January 22, 2020 • 37 mins
Robert Evans attended the massive Second Amendment rally in Richmond, where he uncovered a hotbed of dangerous extremism and nihilistic violence lurking in the heart of the gun rights movement.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Worst Year Ever, A production of I Heart
Radio Together Everything So Down, Down Down. The sound you
(00:37):
were hearing is roughly twenty two voices from roughly men
and women carrying twenty guns and chanting their violent opposition
to all forms of gun control. On January I found
myself in Richmond, Virginia, attending probably the largest anti gun
control protest in the history of the United States. This
(00:58):
event started as the annual Will Lobby Day rally for
the Virginia Citizens Defense League v c d L. Lobby
days exist all over the country, and their days for
NGOs and the like to assemble in state capitals and
plead their cases on various bills. It's pure coincidence that
Richmond's lobby Day happens to coincide with Martin Luther King
Jr's birthday, although that didn't make the number of Confederate
(01:20):
flags I saw any less awkward. Now. The head of
the v c d L is a fellow named Philip
Van Cleave, and he does not want you or anyone
else to confuse his group for a mainstream lobbying organization.
And a two thousand nineteen letter to a local newspaper,
he described the v c d L as an extremist organization,
writing there's nothing wrong with being extreme and the preservation
(01:41):
of our civil rights. V c d L is proud
to be categorized as an extremist organization, and we will
fully intend to continue being such. If you're someone outside
of Virginia and you have heard of Van Cleave, it's
probably because back in two eighteen, Sasha Baron Cohen tricked
him into making a firearms training video aimed at toddlers. Yeah,
they haven't quite developed what we call conscious where you
(02:05):
you feel guilty about doing something wrong. That's developing if
you're near any right and wrong. If they don't haven't
developed that yet, they could be very effective soldiers. The
whole mess cost Van Cleave a great deal of mainstream respect,
but now it's one of the few reliable truths of
our era is that mainstream respect is worth slightly less
than soiled toilet paper. The fringe right has continued to
support Van Cleave, and hundreds of armed activists show up
(02:26):
every year for vcd LS lobby. Days before my flight
to Richmond, I hopped on Skype and talked to State
Senator Lee Carter. Virginia's only elected Socialist legislator. He told
me about the history of this gathering. Happened when the
Republicans were in control. Um. It never amounted to more
than about two hundred people. UM. And people were there
to demonstrate and to talk to legislators. UM. Now you know,
(02:51):
there's there's a lot of symbolism behind a bunch of armed,
mostly white guys. UM. You know, having a demonstration in
the capital of the Confederacy on Margot king Day every year.
But um, but it was symbolish, no violent UM. So
(03:12):
this year, unfortunately, there are a lot of outside groups
that have decided to latch onto this. So I would
no longer characterize this as a rally, and a VCDL
is still planning on going through with their rally as normal.
But it will not be normal. It will not be
normal because last year Virginia's Democratic Party swept the state
(03:34):
legislature and the governorship. Once they had power, the Democrats
decided to push a raft of new gun control laws.
Some of what they've advocated seems reasonably even to me.
A guy who owns multiple air fifteen carries a gun
on a near daily basis. They're pushing for universal background checks,
mandatory reporting for lost and stolen firearms in safe storage requirements.
Pretty sane, reasonable stuff. But other measures are much more controversial.
