference in DC that year
cost them forty eight thousand dollars, significantly more than they
report spending on the same conference in other years. They
also list twelve thousand dollars in travel expenses for twenty seventeen,
(24:15):
which does more or less track with Richard Spencer's busy
travel schedule that year. He attended quite a few events,
and those form nine nineties also list the names of
who is on an organization's board. William Regnery is, of
course a member of the board at the National Policy
(24:36):
Institute at that time, and it wasn't the only nonprofit
board he was on. In twenty seventeen, his Charles Martel Society,
a hate group that publishes the racist Occidental Quarterly, reported
spending over ten thousand dollars on conference expenses in twenty seventeen,
(24:57):
and again, if you look at the nine nineties for
both of those organis stations, the National Policy Institute and
the Charles Martel Society, William Regnory isn't the only old
racist on both boards. In twenty seventeen, longtime Clan lawyer
Sam Dixon shows up on both as well. Regnory was
(25:18):
famously a bit of a recluse, but Dixon is very
publicly involved in the movement to this day. He even
attended the Unite the Right rally, accompanied by his young protege,
an Identity Europa leader named Evan Thomas Anderson. Something you
(25:39):
may or may not remember about the summer of twenty
seventeen was that the United the Right rally didn't occur
in isolation. It wasn't a random freak occurrence that no
one saw coming. It wasn't an aberration. It wasn't the
only Nazi rally that summer, not by a long shot.
(26:02):
The events of August twelfth, twenty seventeen, in Charlottesville, Virginia,
were the culmination of an escalating pattern of behavior at
right wing rallies all over the country in the months
leading up to it. On the Daily Stormer, they were
calling it the Summer of Hate. There were rallies from Berkeley, California,
(26:23):
to Boston, Massachusetts, all summer, and many of the same
people were involved in planning all of them. The Unite
the Right rally was not the only Nazi rally in
the summer of twenty seventeen. It wasn't even the only
Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. If you've looked at the
(26:45):
leaked discord chats on Unicorn riot that I've linked in
the show notes, you might have noticed that the discord
server for planning the Unite the Right rally was called
Charlottesville two point zero. That's because it was an encore
performance after a prior rally here in May of twenty seventeen,
(27:09):
and that one was much smaller. I don't think it
made the news outside of central Virginia. It was just
one hundred or so guys. It was an inner circle,
invite only type Nazi hangout. They did a lot of
the same stuff that they would later try on a
larger scale a few months later. They marched with torches,
(27:31):
they hung out in public parks, and they gave speeches.
Here's part of one of those speeches.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
This is the first of many events, the next phase
of our movement to gain and win the influence of
the next section of our population. We can do it.
The people here and now can do that.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
Probably that words commit to having an official meet up
every month. If you are interested in a regional conference
organizing this event, there's probably going to be a couple
thousand dollars left over to have a startup capital for
the next Aultright events. If you're interested, let me know
(28:21):
and I will help you set something like this up.
We have to be everywhere. These have to be in
every region of the country every couple of months.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
That's Evan Thomas Anderson. He was a regional leader in
Identity ROPO, a hate group that doesn't exist anymore, and
he worked closely with Sam Dixon. Sam Dixon, the elderly
white nationalist attorney who was on the board at the
National Policy Institute and the Charles Martell Society. And here
(28:58):
is a young man who works closely with him. The
young man he attended both this rally and the Unit's
Right rally with, and Evan is offering up thousands of
dollars in startup money for enterprising young white nationalists who
want to organize their own hate rally. It's not his money.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
I wanted to thank the people who put together this
event and brought all of you great people here to
my hometown. First, Evan for putting this together and organizing everything.
Also Eli Mosley and Erica Albam Rowley, Nathan and Identity
(29:46):
Europe up my Eenoch and the TRS Party, mister Sam
Dixon for a lifetime of service of course, Richard Spencer
(30:15):
and NPI for sponsoring the animal bred.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
That's Jason Kessler in May of twenty seventeen. He wasn't
planning the Unite the Right rally. There was no United
the Right rally yet. He hadn't thought of it. He
was just a guy who lived here in Charlottesville. He
was my neighbor. Actually, he lived around the corner from
me in a building that's owned by a local nonprofit
(30:47):
that provides support of housing for people with disabilities. I'm
glad that resource exists. And for the most part they
made great neighbors. Whatever Jason was doing there as his
own business. But on May thirteenth, twenty seventeen, there was
no Unite the Right rally in the works. He hadn't
had the idea yet. And he's telling you in that
(31:08):
clip who paid for and organized the Nazi rally. He's
speaking at that day, the first Nazi rally in Charlottesville
that summer. Evan Anderson, Identity Europa, Sam Dixon, Richard Spencer,
the National Policy Institute, they put on that event and
(31:29):
they were telling the people who were there that there
was money and they would pay them to put on
another one. It's not hard to imagine how Jason Kessler
got the idea to invite all of his new friends
back to town. And again, as in the example of
the Patriot Front march, I think people are vastly overestimating
(31:52):
what it would cost to put on this event. If
the Southern Poverty Law Center had to pay every single
guy who was there, sure, sure that would run you
into hundreds of thousands of dollars. But I don't think
that's even the allegation at work in this conspiracy theory.
I don't know what they think they're alleging. But again,
(32:16):
like the Patriot Front leaks, we have the primary sources here.
We can read thousands and thousands of messages exchanged on
discord in the months leading up to the Unite the
Right rally. There were whole channels on the Discord dedicated
to connecting people in particular states with other attendees in
(32:37):
their area so they could share travel costs. There were
group chats devoted to hashing out who was staying in
which hate groups. Airbnb arguments over whether non members could
stay accommodations booked for members, negotiations over shared costs. People
shared their PayPal information with their real names in it.
