December 11, 2025 • 57 mins
In 2017, Tyler Dykes marched in Charlottesville. In 2021, he breached the capitol. In 2026, he hopes to win a congressional election.
Sources:
https://www.postandcourier.com/beaufort-county/politics/tyler-dykes-campaign-sc1-congress/article_c255115c-45cf-430e-b4a4-160a322631e1.html
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/givesendgo-crowdfunding-extremism/
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67681795/united-states-v-dykes/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/17/racist-crowdfunding-campaigns-extremist
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/01/06/jan-6-prisoners-supporters/
https://www.counterextremism.com/supremacy/base
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/29/us/fbi-arrests-the-base-michigan.html
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media. On October twenty second, twenty twenty five,
two men suddenly found themselves almost entirely unemployable. They didn't
have the same job, they weren't even in the same state.
(00:26):
But the bad day they were both having on October
twenty second was a consequence of a long and complicated
series of events that started at the same time and
at the same place for both of them, the evening
of August eleventh, twenty seventeen, in an empty field behind
(00:46):
the tennis courts at the University of Virginia, eight years
after they marched with tiki torches on the eve of
that deadly Nazi rally in Charlottesville. Men are now convicted felons.
One of them just had his law license suspended. The
(01:07):
other is running for Congress. I'm Molly Conger and this
is where little guys. This is an update to an
(01:35):
old story, an episode that originally ran on October seventeenth,
twenty twenty four, more than a year ago. That episode
is back at the top of your feed today in
case you missed it the first time, or if you
just want to revisit it alongside this one. That's an
unusual choice, especially considering Every episode of this show is
(02:00):
kind of part of the same long story told out
of order. Every episode connects back to some other storyline,
and they almost always feature some names I've mentioned before.
It's a small world, and theirs is even smaller. You
(02:21):
really can't talk about the lives of these weird little
guys without seeing all the places where their lives intersect.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
So if I re.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Ran every old episode that helps add context to the
current one, I'd end up putting half the show's catalog
up as reruns every month, and I think that would
get overwhelming. In this case, though, it felt necessary because
the man at the center of this story is trying
(02:51):
to erase that chapter of his life, and he's trying
to rebrand himself for a big second act. I don't
think we should let him forget that part of his
own story. But I didn't want to retell it all here.
I wanted to leave plenty of roomin this episode to
(03:12):
talk about this new venture of his, and I didn't
want to rehash the entirety of the old episode, but
I wanted to make it easy for you to revisit
that part of his story because the context is everything here. Obviously,
I write a new episode of this show every week,
(03:34):
but I'm never done thinking about the subjects I've written
about in the past. There are court cases. I keep
docket alerts on for guys whose custody status. I monitor groups,
I keep tabs on. I try to stay up to
date on these weird little guys even after their episodes
are done. And it's not usually a positive thing when
(03:58):
there's something in the news that's relevant to the show.
When I sat down to start writing this script, it
was Friday morning, and I had just seen on Blue
Sky that one of you posted a news story about
AT and T. The company had announced the end of
their diversity, equity and inclusion programs, and that listener connected
(04:19):
that news story back to an episode of this show.
It was an episode that had come out exactly a
year ago, the Ku Kluks Cable Access TV episode on
December fifth, twenty twenty four. In that episode, I was
talking about what happened to the millions of dollars that
Nazi stole from a Brinks truck in nineteen eighty four,
(04:42):
and that money ended up all over the place, but
some of it wound up in the hands of William
Luther Pearce and his Nazi group National Alliance. They used
the money to buy land in West Virginia where they
built their Nazi compound, but they also bought ten thousand
dollars worth of stock in AT and T. And they
(05:04):
bought that stock for the express purpose of owning enough
shares to introduce shareholder resolutions three years in a row.
Starting in nineteen eighty eight, a neo Nazi showed up
at the AT and T shareholders meeting and introduced a
resolution to end the company's affirmative action policies. If you're
(05:26):
too young to remember that term, it was basically just
the eighties version of what we call DEI today. In
nineteen eighty eight, nineteen eighty nine, and nineteen ninety, shareholders
at AT and T rejected a racist idea proposed to
them by a literal neo Nazi. In twenty twenty five,
(05:50):
it's the president attacking those diversity initiatives, and this time
the company isn't fighting back.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
None of these.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Stories that I tell on this show are ever really over,
because history doesn't work like that, So we're sort of
perpetually revisiting the events of the past and examining how
they got us into the current political predicament. But today
we're talking about a very specific update. Tyler Dikes is
(06:26):
running for Congress and Augustus and Victus has finally been
suspended from the Florida bar. On a surface level, these
events are unrelated. I would argue, though, that they are
in fact developments in the same story. Tyler Diykes was
(06:48):
the subject of that October twenty twenty four episode The
one Then's back at the top of your feed today.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
He attended the.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Unite the Right rally here in Charlottesville back in twenty
seventeen and participated in the January sixth insurrection in twenty
twenty one. He was arrested and convicted for participating in
the twenty seventeen torch March in twenty twenty three, and
on the day that.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
He was supposed to be released from.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Jail here, the doj unsealed a federal criminal complaint against
him for January sixth. He was sentenced to fifty seven
months in prison at the end of twenty twenty four,
only to be released three months later after he received
a presidential pardon alongside more than fifteen hundred other people
(07:35):
who'd been charged with crimes related to the events of
January sixth. As for Augustus and Victus, he hasn't actually
been covered in an episode of his own, but he
has come up a fair number of times on the show.
He's mentioned in that episode about Tyler Dikes because both
(07:55):
men were convicted on the felony charge of burning an
object with the intent to intimate for their participation in
that Nazi torch march on August eleventh, twenty seventeen, at
the University of Virginia, and that isn't the only time.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
We've talked about him.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
In the episode called an Accidental Nazi Rally from February
of this year, he was one of the local organizers
who stepped up to help an Islamophobic group put on
a nationwide series of rallies against the boogeyman of Sharia
law in the episode State Created Danger in May, he
was the attorney who ghost wrote the lawsuit filed against
(08:34):
the City of Charlottesville by two Nazis who thought the
police should have proactively assisted them in putting on their rally.
In the episode stand Back and Stand By that aired
in June, he was the attorney hired by Enrique Tario
to represent several members of the Proud Boys who are
currently suing the government for one hundred million dollars in
(08:55):
damages for what they feel was an unfair prosecutor against
them for orchestrating the events of January sixth. So it's
a name you've probably heard before on this show, even
if he hasn't officially been the subject of an episode.
Most of the times you've heard his name it had
(09:18):
something to do with the fact that he's a practicing attorney.
As of a few weeks ago, that's no longer the case.
On October twenty second, twenty twenty five, a clerk at
the Florida Supreme Court filed an order suspending Augustus Solenvictus
from the Florida bar. The suspension came just over a
(09:40):
year after his felony conviction, but they generously held off
until the State Court of Appeals dismissed his appeal. He
was given just thirty days to wind down his practice
in the best interests of his current clients. That same day,
October twenty second, twenty twenty five, Tyler Diykes lost his
(10:01):
job too. That afternoon, he tweeted, my name is Tyler
Dikes I was pardoned by President Trump from my actions
on January sixth, and I was just fired again. The
mass media relentlessly posts photos of my Nazi salute on
(10:22):
the Capitol steps about how I was a violent neo
Nazi terrorist. What makes me a Nazi? Loving my country,
loving my family. This is probably the third job I've
lost this year alone from this. Please, I need your help.
Thanks to the lies in the media, I'm almost completely
(10:43):
unable to make a living in anything that isn't politics,
and that is their biggest mistake.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Do you know why?
Speaker 1 (10:51):
It's a mistake that they attacked me so because now
I have no choice but to enter politics and fight
to make America great again. I don't have a choice.
But like I said, these two events are unrelated. They
don't have anything to do with each other except that
(11:14):
they share the same root cause. Augustus and Victus was
suspended from the Florida Bar because suspension from the Florida
Bar is automatic after a felony conviction, and Tyler Dykes
was fired from a series of jobs in South Carolina
after his release from prison because, despite that federal pardon,
(11:35):
he had quite infamously been convicted of felonies related to
his participation in two of the most infamous violent right
wing extremist events in America in the current century, the
Unite the Right rally and the Insurrection. Now, I can't
tell you for certain exactly why he lost his job
(11:57):
this time around, but I don't think it would be
a bad bed to put ten bucks on it, having
something to do with his weird behavior at the No
King's rally in Hilton Head a few days earlier. The
details are different, sure, but if you connect all the dots,
(12:17):
if you work backwards in each man's story, you'll end
up at the same place. They became unemployable on October
twenty second, twenty twenty five, because they both lit that
tiki torch in twenty seventeen, and then they never.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Stopped doubling down on it.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Where that doubling down is leading them, though, is where
these stories split back off again. And neither of those
stories are anywhere near over yet, so we'll just have
to be satisfied with the middle of one of those
stories today. How to catching a felony at a Nazi
rally lost one man his licensed to practice law and
(13:03):
set another down the path to electoral politics. When Tyler
Diykes made that post on October twenty second about losing
his job, he included a link to a now deleted
online fundraiser on the right leaning crowdfunding platform gives and Go.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Based on some of.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
The other texts in that post, it sounds like the
fundraiser was geared more towards soliciting money for his personal
living expenses so he could devote himself full time to
the nebulous work of politics. Generally, he's not actually announcing
anything specific here, just that he's going to get into politics.
(13:48):
And the portion of the post I quoted here doesn't
include the strange way it began. The body of the
message is in the first person, right. My name is
Tyler Dykes was pardoned. I was fired. But before that,
the message is introduced as quote a message from our leader.