(03:58):
There are some proposals that are just outright not good
in my view. So things like one handgun a month,
which in my opinion won't do anything. Because we have
A t S data from before and after Virginia got
rid of its one handgun a month law a few
years ago. What that show was. You know that the
(04:19):
total number of firearms confiscated by the A T S
and connection with a crime didn't change. What changed was
the mix. It was fewer long arms and more pistols,
but the total number remained unchanged. And so you know,
I feel that one handgun a month is a burden
on peaceful collectors that doesn't really do anything to address
public safety. If you're listening to this and you come
(04:41):
from more of a traditional liberal background, particularly if you
grew up in a place like Los Angeles or New
York or Boston, you know, a city with strict firearm laws,
it may seem ludicrous to you that people would protest
any of this, And you need to understand that on
the right wing, logic and reason have long since departed
the gun control debate. There are tins of thou sense
of heavily armed men and women organized into cells around
(05:02):
the nation who would rather die and kill than accept
a new assault weapons band. The reasons why are extremely complex,
but the short of it is that for decades, bad
actors on the fringe right have executed an exceptionally successful
campaign to convince millions that even moderate gun control laws
are an inevitable precursor to mass confiscation and tyranny. For
(05:24):
an example of how these folks talk about gun laws,
here's an exerpt from a speech given by Stuart Rhodes,
head of a nationwide militia called the Oath Keepers, to
an audience of his followers. Someone's going to complain the
face officer when the police officer does. That's pretty much
what youbody can do it. So that's if you're looking
at down the road and put the laws in place,
and these truck and turn the data one person in
(05:45):
a time, one veteran time, one gun over at a time.
That's how they're going to do into how do you
go don't register your gun, sure, but if they know,
but if they know where you're at, and then you
got guns, what are you gonna do? That's why you agree,
That's why you need the neighbors behind you. If every
(06:05):
old guy shoots and when they come to their door,
will only lose a few guys in over sixty and
it will be over. But I'll say better off. Your
should be behind you, all your gas together in the posts.
(06:28):
The kind of thinging you see I display here, the
kind of leads people to think modest gun control proposals
are the prelude to a war of elimination. Well, that's
been carefully nurtured by decades of propaganda. You may not
understand it, but you do have to live with its impacts.
Which is why Lee Carter spent the twentie hiding out
in a safe house under a river of death threats.
And no, not because he was part of the push
(06:48):
for more gun control. It's because he proposed a build
that would have allowed teachers to go on strike. In Virginia,
all public employees have been prom limited from going on
strike for up of seventy years. Um. You know, as
far as I can tell, it goes back to nineteen fifty.
But that's as far back as our electronic records system
goes so I don't know how long before that it
(07:10):
was actually put in the law. And so, you know,
with with the teacher strikes that we've seen in other states,
you know, Colorado, Kentucky, West Virginia, California, in Illinois, UM,
I saw teachers that were able to stand together and
raise the alarm on the conditions of their schools, say
that it's much better for the students if we walk
(07:32):
out for a few days and demand change and get it,
then to continue as if everything's fine. And so I
put in a bill last year to legalize all public
employee strikes. So just completely removed that section of the
code that for him. UM. Unfortunately, that bill died last
(07:53):
year without even getting hearing, and it didn't get a
hearing because a lot of my fellow legislators were so
afraid of this topic. They didn't even want to have
a conversation because they thought if police were allowed to
go on strikes that it would lead to chaos. The
data shows that that's not true. You know, we've seen
from other places where police have had slowdowns or strikes
(08:14):
and things have been fine. UM. But you know this,
this was the view among my fellow legislators. So I decided, Okay,
let's let's avoid the discussion about the merits of the
police state with what I'm trying to do is legalized
feature strikes. And so I narrowed the scope of the bill.
(08:36):
I took it from an outright repeal of the prohibition too,
narrowing the applicability of the prohibition um to just law
enforcement officers, you know, changing where it said any employee
of the commonwealth to any public safety employee of the
count the wealth. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people
out there who uh read that will um and read
(09:01):
the sections of the laws that already exists, and thought
that that was new language. And so they said, you know, um,
this guy is trying to fire cops who don't go
around and grab everybody's cuts. All this confusion was not
due to a simple misunderstanding. It is the result of
a concerted propaganda campaign doing a little bit of forensic digging,
(09:24):
you know, kind of trying to trying to find the
origin of this conspiracy theory. The earliest mentioned that I
could find of it was from a local affiliate of
the Fraternal Order of Police Associates in Charlotte'sville. Um so um,
you know, there's there's two sorts of competing police CLAUSEI unions.