People posted screenshots of confirmation emails from campgrounds and hotels,
(32:59):
and they ranted and raved and complained when Airbnb banned
their accounts when the company found out they were booking
for a Nazi group chat. It's there, It's all there.
You can read it. I'm not just telling you I've
read it. You can read it. It's online. We have
the leaked chats, and we know those leaks are real.
(33:22):
We know this is valid information because when the men
who organized this rally got sued, the lawyers suing them
subpoena and discord and they got the original files. The
people who posted these things aren't denying that they posted them.
The chats are real and you can read them. And
the average attendee paid his own way. And how they
(34:00):
got here. Thomas Russo eighteen years old and fresh out
of high school. He wrote an rented van with a
bunch of other guys from Texas who were all friends
with Asthmador, a now deceased Nazi blogger who wrote for
The Daily Stormer. They all pitched in for gas. We
have the chats. We even have pictures of the craft
(34:21):
night they had together the week before to paint the
homemade shields they carried at the Nazi rally. We don't
need to make up stories about secret money. I know
they made the shields at Billy's house. Most attendees paid
for their own travel, their own lodging, their own food,
their own outfits, their own weapons, and many of them
(34:44):
came on their own. They came with a friend, maybe
someone they met online. They weren't even all members of
any kind of organization. Members of the groups that helped
organize the rally may have benefited from lodging or equipment
paid for at the organizational level, but even then they
were paying in They paid their dues, they bought their
(35:07):
uniform and we have records of that too. A lot
of these groups are incorporated. They have filed paperwork with
the state where they operate to be an LLC. Some
of them have nonprofit status with the IRS. So we
have national policy institutes from nine nineties. They've got nine
(35:31):
nineties for Identity Europa. The League of the South incorporated
as a nonprofit, but they don't actually have IRS. TAXIXIM status.
So we don't have nine nineties for the League of
the South, but we do have them for the Mary
nol Kershaw Foundation. If you listen to the Jack Kershaw
episodes last month, you remember Mary Noel Kershaw was Jack
(35:54):
Kershaw's wife. They worked together as a husband and wife
legal team taking anti integral cases for decades, and he
co founded the League of the South after she died.
The foundation he started in her name allows the League
to collect tax exempt donations to this day. And if
you look at the form nine nineties for the Mary
(36:15):
nol Kershaw Foundation, you can see cash transfers to the
League of the South. It's not a mystery. Not every
organization files nine nineties. They're not all nonprofits. Sure, we
don't have any documentation about the inner workings of Vanguard America.
(36:36):
For example, in a lawsuit against the rallies organizers, a
representative for Vanguard America claimed no documents ever existed. Thomas Rousseau,
who commanded Vanguard America members on the ground at the rally,
was uncooperative during his supposition, and when he founded Patriot
(36:56):
Front not long after the rally, he didn't in corporate
it as any kind of legally existing entity. I think
he thought that would prevent the organization from being sued,
and he was wrong about that. One very funny outlier
in all of this is one of the organizations that
(37:17):
helped plan the rally, the Traditionalist Worker Party. They didn't
just incorporate, They registered as an honest to God political
party with the Federal Election Commission. So in their case
we have itemized expenditure reports. I can look at the
(37:38):
quarterly report they filed with the Federal Election Commission on
November thirtieth, twenty seventeen, and I'm looking at handwritten records
of this hate group's organizational spending on the Nazi rally.
They paid one thy eighty three dollars to Lydia Mountain
Lodge in Standardsville, Virginia on August first, twenty seventeen. On
(37:59):
the line for purpose of disbursement, Treasurer David Matthew Parrott
wrote lodging for event prep. The Southern Poverty Law Center
didn't pay those Nazis from Indiana to rent rustic cabins
twenty nine miles outside of town. This was a decision
that was discussed extensively in the leaked chats and paid
(38:23):
for with money they filed expense reports with the federal
government about we can see it, and where did the
money come from? We know that too, because they filed
reports with the Federal Election Commission, and you can see
that the only income they reported that year was a
(38:44):
transfer of five nine and three dollars from something called
the will Planer Defense Fund. Will Planer has been a
member of half a dozen other Nazi groups in the
last decade, so it's a bit hard to keep track.
But back then, will Planer was a member of the
Traditionalist Worker Party, and at that time he was facing
(39:06):
legal consequences for one of several separate instances where he
attacked counter protesters at Nazi rallies. Honestly, I can't remember
which assault this particular fundraiser was in response to, because
he was doing it kind of a lot. And for
those of you keeping track at home, you should already
have a pin on the board for one of these.
(39:28):
I mentioned in passing that will Planer was detained at
one of the March against Sharia rallies in twenty seventeen.
That was something we talked about in the episode last
February called an accidental Nazi rally. So in twenty seventeen,
the Traditionalist Worker Party held a fundraiser. They collected donations
(39:52):
from their own members and from concerned Nazis across the
white nationalist movement who thought that an injustice was being
done to poor will Planer. And they claimed that this
money was for will Planer's legal defense. And according to
the documentation they filed with the Federal Election Commission, they
transferred that money into their political party coffers, and they
(40:13):
spent it on helmets from a workplace safety equipment company
and those log cabins. None of this is a mystery.
None of this is a secret. It's just boring to
collect all the receipts, and conspiracy theories are easy. The
president wants people to say stuff like the Southern Poverty
(40:36):
Law Center paid for the United the Right rally because
it means Nazis aren't real. It means you sound stupid
for being worried about white nationalists violence, because that's a
fake thing someone made up to make him look bad.