(14:12):
The account that currently functions as his official Tyler Dykes
for Congress campaign account didn't start.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Off that way.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
He'd created the account a few weeks earlier, but it
was originally called b C. Pat's Assembly, which is short
for Beaufort County Patriots Assembly, and it is Beaufort in
South Carolina, which was a surprise to me. There's a
county with the same name in North Carolina, but in
(14:44):
North Carolina it's Beaufort. But this is Beaufort. Don't email
me about it. I looked it up. The domain for
Patriots Assembly dot com was purchased on October fifth. An
early post on the Patriots Assembly Twitter account refer to
Tyler Dikes as quote our leader or our chairman, or
(15:09):
a prominent leader in our new organization. But after that
October twenty second post, the account switches to first person language.
He's no longer pretending to be an entire organization, He's
just posting as himself now. And the very next day,
on October twenty third, he posted a now deleted video
(15:34):
to the right leaning YouTube Knockoff Rumble. According to posts
he made on other platforms announcing this video, it was
an hour long and.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
It was called the J six Marine.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
They tried to silence Colan my story of persecution and
why I'm fighting for christ and America. Honestly, whatever it was,
it shouldn't have been an hour long, and it needed
a more concise title. I mean, I'm not workshopping with
the guy, but come on, but the video is gone,
(16:10):
so I didn't have to watch it. His entire Rumble
channel is actually gone now and I was only able
to find a short clip of this video. Based on
the clip, though he seemed to be workshopping a campaign message.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
Here's the thing.
Speaker 4 (16:29):
The reason that all of our.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
Republicans sit in congressmen are sick. That we're sick and tired, right.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
The reason they're not doing anything is because they are
afraid of getting the same treatment that guy. They're afraid
of doing deportations because they're afraid of the last They're
afraid of the different attacks, the different phone calls, everything
they'll get.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
And that's why they're not doing anything.
Speaker 4 (16:54):
And so let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen who
are watching this, I'm not afraid.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
He was entering politics, all right. He was working up
to announcing that he's running for Congress. Like I said,
I only have this brief clip of that hour long video,
so I don't know what else might have been in there.
I don't know what he said that made him want
to delete it afterwards. But if this clip is representative
(17:26):
of the whole video, it pretty much lines up with
other things that he's left online, like how he's really
fixated on making sure you know that it's unfair and
wrong to call him a Nazi.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
And here's the thing.
Speaker 4 (17:43):
They still call me a Nazi to this thick they
still randomy is all these evil, horrific things. But let
me tell you this, what makes me a Nazi? I
love Christ, I love God, I love my country. I
love my state, my family, in my community, and the
entirety of the Low Country area. And that's why I
(18:03):
live here because I.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Love you so much.
Speaker 4 (18:07):
So does that make me a Nazi? Does love in
your family? Does loving God? Does love in your country?
Does that make you a Nazi? That makes you a Nazi?
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Sophiets, this is the messaging he seems to have settled on.
He's bravely standing up to people who call him a
Nazi just because he's a good Christian man who loves
his country. I guess he knows he's going to have
to address the fact that people are calling him a Nazi,
(18:39):
and he's chosen to do that in the most disingenuous
way possible. On November fifth, he registered a domain for
his campaign website and filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission.
He was officially throwing his hat into the ring for
the Republican primary in South Carolina's first congressional district. That
(19:01):
primary will be in June of twenty twenty six, and
it's a crowded field, with nearly a dozen Republicans vying
for the nomination, and there's no incumbent in the mix.
The current representative in South Carolina's first district announced in
August that she won't be seeking reelection. Nancy Mase is
(19:22):
running for governor instead. The first order of business for
a new candidate, after filing the paperwork and making the website,
is making the big announcement a launch party, right, You
have to create excitement around the campaign. You want to
recruit volunteers and get people to open their wallets. You
(19:46):
can't run a campaign without money and volunteers, and this
is your first shot at both of those. You're setting
a tone for the campaign. You don't want your launch
party to flop. So the newly ed Dykes for Congress campaign,
which is a name that sounds very cool but unfortunately
(20:06):
doesn't mean what it sounds like at all, set about
trying to generate buzz by mailing weird letters to people's
homes all over the first district. Someone who listens to
this show got one in their mailbox and sent me
a picture of it.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Thank you for that.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
It is a single sheet of regular white printer paper.
It's not a slick, professionally printed campaign mailer, and it
actually doesn't announce that he's running for office. It starts
off with a big bold header that says our civilization
is being destroyed, and it goes downhill fast from there.
(20:50):
Civilization is being destroyed by communism, George Soros, christ Haters.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Et cetera. The usual further down the page.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
In this wall of text, which again is on a
sheet of plain printer paper, civilization is in bold again,
and this time it's spelled wrong. The letter also addresses
the quote slander on the leftist news that has falsely
labeled him a Nazi just because there's an out of
(21:23):
context photograph of him waving to a friend from the
steps of the Capitol Building. He closes the letter by
inviting the recipient to attend a rally on November ninth
to find out who Tyler Dykes really is. I guess
it's possible that there was more included in the envelope,
(21:45):
but there's nothing I can see in any of the
multiple photos I've seen of this letter that mentions this
is a political campaign, there's no mention of him running
for office, there's no mention of a particular group that
funded the letter. It just says, hey, come to this
event to hear this guy tell you about how much
(22:05):
he loves God and hates Communism and how he's not
really a Nazi like they said in the newspaper. And
each letter was signed by hand I assume by Tyler personally,
in oddly childlike handwriting. Under the signature it reads US
Marine Corps veteran business owner Pardoned J six Patriot. He
(22:46):
also went door to door with a slightly nicer looking
flier advertising the same event, and these two failed to
disclose that the event had anything to do with a
political campaign. It was billed as a public assembly for
upholding immigration law, affordable housing, safe streets, and American values.
(23:08):
And again, based on the photographs I've seen of these flyers,
they did not appear to even have his name on them.
It seems like mainly weird letters to people's houses did
not convince anybody it's a real my I am not
a Nazi. Flyers are raising a lot of questions already
answered by my flyers.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Type of situation.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
You know, because despite his claim that the leftist news
had been falsely smearing him as a Nazi simply for
peacefully attending a political rally in our nation's capital one
day in January, if you google his name, you're gonna
see a lot more than that. And one of the
people who got this letter made it her personal mission
(23:54):
to make sure people understood what they were looking at.
A Beaufort resident who, according to her Facebook profile, is
named Dawn, posted online a few days before the event
that she'd found some troubling information about the man behind
those letters. She posted screenshots of a few headlines about
Dikes's legal troubles and suggested that the VFW hall where
(24:17):
he planned to hold his event was not an appropriate
venue for this well technically, she posted quote, He's being
hosted by our local veterans of Foreign Wars. Tyler Diys
is a well documented troubled young man with a long
history of violence and Nazi ideations. Our VFW must not
(24:39):
understand the vile, dangerous cop attacking Cretan this lipless little
shit is. She followed up in the comments on her post,
saying that she'd called the VFW hall, and the man
she spoke to hadn't been aware of Diykes's history of
Nazi salutes and assaulting cops. He was pretty concerned to
(25:01):
hear about it. Not long after that phone call, the
VFW canceled on Tyler Dikes. The campaign then scrambled to
find a replacement venue and managed to book a conference
room at the Hampton Inn in nearby Okty. But Dawn,
this mysterious but determined woman on Facebook, caught wind of it,
(25:22):
and she called them too. I didn't do a ton
of digging on Dawn. I just scrolled through her Facebook
and based on what I saw, I have to respect
the level of civic engagement here. When the manager at
the Hampton Inn brushed her off over the phone, she
printed out a packet that included several news stories about
(25:45):
Tyler Dikes and she drove over to Okty to hand
deliver it. The hotel canceled the event a few hours later.
Just twenty four hours before his big launch party, Tyler
Diykes was once again without a venue. He posted a
very weird video on his Instagram. He's infuming mad, but
(26:07):
still determined to hold the event. At an undisclosed location
that would only be revealed to his most loyal supporters
by text message one hour before it was scheduled to begin,
But Dawn already knew God bless her woman after my
own heart. The morning of the ninth, she posted on
Facebook that the event had been moved to a public
(26:30):
park in the nearby town of Ridgeland. Not long after that,
Tyler Dykes emailed her and said that he had reported
her to the police for harassment and death threats. He
also posted on telegram that most of the people at
the event would be veterans and that they had concealed
(26:51):
carry permits implication there being everyone at the park will
have a gun. But it seems the launch party ended
up going off without a hitch at that public park
in Ridgeland. There's only one picture of the party. It's
a tightly cropped photo showing Tyler Diykes at a dress
(27:14):
shirt and khakis, standing in what looks like an empty field.
I'm sure his throngs of armed supporters were just out
of frame, and he's only respecting their privacy by showing
absolutely no evidence that anyone was there. And I certainly
(27:35):
wouldn't publicly speculate that his mom might have taken that picture.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
On the day of the campaign launch event November ninth,
a new fundraising page went up. The original fundraising campaign,
the one launched on October twenty second before any political
campaign had been formally announced or any candidacy statement filed,
raised at least three one hundred twenty five dollars before
(28:05):
it was deleted on November sixth, the day after the
FEC paperwork was filed. The new fundraiser was also on
gives and Go, which was a little surprising to me.