(09:47):
You know, there's there's a Fraternal Order of Police and
the Fraternal Order of Police associates. So it started with
with s o P A Lodge five in Charlottesville. There, Um,
it was shared by the Virginia s OP. So you know,
it went from a local in one organization to the
statewide and the other and then um, you know, from
(10:08):
there it got shared through you know, the pro gun
right wing Facebook group network UM, and it ended up
with UM one of my fellow delegates, Nick Fredi's Paul
Pepper who's currently running for Congress. You know, he's going
on a right wing mediator to try to not support
in the Republican base because the primary. And he decided
(10:33):
to say, you know, Lee Carter put in this bill
to fire police who don't go along with Governor Northom's
gun confiscation, and it spread like wildfire from there. It
ended up you know, the claim was repeated by a
YouTube personality named I ract Veteran to an half varion subscribers, UM.
(10:54):
And you know, it even ended up in a Wall
Street Journal opinion piece. And they never reached out to me.
For comment, because of course I would have said, the
record strates that that's not what the bill does. The
horrific absurdity of least situation has been compounded by the
fact that, as a socialist, he actually opposes many of
the good control laws proposed by his Democratic colleagues. What
(11:15):
I believe about guns in particular is that you know, yes,
there are some changes to gun laws that can be
made to make people safer, universal background checks, mandatory reporting
for lost stolen firearms, things like that. But but you know,
the big ticket troposals, the assault weapons bands and and um,
you know, red flag laws. These are things that that
(11:38):
make people sort of feel like they've done something about guns,
but won't actually benefit public safety. Um. And specifically, you
know that the the driving force of my my gun
policy is what I saw and what the nation saw
on August Row seventeen, when the Nazis attacked Charlotte Still
(11:59):
and so then I decided that it is critically important
that anyone who Nazis would want to kill should have
the ability to stop Nazis from murdering them. And so
he finds himself caught between an outraged horde of paranoid
heavily armed militia living in their own media ecosystem, and
utterly convinced he wants to take their guns and probably
(12:20):
murder them. Well together, everything down, down, down. And then
on the other side, Lee is dealing with a crowd
of liberal democratic politicians who see going after assault weapons
as good for their political career and don't really believe
(12:41):
anyone would ever shoot them over the idea. I think
the notion of an assault weapons done rests on an
extraordinarily strong space in institutions, right, an unwavering state and
institutions that, uh, you know, the government and all of
its attendages are there to help people, um. And you
(13:02):
know that includes police and uh, you know that that
these mass shootings that we're that we're seeing our aberrations,
they're they're one offs that are happening because people have
fool and so you will move the tool and they
won't happen. Um. But you know, part of that also
is sort of transferring that faith and institutions into how
(13:25):
they analyze the actions of others. You know, for for
a lot of particularly liberal politicians, the faith that they
have in institutions is so strong that they can't even
conceive of the fact that it's not shared by everyone
in our society, and so you know, they don't even
a lot of them don't even recognize that there are
(13:47):
groups out there who have been telling themselves for thirty years,
an assault weapons ban is you know, the first step
of the government coming to kill us, right, you know,
these these are these these right wing anti government groups
have been telling themselves this. Vince Waco and Ruby Ridge.
(14:08):
I mean, we even had a state senator in the
hearing on one of these bills mentioned Ruby Ridge in
his comments opposing the assault Weapons down bill, and I
mean you could you could see the n r A
crowd that was in attendance that you know, if you
watch the live stream of that hearing, they pan to
(14:28):
the crowd and it was, you know, a bunch of
people in n r A shirts nod in their head
as soon as he said the words Ruby Rich. So
it's it's sort of the people that are pushing for
this policy are doing is from a good place. I
fundamentally believe that, but they just cannot allow themselves to
(14:50):
recognize that there are people out there who have been
telling themselves for a very long time that an assault
weapon span is the last straw and what they do,
and we need to start. Those people absolutely exist, and
thousands of them showed up to march on Richmond. It's
probably now that I should note, h if you haven't
(15:10):
noticed already, that this is going to be a little
bit of an abnormal episode of worst year ever, because
I'm the only one speaking in it. Um, that's because
I flew out to Richmond alone to cover this. We'll
have Katie and Cody back in later in the week
for a follow up, but we'll talk more about what
I saw at the rally and what happened. But I
wanted to get this out now because you know, this
is fresh in the news and I think people need
(15:32):
to understand what I saw while I was there. So yeah,
thousands and thousands and thousands of people who believe that like,
we're right on the verge of calamity, and it's going
to be calamity pushed by nefarious socialists seeking to take
their guns. Um, those people exist, and I'd like to
present you with an example of just one of them,
(15:53):
a member of a three percenter militia named Chris Hill.