You don't need to worry about the administration reorienting the
entire FBI to arrest the president's political enemies. It's okay
(40:56):
that no one is monitoring far right terrorism anymore because
that stuff was fake. Don't worry if the stuff Stephen
Miller says on Fox News sounds uncomfortably like the stuff
those Nazis were saying, It's okay because the only reason
you thought those were bad talking points in the first
place is because the Democrats paid a guy to hold
a swastika flag while he screamed it at my neighbors.
(41:19):
But it falls apart at the slightest second thought about
what that claim could possibly even mean. What do you
mean the SPOC paid for the rally? Who did? They
pay one guy and he organized it himself and it
cost a quarter million dollars. No matter what angle you
(41:39):
approached the question from, it collapses instantly. We know the
guys who did it were true believers. They told us,
they're still telling us. I played you their own reactions
to this story in last week's episode, and we know
where the money came from, and we know the rally
didn't cost a quarter million dollars. I've got a copy
(42:02):
of the perman application. Jason Kessler paid the City of
Charlottesville's Parks and Recreation Department twenty five dollars for a
permit to hold an event in a public park. Anyone can.
That's what it costs. There were organizational costs paid centrally
(42:25):
sure sound systems and shuttle vans, a few thousand dollars
worth of odds and ends, the kind of thing you
could hide in the budget of a large nonprofit like
the National Policy Institute for the Charles Martel Society. But
they didn't even rent port of bodies. They didn't actually
(42:47):
shell out any kind of money for the kinds of
things experience event organizers of large outdoor events would pay for.
There were no bathrooms, they're no first aid stations, no
free water for the people passing out from the heat
on a hot summer day, no snacks, no signs showing
people where to park or where to walk. It was
(43:09):
not a well organized event. And I'm not just talking
about the rampant hate crimes. I just mean people didn't
know what to park. People got stuck in parking garages
that had road closures around them. It was a clusterfuck.
You might look at photos of thousands of people in
(43:30):
one place and think, Wow, that kind of event must
have cost a fortune, But what is it exactly that
you think costs someone a lot of money. What specifically
is in those pictures that some central event organizer would
have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for Again, they
(43:50):
didn't even get a porta potty. The only part of
that rally that cost any individual tens are hundreds of
thousands of dollars are the medical bills of the victims.
People's bodies were shattered, broken skulls, a fractured pelvis, spinal injuries.
(44:14):
Several people had to learn to walk again. Someone died,
Heather died. People I know, people I love still go
to therapy, still wake up in a cold sweat, sometimes
still flinch at the sound of screeching tires, or WinCE
(44:35):
when they see their own scars. The rally didn't cost
a quarter of a million dollars, but some people's hospital
bills did. One survivor spent months living in an assisted
living facility and then had to retro fit their entire
home because it was no longer accessible to them. Another
(44:57):
developed a lifelong neurological condition called complex pain syndrome. It
causes pain so intense that most people who suffer from
this condition consider ending their own lives. So yeah, yeah,
I guess the rally did cost millions of dollars in
the end, but not in the way that President's implying.
(45:34):
Weird Little Guys is a production of Coolsoe Media and iHeartRadio.
It's researched, written and recorded by me, Molly Hunger. Part
executive producers are Sophie Lectreman and Robert Evans. The show
is edited by the wildly talented Worry Gagan. The theme
music was composed by Brad dickerd. You can email me
at Weird Little 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
(45:57):
show with other listeners on the Weird Little Guys subreddit.
Just don't post anything that's gonna make you one of
my group of guys.
Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
It was an unseasonably chilly, rainy Saturday at the beach
this Memorial Day weekend. Tourists cooped up their hotel rooms
at the Virginia Beach ocean Front probably felt cheated out
of the long weekend they'd had in mind when they
booked their trip. One of those tourists was perhaps staring
longingly at his hotel room window at the empty beach
(00:29):
when he spotted them. A few dozen identically dressed men
marching two by two down Atlantic Avenue, khaki pants, brown boots,
navy blue shirts, tan baseball caps, and faces completely obscured
by white cloth coverings and dark sunglasses. The tourists snapped
a photo through his hotel room window just as the
(00:52):
little group passed through the pair of stone obelisks that
marked the entrance to the Naval Aviation Memorial on the Boardwalk.
On Reddit, he posted white supremacists invading the Boardwalk today,
captioning the photo. Just saw these masked morons march over
to one of the veterans monuments for a photo. Now
(01:12):
they're having some kind of clan meeting or something disgusting.
The photo shows a column of masked men several carrying
flags Revolutionary War era American flags, Confederate flags, and a
third flag. All three designs are red, white, and blue,
(01:35):
and all three flags have thirteen white stars, but the
third flag is one of their own design bearing of
fascis at the center of the ring of stars. They
marched around for a bit, but the effect was ruined.
The beach was empty, there were no crowds of vacationing
(01:58):
families to horrify. It was cold, wet, and really no
fun at all without any spectators. So they marched back
to their cars and unfurled the banner on the highway
overpass near the top Gulf and the suburbs, and they
called it a day. I wonder if they felt discouraged
as they trudged across the overpass and climbed up onto
(02:20):
the five gallon plastic buckets they brought with them so
they could hoist the little banner high enough to be seen.
Before they even had time to change out of their
matching outfits. People were talking about them online, but they
weren't impressed, and they weren't scared. They were accusing the
(02:41):
group of being fake racists. I'm Molly Coonger, and this
is where the Little Guys. The subject of this week's
(03:10):
episode didn't change. After I wasted most of Saturday looking
for more footage of racists marching down the Virginia Beach
boardwalk was fitting, really. I was sitting at my computer
pulling together my notes to finish up the story we've
been talking about the last couple of weeks. As a
(03:31):
quick refresher, the Trump administration has indicted the Southern Poverty
Law Center on charges of wire fraud and conspiracy related
to alleged inappropriate handling of payments made to sources within
the white nationalist movement. And as I've said, I do
not doubt that the SBLC has paid informants, and it
(03:53):
wouldn't be illegal for them to do that legally speaking.