I mean, electoral politics is not exactly my wheelhouse, and
compliance with federal campaign finance laws is not something I'm
(28:29):
interested in. But I've donated to a campaign before I've
looked at a campaign fundraiser. They tend to use more
traditional platforms. Technically, you could just set up a PayPal account,
but that's not a good idea. Platforms like act Blue
(28:53):
and wind red are as the names imply the leaving
choices were Democratic and Republican campaigns, respectively, but there are
other options platforms like any dot and donor box. Most
campaigns choose a fundraising platform specifically designed for election fundraising.
(29:16):
It just makes compliance easier. The software automatically generates the
reports you need. You know, every donor is being prompted
to enter the information you're legally required to collect from them,
and they're designed with federal election law in mind. They've
built in things like the legally required language for disclosing
(29:39):
and detesting to the things the candidate is supposed to
disclose and the donor is supposed to attest.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
You know that paid.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
Ford by or authorized by whatever campaign or committee, and
the contribution rules the donor promises they're abiding by. And
those platforms are compliant with current FEC regulations around reporting
credit card processing fees, which may not be the case
if you're using a fundraising site geared more toward personal fundraising.
(30:13):
But gives end go has a special place in the
heart of many January sixth defendants and their supporters. The
crowdfunding site was originally launched in twenty fourteen as an
alternative to sites like gofund me because the founders felt
that mainstream fundraising sites were biased against Christians. I mean,
(30:34):
citation needed, but okay. When Tall Lavin spoke to the
site's founders for a twenty twenty one article in the nation,
they wouldn't give a firm answer to a question about
whether they'd support the clan. In the last five years,
gives end go has become a haven for right wing extremists, QAnon, weirdos,
(30:59):
people who got fired after some viral video of them
saying the N word, Kyle Rittenhouse, Proud Boys, the twenty
twenty two Canadian Trucker Convoy, guys, anti vax grifters, and
of course January sixth defendants. People who got kicked off
every other fundraising website found refuge on gibsend go. So
(31:24):
maybe it shouldn't be summarizing to me that the site
is now pivoting to be the demand where they find it.
They've added an optional donation page template for political campaigns,
one that collects the federally mandated donor information like occupation
and employer. I took a quick look around the site,
(31:45):
and I think Tyler Dykes is the only candidate for
national office currently raising campaign funds on gibs end go,
but there are a handful of state and local candidates
fundraising there now. Like I said, I don't think you
necessarily can't use a platform like gifts end go for
(32:08):
federal election fundraising. It just seems like it opens you
up to a world of possible problems. I am looking
forward to the Dykes campaigns first campaign finance filings. Will
they report that first thirty one hundred dollars from the
deleted fundraiser? Will they remember to report processing fees as expenditures.
(32:31):
Will the cost of the flyers for the launch party
be properly recorded as disbursements or maybe as in kind donations.
Will he hire someone to replace his mom and dad
as the committee's treasurer and designated agent. I can't wait
to find out the campaign's first month has not been strong.
(32:54):
His first quarterly report isn't due to the FEC until
the end of January. But because he's using a public
fundraising page, I can tell you that as of end
of day December eighth, the fundraiser shows three donations for
a total of one hundred and seventy dollars and unrelated
(33:14):
to the fundraising. I can also tell you that I
accidentally discovered the list of bad words that gives end
go hard codes into the page that will prevent you
from submitting the form. I mean, it's got the classic
squear words you know ass ass, but the s's are
dollar signs ass, but the s's are five's ass.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
But there's an underscore between each letter.
Speaker 5 (33:40):
Boob boobs, boobies, boobs, but the o's are zero's boobs
with three o's boobs, with four o's boobs, with five
o's boobs.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
With seven o's.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
I think you can leave a comment if you spelled
boobs with six o's.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
I didn't see that one on the list.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
There's also a dizzying array of different ways someone might
choose to express the N word, and a surprising number
of unique terms, including variations on the word cock. And
there are some surprises on there, like some of these
words must have ended up on the band list because
(34:26):
of a particular incident, because if you just sat down
to make a list of swears, I really don't think
it would occur to you to preemptively prevent the use
of the term fifty yard cunt punt. I mean, this
is extremely funny to me, obviously, but the actual point
(34:51):
here is this must be new because I've looked at
a lot of gifts end go fundraisers and they did
not use to prevent users from leaving comments that said
Hyle Hitler, But now they do.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
It's coded right into the site.
Speaker 1 (35:08):
You can't type arian spelled right, or several varieties of wrong.
You can't type KKK fourteen eighty eight, anti Semitic slurs,
racial slurs, homophobic slurs. You can't type anything about.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
Hitler at all.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
They must have added this after all the news articles
about Nazis leaving each other comments full of racial slurs
when they're donating to each other's fundraisers for Nazi stuff.
I means so much for free speech right, I guess
even the free speech website doesn't need bad press. Aside
(35:58):
from the lackluster fundraiser, the campaign's online presence sucks. I mean,
aside from the messaging, which is obviously very bad. It
is explicitly chrysto fascist. There's a lot of talk about deportation,
very very focused on deportation. But aside from that, aside
from the messaging being evil, there's a lack of direction here.
(36:24):
On the events page of the campaign website, it's just
a giant AI generated picture of breakfast food. It's announcing
an event called Dialogue with Tyler Diyke's, but under date,
time and location, it just says TBD and it's been
like that for weeks. I get that it can be
(36:46):
hard to get a location for an event, but it's
not hard to use a real photograph of a pancake.
Why am I looking at a hideous, swarped plate of
partially fused fruits and oblong egg yolks.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
It's just sloppy.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
And I searched for more information about the campaign. I
looked at the online presence he created, the website, the Instagram,
the Twitter, the telegram, and I looked in the mainstream news.
I looked at local news in his area. I searched
on Facebook, Twitter, Telegram, rumble. I found one local newspaper article.
(37:29):
You know, every time he's talking about his campaign, he says,
I'm being attacked by the media. I'm being smeared by
the media, you know, the leftist media.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
It has it out for me. I'm being targeted.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
I don't know, maybe I'm overlooking something, but I found
a single local newspaper article. I also found a segment
that was recorded by a local TV news outlet. It
is a brief interview he gave back in October, but
the segment never actually aired on TV. As he was
(38:00):
talking to the reporter, someone else filmed it on their
cell phone and he posted that video to Instagram. But
other than that, I only found a couple of interviews
he's given in the last two months, and all of
them were with right wing conspiracy weirdos whose content is
only available in some bizarre, impossible to access place like
(38:24):
a Twitter live broadcast or downloadable only on Telegram. It
was while I was searching for these videos that I
found out people are still using Getter. It was a
right wing Twitter knockoff that had a brief moment after
the fall of Parlor in twenty twenty one, but before
(38:46):
the rise of truth Social in twenty twenty two. I mean,
if you asked me yesterday, I would have told you
Getter isn't even on the Internet anymore. But apparently some
people are still on get Her. Two of the four
campaign interviews I found were with a confused sounding woman
(39:08):
who calls herself Violent Vixen, one was with a daily
prayer broadcast put out by a Telegram channel that supports
January sixth defendants in their families, and the fourth was
with a conspiracy theorist named Anne vander Steele. She used
to be pretty big in the QAnon community, but that's
(39:28):
not really the hot thing anymore. And I'll be honest,
I did not watch enough and vander Steele to tell
you what she's into these days.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
But in all of.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
These interviews, Tyler Diykes did not tell what I would
consider to be the truth. He lied about the events
leading up to him joining the Marines. He omitted any
mention of why he is no longer a Marine. He
pretends to address the Nazi allegations, but he's fighting a
straw man. He's pretending everyone calling him a Nazi is
(40:02):
just talking about January sixth, And he never mentions all
the Nazi rallies he went to, or the Nazi groups
he was a member of.
Speaker 3 (40:12):
I had previously been at Cornell University at Atica, New York.
I spent one semester there as an engineer in biomedical engineering.
But while I was there, I was actually driven out
and I left, and I did not read up and
go back for the second semester because of how openly
Communists that this staff and the faculty were.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
Oh, Tyler, Tyler, that's not true. Come on, it is
true that he enlisted in the Marines after one semester
of college, but he wasn't driven out because of communism.
He felt calculus and chemistry. His own lawyer put that
(40:58):
in a memo and filed it in federal court. He
started at Cornell in the fall of twenty seventeen, just
a few weeks after he attended the Unit the Right
rally in Charlottesville. He was a straight A student in
high school, but he found the college coursework much more challenging,
and he failed two classes in his first semester, and
(41:19):
because of that, Cornell did not allow him back for
the spring semester. He was placed on academic leave, and
instead of just taking that semester off to regroup and
come back, he opted to drop out for good instead,
and that's when he enlisted the Marines. It was math,
(41:42):
not communism, that drove him out of Cornell. As for
his time in the Marines, well, he never actually says
much about it. His campaign materials often feature a photo
of him in his marine dress blues. He refers to
him himself as a Marine Corps veteran, and he happily
(42:03):
accepts the perfunctory thank you for your service he's often
given in these interviews, but he doesn't say what that
service was. He says he fought for this country and
that his time in the Marines made him the man
he is today, but he never says that he was
discharged to the reserves immediately following basic training. He was
(42:26):
in the reserves from twenty eighteen until twenty twenty two,
when he was given an other than honorable discharge. During
his time in the Marine Corps Reserves, he was actively
involved in far right extremist activity. In January of twenty nineteen,
he was interviewed by an FBI agent from the Joint
(42:48):
Terrorism Task Force regarding his ties to domestic extremist groups.
The agent's affidavit doesn't say which groups. He hadn't joined
the Marines yet when he attended the Unite the Right
rally in twenty seventeen, but he was a Marine a
year later when he was one of a tiny handful
(43:08):
of attendees at the anniversary rally in Washington, d C.
In twenty eighteen, and he was a Marine when he
stormed the Capitol in January of twenty twenty one. The
exact date of his discharge from the Marine Corps isn't clear.
When he was arrested in Virginia in twenty twenty three,
(43:31):
the prosecutor referred to his discharge as having been quote
last year, so I assume it must have been sometime
in twenty twenty two. The records related to his discharge
were filed under SEAL in his federal criminal case, but
unredacted filings that refer to them specify that his discharge
(43:55):
was because of something he did on November eighth, twenty twenty,
and whatever that something was had to do with participating
in prohibited extremist activity. Like I said, the paperwork itself
is filed under SEAL, but I happen to know that
(44:16):
on November eighth, twenty twenty, a security camera in Sumter County,
South Carolina, captured footage of a man who looks exactly
like Tyler Dikes taping up swastika flyers outside local businesses.
He doesn't mention any of this when he's asked about
his service in those campaign interviews, obviously, and when a
(44:39):
federal probation officer asked him about it in twenty twenty four,
he lied. He said that he was asked to leave
the Marines because he failed to show up for drill,
so he was at a Nazi rally. In twenty seventeen.
He was at another Nazi rally in twenty eighteen. He
(45:02):
was interviewed by counter terrorism in twenty nineteen. He was
caught on camera putting up Nazi flyers in twenty twenty,
and the Marine Corps ultimately discharged him for that in
twenty twenty two. By the time he was arrested in
twenty twenty three for intimidating counter protesters with a lit torch.
Back in twenty seventeen, he was a member of an
(45:24):
extremist group called the Southern Sun's Active Club, And all
of this was in that first episode.
Speaker 2 (45:32):
But I missed something.
Speaker 1 (45:35):
There was one filing in his federal court case with
an important detail that I missed the first time around.
In a follow up to the original sentencing memorandum, the
government added a few more details to their list of
things Dykes had done in the past that would seem
to indicate his involvement in extremist activity. Most of them
(45:59):
were the things we've already talked about, the things I
already know, but this one was new. It reads November
December twenty twenty Dyke's travels from South Carolina to bad Axe, Michigan,
to participate in a field training exercise run by an
organization called the Base. The Base is a United States
(46:22):
based racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist group with cells
in the United States and reported ties abroad. The Base
encourages the hastening of a race war and aims to
establish a white ethno state through violence against non white
minority groups and the US government. Oh dear, we haven't
(46:43):
had any reason to get into the Base yet. It
hasn't really come up on the show.
Speaker 2 (46:49):
I think I did.
Speaker 1 (46:50):
Mention it in passing on an older episode, but I
wasn't really telling you anything about the Base. I just
mentioned that I was at a hearing once for one
of the members of the group who'd been arrested before
he could enact his plan to kickstart a race war
in twenty twenty.
Speaker 2 (47:06):
It was a whole thing.
Speaker 1 (47:08):
I don't remember why I was telling you about that hearing,
but it was the day I walked out of the
bathroom at the green Belt, Maryland Federal Court Building with
my dress tucked into my tights. And it was the
same day that I grabbed that FBI agent's phone out
of his hand because he couldn't figure out how to
turn it off, and he was just fumbling with it
(47:29):
and fidgeting and pressing the buttons and doing it wrong.
And I didn't want the judge to get mad at
the gallery because someone's phone was on, so.
Speaker 2 (47:36):
I just did it for him.
Speaker 1 (47:39):
I told you about that, but I don't think I
actually told you anything about the base, so that paragraph
in that document is interesting. I hadn't had any reason
up until this moment to think Tyler Dykes had been
involved with the BASS, but I'm not sure the date
(48:01):
is right. I know the government is never going to
tell me anything juicy about a terrorist organization, and there's
no point even asking. But I wish that someone could
just confirm for me whether that's a typo, because I
really think they had to have meant twenty nineteen not
(48:22):
twenty twenty. I know that there was a paramilitary training
exercise at the compound in bad Axe, Michigan, over the
weekend of November thirtieth to December first, twenty nineteen. There
was supposed to be another one in December of twenty twenty,
but it didn't happen because the FBI raided the property
(48:44):
in October of twenty twenty. If members of the base
did get together in December of twenty twenty. Half the
group wouldn't have made it because they were in federal
custody and wherever the meetup happened, it couldn't have been
the proper pretty in bad acts. So either as a
TYPO and they met twenty nineteen, or there's something else
(49:07):
going on here entirely that I have no other documentation about,
and I have a lot more questions. I'm leaning towards TYPO.
It happens more than you think. But also a lot
of guys who were in the base during that time
period got arrested. I mean, whether or not the government
(49:29):
meant twenty nineteen or twenty twenty. If Tyler Diys was
involved in the base during that time period either year,
he was friends with at least one informant. There's no
getting around that the FBI was in possession of a
lot of cell phones and computers that belonged to members
of the base got arrested during that time period, and
(49:53):
several cells of that group were infiltrated or monitored. The
cell arrested in Maryland for plotting to start the Civil
War was wiretapped. The cell arrested in Georgia for plotting
to murder and anti fascist activists, and his wife had
an undercover agent in their crew. The guys living on
the compound in Michigan got raided. So I feel like
(50:18):
the government definitely knew Tyler Dykes was there. And I
don't just mean they know it now in this document
they wrote in twenty twenty four, I mean they knew
it then. This isn't a recent discovery. So why is
this single paragraph and a last minute addend him to
a sentencing memorandum the only place this has ever come up?
(50:41):
If the FBI knew then that he was a member
of a domestic extremist organization actively plotting to kick off
the Race War, a group that was explicitly seeking to
recruit members of the United States military to carry out
acts of terrorism, why did the Marine Corps wait two
more year years to discharge him? Great question I wish
(51:04):
I could tell you. As Ever, this new piece of
information leaves me with more questions than it answers, but
it does seem to go pretty far in rebutting Tyler
Dykes's claim that the people calling him a Nazi are
being unfair, So.
Speaker 3 (51:25):
Quite interesting you know, my experience is anily six For example,
I brandeded the neo Nazi domestic terrorists because of a wave.
Speaker 1 (51:36):
Every time he tries to hit back on being called
a Nazi, he says he was just waving. He's referring
to a specific photograph, one that was used in the
criminal complaint filed in his federal case. After fighting his
way to the top of the steps of the Capitol
Building on January sixth, he turned around and well, he says,
(51:59):
he would It's just a still photo. But i know
what it looks like to me, and I've seen a
lot of photos of guys doing this. Here's the thing, though,
that's not the only reason people are calling him a Nazi.
As someone running for office hoping to capture the extreme
(52:21):
right wing of the Republican Party, it's safe for him
to be proud of being a January sixth defendant. There
are large segments of the MAGA base that eat it
up when you say that you're a brave MAGA patriot
who stepped up to defend Donald Trump on January sixth,
and the woke mob is just trying to cancel you
(52:43):
because you love America right. So if he can blur
the truth and convince people that, oh, yeah, I'm being
called a Nazi, but only because of this cool thing
I did that you like. That will work for him,
That's good for him. There's a degree of martyrdom associated
(53:05):
with being a January sixth defendant.
Speaker 2 (53:08):
He suffered for the cause.
Speaker 1 (53:10):
He believed in MAGA, and he was willing to put
himself on the line. He rarely misses an opportunity to
mention that he was a January sixth defendant. He also
repeatedly implies that he was the victim of a violent
police rate on his home when the FBI came to
arrest him on the January sixth charges. This is a
(53:31):
popular refrain in that community. It is part of the
martyrdom narrative. But in one interview, he was asked to
recount that harrowing tale, and he's forced to clarify that actually,
he wasn't home when that happened. He doesn't mention that
(53:52):
not only was he not home that day, he hadn't
been home in months because he was in jail for
a felon he committed at a Nazi rally. So he's
trying to downplay the Nazi allegations by saying it's just
a smear against him for his brave, patriotic behavior at
(54:14):
the insurrection. The problem is, even if you believe he
was just waving on January sixth, there's video of him
throwing Hitler salutes at a Nazi rally in twenty seventeen.
I can show you photos and video from multiple angles.
(54:36):
He wasn't waving on August eleventh, twenty seventeen, and there's
no wiggling out of that one. And really we're not
just talking about how many times he gave the old
stiff arm salute during a riot. He wasn't just some
regular Republican voter who got carried away on January sixth.
(54:57):
He was a member of at least two different Nazi groups.
And that's just what the government has been willing to
corroborate on the record. He can post pictures of himself
in his marine dress blues on Instagram if he wants,
but he received an other than honorable discharge for doing
Nazi stuff with his Nazi friends, and the Nazi conduct
(55:17):
in question took place before January sixth, twenty twenty one.
He wants voters to think he's being unfairly labeled a
Nazi for going to the Capitol in January sixth, but
the United States Marine Corps seems to be saying that
he was a Nazi before that. I don't have a
(55:37):
huge amount of faith in the voters that elected Nancy Mace,
but it's a crowded primary field and those people have
other options. I'm not actually worried about Tyler Dyke's winning
his primary. That's extremely unlikely. But I am really not
looking forward to a political landscape littered with guys like this,
(56:02):
Guys who are trying to kick in the Overton window
like it's an actual window on the northwest side of
the Capitol Building. I ended up having to cut a
few thousand words about Augustus and Victus and his suspension
from the Florida Bar. It looks like we'll have to
wait until next week to talk about the ways the
paths these two men have taken have diverged since they
(56:25):
marched together in twenty seventeen. Weird Little Guys. It's a
production of Cool Zone Media and iHeartRadio. It's research, written
(56:45):
and recorded by me while I hunger. Our executive producers
are Sophi Le Treman and Robert Evans. The show is
edited by the wildly talented Bory Gagan. The theme music
was composed by Brad Dickert. You can email me at
weirdlu Guy's 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 show with other
(57:06):
listeners on the Weird Little Guys subreddit. Just don't post
anything that's going to make you one of my Weird
Little Guys.