The allegation is not that they paid informants, because they're
allowed to do that. The government is alleging that they
went about it in a way that violated banking laws,
among other things. The technical ins and outs of a
(04:13):
wire fraud indictment aren't the point, not just because I
think that's very boring, but because the government does too.
They don't care about that. The actual legal theory of
the case is functionally irrelevant, because this isn't about the law,
It's about propaganda. They care about shaping the public perception
(04:39):
of white nationalism and undermining the credibility of organizations like
the SPLC that raise public awareness about the existence and
actions of violent hate groups. They want you to think
that liberals made up Nazis as some kind of scary
bedtime story. The most damaging claim at the center of
(05:04):
all this rhetoric surrounding that indictment is that one of
the Southern Poverty Law Centers paid informants was involved in
the planning of the twenty seventeen Unite the Right rally
in Charlottesville. So two weeks ago we talked a bit
about how some of the language and the indictment is
being twisted to spread the claim that the entire rally
(05:24):
was organized and funded by the Southern Poverty Law Center
as some kind of hoax. And last week we heard
from some of the men who actually did organize that rally,
and they're very offended that the president is telling people
they aren't real Nazis. But the president's very stupid plan
(05:47):
is working, I mean, at least a little bit. It's
working on the people. It's supposed to work on anyway.
At the top of the episode, I described an event
that took place on the Saturday Memorial Day weekend this year,
just the other day. If you're listening to this episode,
the day it showed up on your feed, thirty or
(06:09):
forty members of the white nationalist group Patriot Front held
the Brief March of the Virginia Beach Ocean Front. It
was one of several pop up type events the group
put on over the holiday weekend, including one in Idaho
and another in Texas. Pictures and videos of Patriot Front's
demonstration in Virginia Beach showed up on social media, and
(06:30):
they are littered with dismissive comments. What do you so
worked up about? That's not even a real hate group.
Those aren't even real racist. This is just an SPLC hoax,
And these people are saying these things because they've been
primed by this news story that the Unite the Right
rally was fake. A brief survey of the social media
(06:53):
reactions doesn't reveal anything shocking. A real estate agent named
Barry hosted a Democratic group called the Southern Poverty Law
Center paid for the Charlesville rally to promote racism. Democrats
fund this group to supposedly fight against racism, and you
got caught funding it. You can't make this up. You can,
(07:17):
of course they are making it up. Rachel, who runs
a multi level marketing company that sells holistic healing seamoss
Gel wrote, probably Antifa. A Republican political consultant named Brian
called the Marcher's Democrats. A brief tour of the Facebook
profiles of many of the people posting things like this
(07:40):
show that more often than not, they were posting dozens
upon dozens of anti mask memes a couple of years ago,
which I find to be an interesting correlation. One comment
caught my eye because the name sounded so familiar. A
man named Jake Hyles wrote, these are left wing extremists
(08:03):
funded by left wing NGOs like the SPLC, pretending to
be right wingers to create racial tensions. I'm a right
winger j sixer, MAGA, and I know plenty of other
right wingers, and myself and every right winger I know
despise racism. You're being played. That's why his name sounds familiar.
(08:26):
He was one of the earliest arrests in the J
six cases. His case was filed just days after the
government announced their intention to charge hundreds of rioters. And
he's from my hometown. I'm also from Virginia Beach. Now,
I don't care enough about Jake to tell you whether
or not he was actually a member of the Proud Boys,
(08:49):
but he did enjoy the group's message enough to buy
their merch. When he entered the United States Capitol Building
on January sixth, twenty twenty one, he was wearing a
sweat that said fuck Antifa, with the Proud Boys signature
laurel wreath motif. Hyles cooperated fully. He provided evidence against
(09:11):
his own cousin and testified before a grand jury against
other rioters, and he turned over evidence against the police
officer who was charged with obstruction of justice. He never
got any jail time as part of his plea agreement,
and he has of course been pardoned by the President
along with everybody else. But his comment kind of gives
(09:34):
the game away. You know, I'm a real Maga patriot.
I'm proud of my participation in the January sixth riot.
All my friends are extremely right wing, and we all
know that the Democrats invented racism to cause problems. It's
not real. Real right wingers don't do stuff like this.
(09:56):
He's saying that left wingers stoke racial tension where none
would otherwise exist. If they weren't doing it, it wouldn't
be a problem. And this is actually not a new
thought process. During the Civil rights movement in the sixties,
right wingers would say things like, well, if it weren't
(10:17):
for those damn communists stoking this racial tension, there wouldn't
be any Racism doesn't exist. It's just those terrible left
wingers making stuff up to rile up the minorities. What
we're doing isn't wrong. You're wrong for seeing it. It's
(10:37):
the same sort of feeling repackaged for the Facebook fried
conspiracy brain of the twenty first century. Now, not all
of the commenters bought into the administration's narrative. Of course,
there were some brave souls futilely arguing with the hordes
of fifty five year old white men with perpetual sunburns
(10:59):
who seem to dominate the comment section of every local
news outlet in the country. But this conspiracy is working
with their base people who want to believe the lie.
Do it feels good to say it? It feels good
to wash their hands of those nasty Nazis who believe
(11:19):
all the same things they do, but in such an
uncomfortable way. Now again, we're sort of having these conversations
in parallel. Right, We're talking about this conspiracy theory that
Unite the Right was fake because the SPLC paid Field
Source thirty seven, who was there, And we're also talking
(11:41):
about this rally last week by Patriot Front. Patriot Front
didn't exist in August of twenty seventeen. Patriot Front was
formed in reaction to the Unite the Right rally by
Thomas Rousseau, who was at the Unite the Right rally
as the ground commander for the group Vanguard America. And
so a lot of public speculation around this conspiracy is
(12:04):
that Thomas Rousseau is Field Source thirty seven. But as
I've mentioned in prior discussions, Field Source thirty seven isn't
Thomas rousso it can't be. He was fifteen years old
when Field Source thirty seven started trading intel for money.