Cool Zone Media. On October twenty second, twenty twenty five,
two men suddenly found themselves almost entirely unemployable. They didn't
have the same job, they weren't even in the same state.
(00:26):
But the bad day they were both having on October
twenty second was a consequence of a long and complicated
series of events that started at the same time and
at the same place for both of them, the evening
of August eleventh, twenty seventeen, in an empty field behind
(00:46):
the tennis courts at the University of Virginia, eight years
after they marched with tiki torches on the eve of
that deadly Nazi rally in Charlottesville. Men are now convicted felons.
One of them just had his law license suspended. The
(01:07):
other is running for Congress. I'm Molly Conger and this
is where little guys. This is an update to an
(01:35):
old story, an episode that originally ran on October seventeenth,
twenty twenty four, more than a year ago. That episode
is back at the top of your feed today in
case you missed it the first time, or if you
just want to revisit it alongside this one. That's an
unusual choice, especially considering Every episode of this show is
(02:00):
kind of part of the same long story told out
of order. Every episode connects back to some other storyline,
and they almost always feature some names I've mentioned before.
It's a small world, and theirs is even smaller. You
(02:21):
really can't talk about the lives of these weird little
guys without seeing all the places where their lives intersect.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
So if I re.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Ran every old episode that helps add context to the
current one, I'd end up putting half the show's catalog
up as reruns every month, and I think that would
get overwhelming. In this case, though, it felt necessary because
the man at the center of this story is trying
(02:51):
to erase that chapter of his life, and he's trying
to rebrand himself for a big second act. I don't
think we should let him forget that part of his
own story. But I didn't want to retell it all here.
I wanted to leave plenty of roomin this episode to
(03:12):
talk about this new venture of his, and I didn't
want to rehash the entirety of the old episode, but
I wanted to make it easy for you to revisit
that part of his story because the context is everything here. Obviously,
I write a new episode of this show every week,
(03:34):
but I'm never done thinking about the subjects I've written
about in the past. There are court cases. I keep
docket alerts on for guys whose custody status. I monitor groups,
I keep tabs on. I try to stay up to
date on these weird little guys even after their episodes
are done. And it's not usually a positive thing when
(03:58):
there's something in the news that's relevant to the show.
When I sat down to start writing this script, it
was Friday morning, and I had just seen on Blue
Sky that one of you posted a news story about
AT and T. The company had announced the end of
their diversity, equity and inclusion programs, and that listener connected
(04:19):
that news story back to an episode of this show.
It was an episode that had come out exactly a
year ago, the Ku Kluks Cable Access TV episode on
December fifth, twenty twenty four. In that episode, I was
talking about what happened to the millions of dollars that
Nazi stole from a Brinks truck in nineteen eighty four,
(04:42):
and that money ended up all over the place, but
some of it wound up in the hands of William
Luther Pearce and his Nazi group National Alliance. They used
the money to buy land in West Virginia where they
built their Nazi compound, but they also bought ten thousand
dollars worth of stock in AT and T. And they
(05:04):
bought that stock for the express purpose of owning enough
shares to introduce shareholder resolutions three years in a row.
Starting in nineteen eighty eight, a neo Nazi showed up
at the AT and T shareholders meeting and introduced a
resolution to end the company's affirmative action policies. If you're
(05:26):
too young to remember that term, it was basically just
the eighties version of what we call DEI today. In
nineteen eighty eight, nineteen eighty nine, and nineteen ninety, shareholders
at AT and T rejected a racist idea proposed to
them by a literal neo Nazi. In twenty twenty five,
(05:50):
it's the president attacking those diversity initiatives, and this time
the company isn't fighting back.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
None of these.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Stories that I tell on this show are ever really over,
because history doesn't work like that, So we're sort of
perpetually revisiting the events of the past and examining how
they got us into the current political predicament. But today
we're talking about a very specific update. Tyler Dikes is
(06:26):
running for Congress and Augustus and Victus has finally been
suspended from the Florida bar. On a surface level, these
events are unrelated. I would argue, though, that they are
in fact developments in the same story. Tyler Diykes was
(06:48):
the subject of that October twenty twenty four episode The
one Then's back at the top of your feed today.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
He attended the.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Unite the Right rally here in Charlottesville back in twenty
seventeen and participated in the January sixth insurrection in twenty
twenty one. He was arrested and convicted for participating in
the twenty seventeen torch March in twenty twenty three, and
on the day that.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
He was supposed to be released from.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
Jail here, the doj unsealed a federal criminal complaint against
him for January sixth. He was sentenced to fifty seven
months in prison at the end of twenty twenty four,
only to be released three months later after he received
a presidential pardon alongside more than fifteen hundred other people
(07:35):
who'd been charged with crimes related to the events of
January sixth. As for Augustus and Victus, he hasn't actually
been covered in an episode of his own, but he
has come up a fair number of times on the show.
He's mentioned in that episode about Tyler Dikes because both
(07:55):
men were convicted on the felony charge of burning an
object with the intent to intimate for their participation in
that Nazi torch march on August eleventh, twenty seventeen, at
the University of Virginia, and that isn't the only time.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
We've talked about him.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
In the episode called an Accidental Nazi Rally from February
of this year, he was one of the local organizers
who stepped up to help an Islamophobic group put on
a nationwide series of rallies against the boogeyman of Sharia
law in the episode State Created Danger in May, he
was the attorney who ghost wrote the lawsuit filed against
(08:34):
the City of Charlottesville by two Nazis who thought the
police should have proactively assisted them in putting on their rally.
In the episode stand Back and Stand By that aired
in June, he was the attorney hired by Enrique Tario
to represent several members of the Proud Boys who are
currently suing the government for one hundred million dollars in
(08:55):
damages for what they feel was an unfair prosecutor against
them for orchestrating the events of January sixth. So it's
a name you've probably heard before on this show, even
if he hasn't officially been the subject of an episode.
Most of the times you've heard his name it had
(09:18):
something to do with the fact that he's a practicing attorney.
As of a few weeks ago, that's no longer the case.
On October twenty second, twenty twenty five, a clerk at
the Florida Supreme Court filed an order suspending Augustus Solenvictus
from the Florida bar. The suspension came just over a
(09:40):
year after his felony conviction, but they generously held off
until the State Court of Appeals dismissed his appeal. He
was given just thirty days to wind down his practice
in the best interests of his current clients. That same day,
October twenty second, twenty twenty five, Tyler Diykes lost his
(10:01):
job too. That afternoon, he tweeted, my name is Tyler
Dikes I was pardoned by President Trump from my actions
on January sixth, and I was just fired again. The
mass media relentlessly posts photos of my Nazi salute on
(10:22):
the Capitol steps about how I was a violent neo
Nazi terrorist. What makes me a Nazi? Loving my country,
loving my family. This is probably the third job I've
lost this year alone from this. Please, I need your help.
Thanks to the lies in the media, I'm almost completely
(10:43):
unable to make a living in anything that isn't politics,
and that is their biggest mistake.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Do you know why?
Speaker 1 (10:51):
It's a mistake that they attacked me so because now
I have no choice but to enter politics and fight
to make America great again. I don't have a choice.
But like I said, these two events are unrelated. They
don't have anything to do with each other except that
(11:14):
they share the same root cause. Augustus and Victus was
suspended from the Florida Bar because suspension from the Florida
Bar is automatic after a felony conviction, and Tyler Dykes
was fired from a series of jobs in South Carolina
after his release from prison because, despite that federal pardon,
(11:35):
he had quite infamously been convicted of felonies related to
his participation in two of the most infamous violent right
wing extremist events in America in the current century, the
Unite the Right rally and the Insurrection. Now, I can't
tell you for certain exactly why he lost his job
(11:57):
this time around, but I don't think it would be
a bad bed to put ten bucks on it, having
something to do with his weird behavior at the No
King's rally in Hilton Head a few days earlier. The
details are different, sure, but if you connect all the dots,
(12:17):
if you work backwards in each man's story, you'll end
up at the same place. They became unemployable on October
twenty second, twenty twenty five, because they both lit that
tiki torch in twenty seventeen, and then they never.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Stopped doubling down on it.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Where that doubling down is leading them, though, is where
these stories split back off again. And neither of those
stories are anywhere near over yet, so we'll just have
to be satisfied with the middle of one of those
stories today. How to catching a felony at a Nazi
rally lost one man his licensed to practice law and
(13:03):
set another down the path to electoral politics. When Tyler
Diykes made that post on October twenty second about losing
his job, he included a link to a now deleted
online fundraiser on the right leaning crowdfunding platform gives and Go.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Based on some of.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
The other texts in that post, it sounds like the
fundraiser was geared more towards soliciting money for his personal
living expenses so he could devote himself full time to
the nebulous work of politics. Generally, he's not actually announcing
anything specific here, just that he's going to get into politics.
(13:48):
And the portion of the post I quoted here doesn't
include the strange way it began. The body of the
message is in the first person, right. My name is
Tyler Dykes was pardoned. I was fired. But before that,
the message is introduced as quote a message from our leader.