But the truth doesn't really matter, especially not when people
(12:28):
are just really eager to believe that the Southern Poverty
Law Center paid to send forty guys in white masks
to the beach and the rain. But that's what I
want to talk about this week money, specifically the money
spent to put on events like this, the money that
(12:49):
was spent to organize Unite the Right. But this digression
about Patriot Front's tripped to the beach this weekend wasn't
just me getting distrusted by something I saw online while
I was writing. It's a little bit that, but it's connected,
and I think it's a good place to start. People
(13:10):
assuming that this kind of thing must be bankrolled by
some shadowy, ill intentioned figure. I don't think they understand
how these groups work or what this kind of thing
actually costs, and then they let their imaginations run wild
instead of trying to find an actual answer, because actual
(13:33):
answers do in fact exist, and we don't need the
government's subpoena power to get them. We already have them. Remember,
Back in January, I interviewed Chris Matthias about his new
book about anti fascists who infiltrate hate groups. Maybe you don't,
(13:53):
that's okay, but it was a fun episode. And one
of the most fun parts of my conversation with Chris,
yes was about Patriot Front specifically about I run in
that I had with Patriot Front founder Thomas Russo back
in January of twenty twenty two. I had the incredibly
funny privilege of being the one to tell Russo in
(14:18):
person that his organization's entire internal communications log had been
leaked and published online. Hey guys, your rocket Chat just
got leaked on DA Secrets.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
Unicorn.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Ryant just dropped your rocket Chat everything, all your dms,
all your dms, the Metadeia tech, the video. We're just
gonna make fun of you. The videos that you send
your network leaders, those all have Metadeia and Unicorn. Ryan
is posting them right now. That is me and my
(14:57):
buddy Goad in DC back in January of twenty twenty two.
You can't see the video, but it's a bunch of
Patriot Front guys just standing very still, like deer in
the headlights, because they aren't allowed to speak while they're
in uniform, and they aren't allowed to bring their phones
with them when they go out on demonstrations like this.
(15:20):
So I'm telling them that all of their shit got leaked,
and they're very far away from their phones. They cannot
get into their phones and start frantically deleting things. It
was very funny. And Chris's book, which you can and
should buy, it's called to Catch a Fascist. The book
includes the other side of that story. He spoke to
(15:43):
the anti fascist who infiltrated the group and leaked those chats,
and what those chats revealed was a lot everything. A
ton of guys got doxed. They got sued also, they lost,
by the way, but buried in those thousands and thousands
(16:08):
of documents and chats, there were a lot of complaints.
Guys were complaining constantly about how goddamn expensive it is
to be a member of Patriot Front. There are complaints
from guys who have to take off work to go
to these marches. There are audio recordings of meetings where
(16:32):
Thomas Rousseau is scolding them for failing to get time
off from their jobs to travel across the country for
these marches. They are coordinating with each other about who
will pay for gas, who can rent a car, whose
dad will let them borrow a van, who can afford
to put up the cost of an airbnb upfront, and
everybody will send him twenty dollars later. They're paying, they're
(16:54):
paying to participate, and they're not just being forced to
miswork so that Thomas Rousseau can show off that he
has fifty men in his beck and call. They're not
just paying for their own travel costs. It's also a
pyramid scheme. Members are required to meet certain benchmarks. They
(17:30):
have to meet a so called activism quota, and for
Patriot Front, activism means going out and defacing public property
with racist stickers and flyers. They have to buy the stickers.
They have to buy the posters. They have to buy
the stencils. They cannot make them, they cannot reproduce them.
(17:53):
They have to purchase them. They aren't provided for free,
and you have to buy them because if you're not
regularly submitting videos of yourself engaging in vandalism to your
network leader using the supplies you paid for, you'll get
in trouble. They have to buy the hats, they have
(18:13):
to buy the jackets, they have to buy the patches.
Patriot Front can afford to put on their little marches
because every guy there has been bullied into paying his
own way and paying into this fascist pyramid scheme that
employs the guy at the top. It doesn't cost a
lot of money to have a group of guys march
(18:34):
around for an hour in outfits they bought themselves. There's
no secret there. You can literally listen to audio recordings
of these events being planned. You can read the private
messages between members where they grouse about having to pay
for their own airbnbes. But that's Patriot Front. We're talking
(18:58):
about Unite the Right, not some pop up rally nine
years later, and a big event like Unite the Right
certainly cost more overall than some dinky little flash mob
at the beach. But we have data here too. We
don't have to invent conspiracy theories about the SPLC funding
(19:19):
fake Nazi rallies because we have actual documentation from real
hate groups that really plan a real Nazi rally. We
have the receipts. When I was collecting right wing news
coverage about the SPLC indictment a few weeks ago, I
(19:40):
spotted an interesting headline from the Washington Examiner SBLC spent
more money on informant infiltrated Unite the Right rally planning
than a top organizing group made that year. Bit of
a mouthful for a headline, But what do I know.
I'm not the editor of a right wing website owned
by the eighty six year old son of an oil
time Haikoon. Remember, the crux of the administration's claim about
(20:05):
Unite the Right being a hoax is the allegation that
Field Source thirty seven was paid two hundred and seventy
thousand dollars by the Southern Poverty Law Center and Field
Source thirty seven was allegedly involved in some capacity in
the planning of the rally, and that has morphed into
the Southern Poverty Law Center paid two hundred and seventy
(20:26):
thousand dollars to plan the rally. So the headline here
is comparing that two hundred and seventy thousand dollars to
the reported annual income of the National Policy Institute. That's
the right wing think tank that employed Richard Spencer in
twenty seventeen. So that headline, which is an astonishing twenty
(20:49):
one words long, is saying the SBLC paid their informant
more money than the National Policy Institute made the the
rally took place. There are a number of problems with
the article's argument, but I'm actually so glad that the
author raised this point because it proves they do understand
(21:13):
their lying. The National Policy Institute was a non profit
organization with tax exempt status from the IRS. That means
they filed a Form nine to ninety with the IRS
every year, and those are public record. And that's where
this journalist is getting that number, because she's right. For
(21:38):
the fiscal year ending December twenty seventeen, the National Policy
Institute reported one hundred and seventy thousand dollars in revenue.
And you got to give it to her. She's right again,
one hundred and seventy thousand is a smaller number than
two hundred and seventy thousand. That's very as due to her.
(21:59):
But remember that two hundred and seventy thousand dollars, according
to the indictment, was paid out between twenty fifteen and
twenty twenty three. That's almost a decade. We don't know
how much of that money was paid in twenty seventeen specifically,
or what any of it was used for, but we
(22:20):
do actually have some idea what the National Policy Institute
was spending money on. Richard Spencer was paid a salary
of forty five thousand dollars. That's in the nine ninety
It's not an impressive salary. Really, but it's stretched further
than you might think. That Form nine ninety isn't the
(22:42):
only source. I have a good samaritan leaked some interesting
documents to me a while back. In one of those
documents is a copy of Richard Spencer's lease from that
year for the home where he lived. He wasn't paying
his own rent. Wiam Regnory was Regnory was actually doing
(23:04):
what the president wants you to think the SPLC was doing.
William Regnory was bankrolling huge portions of the American far
right during this era of the movement. Regnory died in
twenty twenty one, but the networks he spent years cultivating
and funding live on. Put a pin in your red
(23:27):
string board if you're keeping track of recurring characters at home,
because we will come back to William Regnory. I can
promise you that that same Form nine ninety shows that
the National Policy Institute spent one hundred and eighty thousand
dollars that year. So they brought in one hundred and
seventy thousand, and they spent one hundred and eighty thousand,
(23:51):
And the form doesn't provide a full accounting of how
they spent that money. But there are some broad categories.
They claim that they're annual conference in DC that year
cost them forty eight thousand dollars, significantly more than they
report spending on the same conference in other years. They
also list twelve thousand dollars in travel expenses for twenty seventeen,
(24:15):
which does more or less track with Richard Spencer's busy
travel schedule that year. He attended quite a few events,
and those form nine nineties also list the names of
who is on an organization's board. William Regnery is, of
course a member of the board at the National Policy
(24:36):
Institute at that time, and it wasn't the only nonprofit
board he was on. In twenty seventeen, his Charles Martel Society,
a hate group that publishes the racist Occidental Quarterly, reported
spending over ten thousand dollars on conference expenses in twenty seventeen,
(24:57):
and again, if you look at the nine nineties for
both of those organis stations, the National Policy Institute and
the Charles Martel Society, William Regnory isn't the only old
racist on both boards. In twenty seventeen, longtime Clan lawyer
Sam Dixon shows up on both as well. Regnory was
(25:18):
famously a bit of a recluse, but Dixon is very
publicly involved in the movement to this day. He even
attended the Unite the Right rally, accompanied by his young protege,
an Identity Europa leader named Evan Thomas Anderson. Something you
(25:39):
may or may not remember about the summer of twenty
seventeen was that the United the Right rally didn't occur
in isolation. It wasn't a random freak occurrence that no
one saw coming. It wasn't an aberration. It wasn't the
only Nazi rally that summer, not by a long shot.
(26:02):
The events of August twelfth, twenty seventeen, in Charlottesville, Virginia,
were the culmination of an escalating pattern of behavior at
right wing rallies all over the country in the months
leading up to it. On the Daily Stormer, they were
calling it the Summer of Hate. There were rallies from Berkeley, California,
(26:23):
to Boston, Massachusetts, all summer, and many of the same
people were involved in planning all of them. The Unite
the Right rally was not the only Nazi rally in
the summer of twenty seventeen. It wasn't even the only
Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. If you've looked at the
(26:45):
leaked discord chats on Unicorn riot that I've linked in
the show notes, you might have noticed that the discord
server for planning the Unite the Right rally was called
Charlottesville two point zero. That's because it was an encore
performance after a prior rally here in May of twenty seventeen,
(27:09):
and that one was much smaller. I don't think it
made the news outside of central Virginia. It was just
one hundred or so guys. It was an inner circle,
invite only type Nazi hangout. They did a lot of
the same stuff that they would later try on a
larger scale a few months later. They marched with torches,
(27:31):
they hung out in public parks, and they gave speeches.
Here's part of one of those speeches.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
This is the first of many events, the next phase
of our movement to gain and win the influence of
the next section of our population. We can do it.
The people here and now can do that.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
Probably that words commit to having an official meet up
every month. If you are interested in a regional conference
organizing this event, there's probably going to be a couple
thousand dollars left over to have a startup capital for
the next Aultright events. If you're interested, let me know
(28:21):
and I will help you set something like this up.
We have to be everywhere. These have to be in
every region of the country every couple of months.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
That's Evan Thomas Anderson. He was a regional leader in
Identity ROPO, a hate group that doesn't exist anymore, and
he worked closely with Sam Dixon. Sam Dixon, the elderly
white nationalist attorney who was on the board at the
National Policy Institute and the Charles Martell Society. And here
(28:58):
is a young man who works closely with him. The
young man he attended both this rally and the Unit's
Right rally with, and Evan is offering up thousands of
dollars in startup money for enterprising young white nationalists who
want to organize their own hate rally. It's not his money.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
I wanted to thank the people who put together this
event and brought all of you great people here to
my hometown. First, Evan for putting this together and organizing everything.