(14:12):
The account that currently functions as his official Tyler Dykes
for Congress campaign account didn't start.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Off that way.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
He'd created the account a few weeks earlier, but it
was originally called b C. Pat's Assembly, which is short
for Beaufort County Patriots Assembly, and it is Beaufort in
South Carolina, which was a surprise to me. There's a
county with the same name in North Carolina, but in
(14:44):
North Carolina it's Beaufort. But this is Beaufort. Don't email
me about it. I looked it up. The domain for
Patriots Assembly dot com was purchased on October fifth. An
early post on the Patriots Assembly Twitter account refer to
Tyler Dikes as quote our leader or our chairman, or
(15:09):
a prominent leader in our new organization. But after that
October twenty second post, the account switches to first person language.
He's no longer pretending to be an entire organization, He's
just posting as himself now. And the very next day,
on October twenty third, he posted a now deleted video
(15:34):
to the right leaning YouTube Knockoff Rumble. According to posts
he made on other platforms announcing this video, it was
an hour long and.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
It was called the J six Marine.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
They tried to silence Colan my story of persecution and
why I'm fighting for christ and America. Honestly, whatever it was,
it shouldn't have been an hour long, and it needed
a more concise title. I mean, I'm not workshopping with
the guy, but come on, but the video is gone,
(16:10):
so I didn't have to watch it. His entire Rumble
channel is actually gone now and I was only able
to find a short clip of this video. Based on
the clip, though he seemed to be workshopping a campaign message.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
Here's the thing.
Speaker 4 (16:29):
The reason that all of our.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
Republicans sit in congressmen are sick. That we're sick and tired, right.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
The reason they're not doing anything is because they are
afraid of getting the same treatment that guy. They're afraid
of doing deportations because they're afraid of the last They're
afraid of the different attacks, the different phone calls, everything
they'll get.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
And that's why they're not doing anything.
Speaker 4 (16:54):
And so let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen who
are watching this, I'm not afraid.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
He was entering politics, all right. He was working up
to announcing that he's running for Congress. Like I said,
I only have this brief clip of that hour long video,
so I don't know what else might have been in there.
I don't know what he said that made him want
to delete it afterwards. But if this clip is representative
(17:26):
of the whole video, it pretty much lines up with
other things that he's left online, like how he's really
fixated on making sure you know that it's unfair and
wrong to call him a Nazi.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
And here's the thing.
Speaker 4 (17:43):
They still call me a Nazi to this thick they
still randomy is all these evil, horrific things. But let
me tell you this, what makes me a Nazi? I
love Christ, I love God, I love my country. I
love my state, my family, in my community, and the
entirety of the Low Country area. And that's why I
(18:03):
live here because I.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
Love you so much.
Speaker 4 (18:07):
So does that make me a Nazi? Does love in
your family? Does loving God? Does love in your country?
Does that make you a Nazi? That makes you a Nazi?
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Sophiets, this is the messaging he seems to have settled on.
He's bravely standing up to people who call him a
Nazi just because he's a good Christian man who loves
his country. I guess he knows he's going to have
to address the fact that people are calling him a Nazi,
(18:39):
and he's chosen to do that in the most disingenuous
way possible. On November fifth, he registered a domain for
his campaign website and filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission.
He was officially throwing his hat into the ring for
the Republican primary in South Carolina's first congressional district. That
(19:01):
primary will be in June of twenty twenty six, and
it's a crowded field, with nearly a dozen Republicans vying
for the nomination, and there's no incumbent in the mix.
The current representative in South Carolina's first district announced in
August that she won't be seeking reelection. Nancy Mase is
(19:22):
running for governor instead. The first order of business for
a new candidate, after filing the paperwork and making the website,
is making the big announcement a launch party, right, You
have to create excitement around the campaign. You want to
recruit volunteers and get people to open their wallets. You
(19:46):
can't run a campaign without money and volunteers, and this
is your first shot at both of those. You're setting
a tone for the campaign. You don't want your launch
party to flop. So the newly ed Dykes for Congress campaign,
which is a name that sounds very cool but unfortunately
(20:06):
doesn't mean what it sounds like at all, set about
trying to generate buzz by mailing weird letters to people's
homes all over the first district. Someone who listens to
this show got one in their mailbox and sent me
a picture of it.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Thank you for that.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
It is a single sheet of regular white printer paper.
It's not a slick, professionally printed campaign mailer, and it
actually doesn't announce that he's running for office. It starts
off with a big bold header that says our civilization
is being destroyed, and it goes downhill fast from there.
(20:50):
Civilization is being destroyed by communism, George Soros, christ Haters.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Et cetera. The usual further down the page.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
In this wall of text, which again is on a
sheet of plain printer paper, civilization is in bold again,
and this time it's spelled wrong. The letter also addresses
the quote slander on the leftist news that has falsely
labeled him a Nazi just because there's an out of
(21:23):
context photograph of him waving to a friend from the
steps of the Capitol Building. He closes the letter by
inviting the recipient to attend a rally on November ninth
to find out who Tyler Dykes really is. I guess
it's possible that there was more included in the envelope,
(21:45):
but there's nothing I can see in any of the
multiple photos I've seen of this letter that mentions this
is a political campaign, there's no mention of him running
for office, there's no mention of a particular group that
funded the letter. It just says, hey, come to this
event to hear this guy tell you about how much
(22:05):
he loves God and hates Communism and how he's not
really a Nazi like they said in the newspaper. And
each letter was signed by hand I assume by Tyler personally,
in oddly childlike handwriting. Under the signature it reads US
Marine Corps veteran business owner Pardoned J six Patriot. He
(22:46):
also went door to door with a slightly nicer looking
flier advertising the same event, and these two failed to
disclose that the event had anything to do with a
political campaign. It was billed as a public assembly for
upholding immigration law, affordable housing, safe streets, and American values.
(23:08):
And again, based on the photographs I've seen of these flyers,
they did not appear to even have his name on them.
It seems like mainly weird letters to people's houses did
not convince anybody it's a real my I am not
a Nazi. Flyers are raising a lot of questions already
answered by my flyers.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Type of situation.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
You know, because despite his claim that the leftist news
had been falsely smearing him as a Nazi simply for
peacefully attending a political rally in our nation's capital one
day in January, if you google his name, you're gonna
see a lot more than that. And one of the
people who got this letter made it her personal mission
(23:54):
to make sure people understood what they were looking at.
A Beaufort resident who, according to her Facebook profile, is
named Dawn, posted online a few days before the event
that she'd found some troubling information about the man behind
those letters. She posted screenshots of a few headlines about
Dikes's legal troubles and suggested that the VFW hall where
(24:17):
he planned to hold his event was not an appropriate
venue for this well technically, she posted quote, He's being
hosted by our local veterans of Foreign Wars. Tyler Diys
is a well documented troubled young man with a long
history of violence and Nazi ideations. Our VFW must not
(24:39):
understand the vile, dangerous cop attacking Cretan this lipless little
shit is. She followed up in the comments on her post,
saying that she'd called the VFW hall, and the man
she spoke to hadn't been aware of Diykes's history of
Nazi salutes and assaulting cops. He was pretty concerned to
(25:01):
hear about it. Not long after that phone call, the
VFW canceled on Tyler Dikes. The campaign then scrambled to
find a replacement venue and managed to book a conference
room at the Hampton Inn in nearby Okty. But Dawn,
this mysterious but determined woman on Facebook, caught wind of it,
(25:22):
and she called them too. I didn't do a ton
of digging on Dawn. I just scrolled through her Facebook
and based on what I saw, I have to respect
the level of civic engagement here. When the manager at
the Hampton Inn brushed her off over the phone, she
printed out a packet that included several news stories about
(25:45):
Tyler Dikes and she drove over to Okty to hand
deliver it. The hotel canceled the event a few hours later.
Just twenty four hours before his big launch party, Tyler
Diykes was once again without a venue. He posted a
very weird video on his Instagram. He's infuming mad, but
(26:07):
still determined to hold the event. At an undisclosed location
that would only be revealed to his most loyal supporters
by text message one hour before it was scheduled to begin,
But Dawn already knew God bless her woman after my
own heart. The morning of the ninth, she posted on
Facebook that the event had been moved to a public
(26:30):
park in the nearby town of Ridgeland. Not long after that,
Tyler Dykes emailed her and said that he had reported
her to the police for harassment and death threats. He
also posted on telegram that most of the people at
the event would be veterans and that they had concealed
(26:51):
carry permits implication there being everyone at the park will
have a gun. But it seems the launch party ended
up going off without a hitch at that public park
in Ridgeland. There's only one picture of the party. It's
a tightly cropped photo showing Tyler Diykes at a dress
(27:14):
shirt and khakis, standing in what looks like an empty field.
I'm sure his throngs of armed supporters were just out
of frame, and he's only respecting their privacy by showing
absolutely no evidence that anyone was there. And I certainly
(27:35):
wouldn't publicly speculate that his mom might have taken that picture.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
On the day of the campaign launch event November ninth,
a new fundraising page went up. The original fundraising campaign,
the one launched on October twenty second before any political
campaign had been formally announced or any candidacy statement filed,
raised at least three one hundred twenty five dollars before
(28:05):
it was deleted on November sixth, the day after the
FEC paperwork was filed. The new fundraiser was also on
gives and Go, which was a little surprising to me.
I mean, electoral politics is not exactly my wheelhouse, and
compliance with federal campaign finance laws is not something I'm
(28:29):
interested in. But I've donated to a campaign before I've
looked at a campaign fundraiser. They tend to use more
traditional platforms. Technically, you could just set up a PayPal account,
but that's not a good idea. Platforms like act Blue
(28:53):
and wind red are as the names imply the leaving
choices were Democratic and Republican campaigns, respectively, but there are
other options platforms like any dot and donor box. Most
campaigns choose a fundraising platform specifically designed for election fundraising.