Also Eli Mosley and Erica Albam Rowley, Nathan and Identity
(29:46):
Europe up my Eenoch and the TRS Party, mister Sam
Dixon for a lifetime of service of course, Richard Spencer
(30:15):
and NPI for sponsoring the animal bred.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
That's Jason Kessler in May of twenty seventeen. He wasn't
planning the Unite the Right rally. There was no United
the Right rally yet. He hadn't thought of it. He
was just a guy who lived here in Charlottesville. He
was my neighbor. Actually, he lived around the corner from
me in a building that's owned by a local nonprofit
(30:47):
that provides support of housing for people with disabilities. I'm
glad that resource exists. And for the most part they
made great neighbors. Whatever Jason was doing there as his
own business. But on May thirteenth, twenty seventeen, there was
no Unite the Right rally in the works. He hadn't
had the idea yet. And he's telling you in that
(31:08):
clip who paid for and organized the Nazi rally. He's
speaking at that day, the first Nazi rally in Charlottesville
that summer. Evan Anderson, Identity Europa, Sam Dixon, Richard Spencer,
the National Policy Institute, they put on that event and
(31:29):
they were telling the people who were there that there
was money and they would pay them to put on
another one. It's not hard to imagine how Jason Kessler
got the idea to invite all of his new friends
back to town. And again, as in the example of
the Patriot Front march, I think people are vastly overestimating
(31:52):
what it would cost to put on this event. If
the Southern Poverty Law Center had to pay every single
guy who was there, sure, sure that would run you
into hundreds of thousands of dollars. But I don't think
that's even the allegation at work in this conspiracy theory.
I don't know what they think they're alleging. But again,
(32:16):
like the Patriot Front leaks, we have the primary sources here.
We can read thousands and thousands of messages exchanged on
discord in the months leading up to the Unite the
Right rally. There were whole channels on the Discord dedicated
to connecting people in particular states with other attendees in
(32:37):
their area so they could share travel costs. There were
group chats devoted to hashing out who was staying in
which hate groups. Airbnb arguments over whether non members could
stay accommodations booked for members, negotiations over shared costs. People
shared their PayPal information with their real names in it.
People posted screenshots of confirmation emails from campgrounds and hotels,
(32:59):
and they ranted and raved and complained when Airbnb banned
their accounts when the company found out they were booking
for a Nazi group chat. It's there, It's all there.
You can read it. I'm not just telling you I've
read it. You can read it. It's online. We have
the leaked chats, and we know those leaks are real.
(33:22):
We know this is valid information because when the men
who organized this rally got sued, the lawyers suing them
subpoena and discord and they got the original files. The
people who posted these things aren't denying that they posted them.
The chats are real and you can read them. And
the average attendee paid his own way. And how they
(34:00):
got here. Thomas Russo eighteen years old and fresh out
of high school. He wrote an rented van with a
bunch of other guys from Texas who were all friends
with Asthmador, a now deceased Nazi blogger who wrote for
The Daily Stormer. They all pitched in for gas. We
have the chats. We even have pictures of the craft
(34:21):
night they had together the week before to paint the
homemade shields they carried at the Nazi rally. We don't
need to make up stories about secret money. I know
they made the shields at Billy's house. Most attendees paid
for their own travel, their own lodging, their own food,
their own outfits, their own weapons, and many of them
(34:44):
came on their own. They came with a friend, maybe
someone they met online. They weren't even all members of
any kind of organization. Members of the groups that helped
organize the rally may have benefited from lodging or equipment
paid for at the organizational level, but even then they
were paying in They paid their dues, they bought their
(35:07):
uniform and we have records of that too. A lot
of these groups are incorporated. They have filed paperwork with
the state where they operate to be an LLC. Some
of them have nonprofit status with the IRS. So we
have national policy institutes from nine nineties. They've got nine
(35:31):
nineties for Identity Europa. The League of the South incorporated
as a nonprofit, but they don't actually have IRS. TAXIXIM status.
So we don't have nine nineties for the League of
the South, but we do have them for the Mary
nol Kershaw Foundation. If you listen to the Jack Kershaw
episodes last month, you remember Mary Noel Kershaw was Jack
(35:54):
Kershaw's wife. They worked together as a husband and wife
legal team taking anti integral cases for decades, and he
co founded the League of the South after she died.
The foundation he started in her name allows the League
to collect tax exempt donations to this day. And if
you look at the form nine nineties for the Mary
(36:15):
nol Kershaw Foundation, you can see cash transfers to the
League of the South. It's not a mystery. Not every
organization files nine nineties. They're not all nonprofits. Sure, we
don't have any documentation about the inner workings of Vanguard America.
(36:36):
For example, in a lawsuit against the rallies organizers, a
representative for Vanguard America claimed no documents ever existed. Thomas Rousseau,
who commanded Vanguard America members on the ground at the rally,
was uncooperative during his supposition, and when he founded Patriot
(36:56):
Front not long after the rally, he didn't in corporate
it as any kind of legally existing entity. I think
he thought that would prevent the organization from being sued,
and he was wrong about that. One very funny outlier
in all of this is one of the organizations that
(37:17):
helped plan the rally, the Traditionalist Worker Party. They didn't
just incorporate, They registered as an honest to God political
party with the Federal Election Commission. So in their case
we have itemized expenditure reports. I can look at the
(37:38):
quarterly report they filed with the Federal Election Commission on
November thirtieth, twenty seventeen, and I'm looking at handwritten records
of this hate group's organizational spending on the Nazi rally.
They paid one thy eighty three dollars to Lydia Mountain
Lodge in Standardsville, Virginia on August first, twenty seventeen. On
(37:59):
the line for purpose of disbursement, Treasurer David Matthew Parrott
wrote lodging for event prep. The Southern Poverty Law Center
didn't pay those Nazis from Indiana to rent rustic cabins
twenty nine miles outside of town. This was a decision
that was discussed extensively in the leaked chats and paid
(38:23):
for with money they filed expense reports with the federal
government about we can see it, and where did the
money come from? We know that too, because they filed
reports with the Federal Election Commission, and you can see
that the only income they reported that year was a
(38:44):
transfer of five nine and three dollars from something called
the will Planer Defense Fund. Will Planer has been a
member of half a dozen other Nazi groups in the
last decade, so it's a bit hard to keep track.
But back then, will Planer was a member of the
Traditionalist Worker Party, and at that time he was facing
(39:06):
legal consequences for one of several separate instances where he
attacked counter protesters at Nazi rallies. Honestly, I can't remember
which assault this particular fundraiser was in response to, because
he was doing it kind of a lot. And for
those of you keeping track at home, you should already
have a pin on the board for one of these.
(39:28):
I mentioned in passing that will Planer was detained at
one of the March against Sharia rallies in twenty seventeen.
That was something we talked about in the episode last
February called an accidental Nazi rally. So in twenty seventeen,
the Traditionalist Worker Party held a fundraiser. They collected donations
(39:52):
from their own members and from concerned Nazis across the
white nationalist movement who thought that an injustice was being
done to poor will Planer. And they claimed that this
money was for will Planer's legal defense. And according to
the documentation they filed with the Federal Election Commission, they
transferred that money into their political party coffers, and they
(40:13):
spent it on helmets from a workplace safety equipment company
and those log cabins. None of this is a mystery.
None of this is a secret. It's just boring to
collect all the receipts, and conspiracy theories are easy. The
president wants people to say stuff like the Southern Poverty
(40:36):
Law Center paid for the United the Right rally because
it means Nazis aren't real. It means you sound stupid
for being worried about white nationalists violence, because that's a
fake thing someone made up to make him look bad.
You don't need to worry about the administration reorienting the
entire FBI to arrest the president's political enemies. It's okay
(40:56):
that no one is monitoring far right terrorism anymore because
that stuff was fake. Don't worry if the stuff Stephen
Miller says on Fox News sounds uncomfortably like the stuff
those Nazis were saying, It's okay because the only reason
you thought those were bad talking points in the first
place is because the Democrats paid a guy to hold
a swastika flag while he screamed it at my neighbors.
(41:19):
But it falls apart at the slightest second thought about
what that claim could possibly even mean. What do you
mean the SPOC paid for the rally? Who did? They
pay one guy and he organized it himself and it
cost a quarter million dollars. No matter what angle you
(41:39):
approached the question from, it collapses instantly. We know the
guys who did it were true believers. They told us,
they're still telling us. I played you their own reactions
to this story in last week's episode, and we know
where the money came from, and we know the rally
didn't cost a quarter million dollars. I've got a copy
(42:02):
of the perman application. Jason Kessler paid the City of
Charlottesville's Parks and Recreation Department twenty five dollars for a
permit to hold an event in a public park. Anyone can.
That's what it costs. There were organizational costs paid centrally
(42:25):
sure sound systems and shuttle vans, a few thousand dollars
worth of odds and ends, the kind of thing you
could hide in the budget of a large nonprofit like
the National Policy Institute for the Charles Martel Society. But
they didn't even rent port of bodies. They didn't actually
(42:47):
shell out any kind of money for the kinds of
things experience event organizers of large outdoor events would pay for.
There were no bathrooms, they're no first aid stations, no
free water for the people passing out from the heat
on a hot summer day, no snacks, no signs showing
people where to park or where to walk. It was
(43:09):
not a well organized event. And I'm not just talking
about the rampant hate crimes. I just mean people didn't
know what to park. People got stuck in parking garages
that had road closures around them. It was a clusterfuck.
You might look at photos of thousands of people in
(43:30):
one place and think, Wow, that kind of event must
have cost a fortune, But what is it exactly that
you think costs someone a lot of money. What specifically
is in those pictures that some central event organizer would
have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for Again, they
(43:50):
didn't even get a porta potty. The only part of
that rally that cost any individual tens are hundreds of
thousands of dollars are the medical bills of the victims.
People's bodies were shattered, broken skulls, a fractured pelvis, spinal injuries.
(44:14):
Several people had to learn to walk again. Someone died,
Heather died. People I know, people I love still go
to therapy, still wake up in a cold sweat, sometimes
still flinch at the sound of screeching tires, or WinCE
(44:35):
when they see their own scars. The rally didn't cost
a quarter of a million dollars, but some people's hospital
bills did. One survivor spent months living in an assisted
living facility and then had to retro fit their entire
home because it was no longer accessible to them. Another
(44:57):
developed a lifelong neurological condition called complex pain syndrome. It
causes pain so intense that most people who suffer from
this condition consider ending their own lives. So yeah, yeah,
I guess the rally did cost millions of dollars in
the end, but not in the way that President's implying.
(45:34):
Weird Little Guys is a production of Coolsoe Media and iHeartRadio.
It's researched, written and recorded by me, Molly Hunger. Part
executive producers are Sophie Lectreman and Robert Evans. The show
is edited by the wildly talented Worry Gagan. The theme
music was composed by Brad dickerd. You can email me
at Weird Little 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
(45:57):
show with other listeners on the Weird Little Guys subreddit.
Just don't post anything that's gonna make you one of
my group of guys.
Host
Molly Conger
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