(29:16):
It just makes compliance easier. The software automatically generates the
reports you need. You know, every donor is being prompted
to enter the information you're legally required to collect from them,
and they're designed with federal election law in mind. They've
built in things like the legally required language for disclosing
(29:39):
and detesting to the things the candidate is supposed to
disclose and the donor is supposed to attest.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
You know that paid.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
Ford by or authorized by whatever campaign or committee, and
the contribution rules the donor promises they're abiding by. And
those platforms are compliant with current FEC regulations around reporting
credit card processing fees, which may not be the case
if you're using a fundraising site geared more toward personal fundraising.
(30:13):
But gives end go has a special place in the
heart of many January sixth defendants and their supporters. The
crowdfunding site was originally launched in twenty fourteen as an
alternative to sites like gofund me because the founders felt
that mainstream fundraising sites were biased against Christians. I mean,
(30:34):
citation needed, but okay. When Tall Lavin spoke to the
site's founders for a twenty twenty one article in the nation,
they wouldn't give a firm answer to a question about
whether they'd support the clan. In the last five years,
gives end go has become a haven for right wing extremists, QAnon, weirdos,
(30:59):
people who got fired after some viral video of them
saying the N word, Kyle Rittenhouse, Proud Boys, the twenty
twenty two Canadian Trucker Convoy, guys, anti vax grifters, and
of course January sixth defendants. People who got kicked off
every other fundraising website found refuge on gibsend go. So
(31:24):
maybe it shouldn't be summarizing to me that the site
is now pivoting to be the demand where they find it.
They've added an optional donation page template for political campaigns,
one that collects the federally mandated donor information like occupation
and employer. I took a quick look around the site,
(31:45):
and I think Tyler Dykes is the only candidate for
national office currently raising campaign funds on gibs end go,
but there are a handful of state and local candidates
fundraising there now. Like I said, I don't think you
necessarily can't use a platform like gifts end go for
(32:08):
federal election fundraising. It just seems like it opens you
up to a world of possible problems. I am looking
forward to the Dykes campaigns first campaign finance filings. Will
they report that first thirty one hundred dollars from the
deleted fundraiser? Will they remember to report processing fees as expenditures.
(32:31):
Will the cost of the flyers for the launch party
be properly recorded as disbursements or maybe as in kind donations.
Will he hire someone to replace his mom and dad
as the committee's treasurer and designated agent. I can't wait
to find out the campaign's first month has not been strong.
(32:54):
His first quarterly report isn't due to the FEC until
the end of January. But because he's using a public
fundraising page, I can tell you that as of end
of day December eighth, the fundraiser shows three donations for
a total of one hundred and seventy dollars and unrelated
(33:14):
to the fundraising. I can also tell you that I
accidentally discovered the list of bad words that gives end
go hard codes into the page that will prevent you
from submitting the form. I mean, it's got the classic
squear words you know ass ass, but the s's are
dollar signs ass, but the s's are five's ass.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
But there's an underscore between each letter.
Speaker 5 (33:40):
Boob boobs, boobies, boobs, but the o's are zero's boobs
with three o's boobs, with four o's boobs, with five
o's boobs.
Speaker 2 (33:54):
With seven o's.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
I think you can leave a comment if you spelled
boobs with six o's.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
I didn't see that one on the list.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
There's also a dizzying array of different ways someone might
choose to express the N word, and a surprising number
of unique terms, including variations on the word cock. And
there are some surprises on there, like some of these
words must have ended up on the band list because
(34:26):
of a particular incident, because if you just sat down
to make a list of swears, I really don't think
it would occur to you to preemptively prevent the use
of the term fifty yard cunt punt. I mean, this
is extremely funny to me, obviously, but the actual point
(34:51):
here is this must be new because I've looked at
a lot of gifts end go fundraisers and they did
not use to prevent users from leaving comments that said
Hyle Hitler, But now they do.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
It's coded right into the site.
Speaker 1 (35:08):
You can't type arian spelled right, or several varieties of wrong.
You can't type KKK fourteen eighty eight, anti Semitic slurs,
racial slurs, homophobic slurs. You can't type anything about.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
Hitler at all.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
They must have added this after all the news articles
about Nazis leaving each other comments full of racial slurs
when they're donating to each other's fundraisers for Nazi stuff.
I means so much for free speech right, I guess
even the free speech website doesn't need bad press. Aside
(35:58):
from the lackluster fundraiser, the campaign's online presence sucks. I mean,
aside from the messaging, which is obviously very bad. It
is explicitly chrysto fascist. There's a lot of talk about deportation,
very very focused on deportation. But aside from that, aside
from the messaging being evil, there's a lack of direction here.
(36:24):
On the events page of the campaign website, it's just
a giant AI generated picture of breakfast food. It's announcing
an event called Dialogue with Tyler Diyke's, but under date,
time and location, it just says TBD and it's been
like that for weeks. I get that it can be
(36:46):
hard to get a location for an event, but it's
not hard to use a real photograph of a pancake.
Why am I looking at a hideous, swarped plate of
partially fused fruits and oblong egg yolks.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
It's just sloppy.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
And I searched for more information about the campaign. I
looked at the online presence he created, the website, the Instagram,
the Twitter, the telegram, and I looked in the mainstream news.
I looked at local news in his area. I searched
on Facebook, Twitter, Telegram, rumble. I found one local newspaper article.
(37:29):
You know, every time he's talking about his campaign, he says,
I'm being attacked by the media. I'm being smeared by
the media, you know, the leftist media.
Speaker 2 (37:36):
It has it out for me. I'm being targeted.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
I don't know, maybe I'm overlooking something, but I found
a single local newspaper article. I also found a segment
that was recorded by a local TV news outlet. It
is a brief interview he gave back in October, but
the segment never actually aired on TV. As he was
(38:00):
talking to the reporter, someone else filmed it on their
cell phone and he posted that video to Instagram. But
other than that, I only found a couple of interviews
he's given in the last two months, and all of
them were with right wing conspiracy weirdos whose content is
only available in some bizarre, impossible to access place like
(38:24):
a Twitter live broadcast or downloadable only on Telegram. It
was while I was searching for these videos that I
found out people are still using Getter. It was a
right wing Twitter knockoff that had a brief moment after
the fall of Parlor in twenty twenty one, but before
(38:46):
the rise of truth Social in twenty twenty two. I mean,
if you asked me yesterday, I would have told you
Getter isn't even on the Internet anymore. But apparently some
people are still on get Her. Two of the four
campaign interviews I found were with a confused sounding woman
(39:08):
who calls herself Violent Vixen, one was with a daily
prayer broadcast put out by a Telegram channel that supports
January sixth defendants in their families, and the fourth was
with a conspiracy theorist named Anne vander Steele. She used
to be pretty big in the QAnon community, but that's
(39:28):
not really the hot thing anymore. And I'll be honest,
I did not watch enough and vander Steele to tell
you what she's into these days.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
But in all of.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
These interviews, Tyler Diykes did not tell what I would
consider to be the truth. He lied about the events
leading up to him joining the Marines. He omitted any
mention of why he is no longer a Marine. He
pretends to address the Nazi allegations, but he's fighting a
straw man. He's pretending everyone calling him a Nazi is
(40:02):
just talking about January sixth, And he never mentions all
the Nazi rallies he went to, or the Nazi groups
he was a member of.
Speaker 3 (40:12):
I had previously been at Cornell University at Atica, New York.
I spent one semester there as an engineer in biomedical engineering.
But while I was there, I was actually driven out
and I left, and I did not read up and
go back for the second semester because of how openly
Communists that this staff and the faculty were.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
Oh, Tyler, Tyler, that's not true. Come on, it is
true that he enlisted in the Marines after one semester
of college, but he wasn't driven out because of communism.
He felt calculus and chemistry. His own lawyer put that
(40:58):
in a memo and filed it in federal court. He
started at Cornell in the fall of twenty seventeen, just
a few weeks after he attended the Unit the Right
rally in Charlottesville. He was a straight A student in
high school, but he found the college coursework much more challenging,
and he failed two classes in his first semester, and
(41:19):
because of that, Cornell did not allow him back for
the spring semester. He was placed on academic leave, and
instead of just taking that semester off to regroup and
come back, he opted to drop out for good instead,
and that's when he enlisted the Marines. It was math,
(41:42):
not communism, that drove him out of Cornell. As for
his time in the Marines, well, he never actually says
much about it. His campaign materials often feature a photo
of him in his marine dress blues. He refers to
him himself as a Marine Corps veteran, and he happily
(42:03):
accepts the perfunctory thank you for your service he's often
given in these interviews, but he doesn't say what that
service was. He says he fought for this country and
that his time in the Marines made him the man
he is today, but he never says that he was
discharged to the reserves immediately following basic training. He was
(42:26):
in the reserves from twenty eighteen until twenty twenty two,
when he was given an other than honorable discharge. During
his time in the Marine Corps Reserves, he was actively
involved in far right extremist activity. In January of twenty nineteen,
he was interviewed by an FBI agent from the Joint
(42:48):
Terrorism Task Force regarding his ties to domestic extremist groups.
The agent's affidavit doesn't say which groups. He hadn't joined
the Marines yet when he attended the Unite the Right
rally in twenty seventeen, but he was a Marine a
year later when he was one of a tiny handful
(43:08):
of attendees at the anniversary rally in Washington, d C.
In twenty eighteen, and he was a Marine when he
stormed the Capitol in January of twenty twenty one. The
exact date of his discharge from the Marine Corps isn't clear.
When he was arrested in Virginia in twenty twenty three,
(43:31):
the prosecutor referred to his discharge as having been quote
last year, so I assume it must have been sometime
in twenty twenty two. The records related to his discharge
were filed under SEAL in his federal criminal case, but
unredacted filings that refer to them specify that his discharge
(43:55):
was because of something he did on November eighth, twenty twenty,
and whatever that something was had to do with participating
in prohibited extremist activity. Like I said, the paperwork itself
is filed under SEAL, but I happen to know that
(44:16):
on November eighth, twenty twenty, a security camera in Sumter County,
South Carolina, captured footage of a man who looks exactly
like Tyler Dikes taping up swastika flyers outside local businesses.
He doesn't mention any of this when he's asked about
his service in those campaign interviews, obviously, and when a
(44:39):
federal probation officer asked him about it in twenty twenty four,
he lied. He said that he was asked to leave
the Marines because he failed to show up for drill,
so he was at a Nazi rally. In twenty seventeen.
He was at another Nazi rally in twenty eighteen. He
(45:02):
was interviewed by counter terrorism in twenty nineteen. He was
caught on camera putting up Nazi flyers in twenty twenty,
and the Marine Corps ultimately discharged him for that in
twenty twenty two. By the time he was arrested in
twenty twenty three for intimidating counter protesters with a lit torch.
Back in twenty seventeen, he was a member of an
(45:24):
extremist group called the Southern Sun's Active Club, And all
of this was in that first episode.
Speaker 2 (45:32):
But I missed something.
Speaker 1 (45:35):
There was one filing in his federal court case with
an important detail that I missed the first time around.
In a follow up to the original sentencing memorandum, the
government added a few more details to their list of
things Dykes had done in the past that would seem
to indicate his involvement in extremist activity. Most of them
(45:59):
were the things we've already talked about, the things I
already know, but this one was new. It reads November
December twenty twenty Dyke's travels from South Carolina to bad Axe, Michigan,
to participate in a field training exercise run by an
organization called the Base. The Base is a United States
(46:22):
based racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist group with cells
in the United States and reported ties abroad. The Base
encourages the hastening of a race war and aims to
establish a white ethno state through violence against non white
minority groups and the US government. Oh dear, we haven't
(46:43):
had any reason to get into the Base yet. It
hasn't really come up on the show.
Speaker 2 (46:49):
I think I did.
Speaker 1 (46:50):
Mention it in passing on an older episode, but I
wasn't really telling you anything about the Base. I just
mentioned that I was at a hearing once for one
of the members of the group who'd been arrested before
he could enact his plan to kickstart a race war
in twenty twenty.
Speaker 2 (47:06):
It was a whole thing.
Speaker 1 (47:08):
I don't remember why I was telling you about that hearing,
but it was the day I walked out of the
bathroom at the green Belt, Maryland Federal Court Building with
my dress tucked into my tights. And it was the
same day that I grabbed that FBI agent's phone out
of his hand because he couldn't figure out how to
turn it off, and he was just fumbling with it
(47:29):
and fidgeting and pressing the buttons and doing it wrong.
And I didn't want the judge to get mad at
the gallery because someone's phone was on, so.
Speaker 2 (47:36):
I just did it for him.
Speaker 1 (47:39):
I told you about that, but I don't think I
actually told you anything about the base, so that paragraph
in that document is interesting. I hadn't had any reason
up until this moment to think Tyler Dykes had been
involved with the BASS, but I'm not sure the date
(48:01):
is right. I know the government is never going to
tell me anything juicy about a terrorist organization, and there's
no point even asking. But I wish that someone could
just confirm for me whether that's a typo, because I
really think they had to have meant twenty nineteen not
(48:22):
twenty twenty. I know that there was a paramilitary training
exercise at the compound in bad Axe, Michigan, over the
weekend of November thirtieth to December first, twenty nineteen. There
was supposed to be another one in December of twenty twenty,
but it didn't happen because the FBI raided the property
(48:44):
in October of twenty twenty. If members of the base
did get together in December of twenty twenty. Half the
group wouldn't have made it because they were in federal
custody and wherever the meetup happened, it couldn't have been
the proper pretty in bad acts. So either as a
TYPO and they met twenty nineteen, or there's something else
(49:07):
going on here entirely that I have no other documentation about,
and I have a lot more questions. I'm leaning towards TYPO.
It happens more than you think. But also a lot
of guys who were in the base during that time
period got arrested. I mean, whether or not the government
(49:29):
meant twenty nineteen or twenty twenty. If Tyler Diys was
involved in the base during that time period either year,
he was friends with at least one informant. There's no
getting around that the FBI was in possession of a
lot of cell phones and computers that belonged to members
of the base got arrested during that time period, and
(49:53):
several cells of that group were infiltrated or monitored. The
cell arrested in Maryland for plotting to start the Civil
War was wiretapped. The cell arrested in Georgia for plotting
to murder and anti fascist activists, and his wife had
an undercover agent in their crew. The guys living on
the compound in Michigan got raided. So I feel like
(50:18):
the government definitely knew Tyler Dykes was there. And I
don't just mean they know it now in this document
they wrote in twenty twenty four, I mean they knew
it then. This isn't a recent discovery. So why is
this single paragraph and a last minute addend him to
a sentencing memorandum the only place this has ever come up?
(50:41):
If the FBI knew then that he was a member
of a domestic extremist organization actively plotting to kick off
the Race War, a group that was explicitly seeking to
recruit members of the United States military to carry out
acts of terrorism, why did the Marine Corps wait two
more year years to discharge him? Great question I wish
(51:04):
I could tell you. As Ever, this new piece of
information leaves me with more questions than it answers, but
it does seem to go pretty far in rebutting Tyler
Dykes's claim that the people calling him a Nazi are
being unfair, So.
Speaker 3 (51:25):
Quite interesting you know, my experience is anily six For example,
I brandeded the neo Nazi domestic terrorists because of a wave.
Speaker 1 (51:36):
Every time he tries to hit back on being called
a Nazi, he says he was just waving. He's referring
to a specific photograph, one that was used in the
criminal complaint filed in his federal case. After fighting his
way to the top of the steps of the Capitol
Building on January sixth, he turned around and well, he says,
(51:59):
he would It's just a still photo. But i know
what it looks like to me, and I've seen a
lot of photos of guys doing this. Here's the thing, though,
that's not the only reason people are calling him a Nazi.
As someone running for office hoping to capture the extreme
(52:21):
right wing of the Republican Party, it's safe for him
to be proud of being a January sixth defendant. There
are large segments of the MAGA base that eat it
up when you say that you're a brave MAGA patriot
who stepped up to defend Donald Trump on January sixth,
and the woke mob is just trying to cancel you
(52:43):
because you love America right. So if he can blur
the truth and convince people that, oh, yeah, I'm being
called a Nazi, but only because of this cool thing
I did that you like. That will work for him,
That's good for him. There's a degree of martyrdom associated
(53:05):
with being a January sixth defendant.
Speaker 2 (53:08):
He suffered for the cause.
Speaker 1 (53:10):
He believed in MAGA, and he was willing to put
himself on the line. He rarely misses an opportunity to
mention that he was a January sixth defendant. He also
repeatedly implies that he was the victim of a violent
police rate on his home when the FBI came to
arrest him on the January sixth charges. This is a
(53:31):
popular refrain in that community. It is part of the
martyrdom narrative. But in one interview, he was asked to
recount that harrowing tale, and he's forced to clarify that actually,
he wasn't home when that happened. He doesn't mention that
(53:52):
not only was he not home that day, he hadn't
been home in months because he was in jail for
a felon he committed at a Nazi rally. So he's
trying to downplay the Nazi allegations by saying it's just
a smear against him for his brave, patriotic behavior at
(54:14):
the insurrection. The problem is, even if you believe he
was just waving on January sixth, there's video of him
throwing Hitler salutes at a Nazi rally in twenty seventeen.
I can show you photos and video from multiple angles.
(54:36):
He wasn't waving on August eleventh, twenty seventeen, and there's
no wiggling out of that one. And really we're not
just talking about how many times he gave the old
stiff arm salute during a riot. He wasn't just some
regular Republican voter who got carried away on January sixth.
(54:57):
He was a member of at least two different Nazi groups.
And that's just what the government has been willing to
corroborate on the record. He can post pictures of himself
in his marine dress blues on Instagram if he wants,
but he received an other than honorable discharge for doing
Nazi stuff with his Nazi friends, and the Nazi conduct
(55:17):
in question took place before January sixth, twenty twenty one.
He wants voters to think he's being unfairly labeled a
Nazi for going to the Capitol in January sixth, but
the United States Marine Corps seems to be saying that
he was a Nazi before that. I don't have a
(55:37):
huge amount of faith in the voters that elected Nancy Mace,
but it's a crowded primary field and those people have
other options. I'm not actually worried about Tyler Dyke's winning
his primary. That's extremely unlikely. But I am really not
looking forward to a political landscape littered with guys like this,
(56:02):
Guys who are trying to kick in the Overton window
like it's an actual window on the northwest side of
the Capitol Building. I ended up having to cut a
few thousand words about Augustus and Victus and his suspension
from the Florida Bar. It looks like we'll have to
wait until next week to talk about the ways the
paths these two men have taken have diverged since they
(56:25):
marched together in twenty seventeen. Weird Little Guys. It's a
production of Cool Zone Media and iHeartRadio. It's research, written
(56:45):
and recorded by me while I hunger. Our executive producers
are Sophi Le Treman and Robert Evans. The show is
edited by the wildly talented Bory Gagan. The theme music
was composed by Brad Dickert. You can email me at
weirdlu Guy's 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 show with other
(57:06):
listeners on the Weird Little Guys subreddit. Just don't post
anything that's going to make you one of my Weird
Little Guys.
Host
Molly Conger
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