In this clip, he actually supports red flag laws. So
long as existed, disarmed anti fascists and communists so he
can murder them. Red flag laws. I don't think anybody
in the right mind would give two ships or flying
fuck if the red flag laws were designed to take
(16:13):
the firearms away from the card carrying communists that run
around with their Antifa red flags, beating people up, hitting
them with locks and socks, stabbing them, um all of
that ship. If that outburd the case, I would be
supportive of a red flag law. You're recognized communists, you're
(16:35):
a member of Antifa, you run around with with your
Antifa flag. Hell yeah, sending the swat team, disarmed the
bastard and let them go through the the wringer, or
it wouldn't even be going through the ringer. Designate them
as terrorists first, designated them as terrorists first, and you
(16:58):
arrest them under suspicion of terrorist activity. Simple as that.
But instan targeting me, it's misdirected. Now, the bulk of
the mainstream news you've seen about this rally will have
focused around one of two things. Number one, wacky pictures
of men with giant guns and ill fitting body armor,
and number two, the fact that it was a peaceful rally,
(17:18):
and this is true. I saw no violence on January,
but part of that has to do with the fact
that in the days immediately prior to the rally, the
FBI arrested six members of a neo Nazi terrorist organization
called the Base. They had plans to show up in
Richmond with an legal automatic weapon and fift hundred rounds
of ammunition. One of the arrested men was a Canadian
(17:38):
military demolitions expert on the run from the law in
his own country. But calling this rally peaceful also ignores
the sheer amount of fantasizing about violence that I saw there.
In the far right, the term boogaloo refers to a
coming second civil war. On January twenty, I saw patches
and blasted with Pepe's that identified the bearer of the
patch as a member of the Boogaloo ber gaide. I
(18:00):
saw a protest sign and someone's hands with I have
a dream of a Boogaloo written on it in cruel
mockery of Martin Luther King junior. Day I saw an
armored truck drive down the street covered in American flags
with Boogaloo written on the front of the cab. I
saw variations of different boogaloo license plates on cars from
multiple states. Even seemingly innocuous and zany things wound up
(18:22):
being connected to this violent fantasy of internessing warfare. At
one point, I snagged several shots of heavily armed militiamen
wearing brightly colored Hawaiian shirts underneath their body armor. I
shared the pictures on Twitter, calling his men members of
the Marguaritaville Light Infantry, and there was much laughter. I
assumed the shirts were part of a lighthearted jest on
the parts of these militiamen. Maybe they were trying to
(18:42):
seem less threatening, you know, in their weapons and equipment.
Maybe they didn't want to scare people. But then when
I got back to my hotel room, I did some digging.
A simple Google search for Hawaiian shirt boogaloo led me
to numerous returns which showed that online big luoo has
evolved into yet another's synonym for boogaloo. And of course,
what do you wear at a luow Hawaiian shirt? Here's
(19:03):
an example I found on the Facebook page Firearms Unknown,
which has more than twenty eight thousand followers. The post
in question starts with an image of a man in
a Hawaiian shirt at a gun store holding a scoped
A R fifteen. Beto O'Rourke's head is photoshopped onto his body.
The text underneath this image reads quote, the big Luau
is coming. Be prepared and go in style with the
(19:26):
firearms unknown Boogaloo blouse. Everyone knows you can't attend to
luou in anything but a Hawaiian shirt, and the Boogoloo
blouse is the perfect Hawaiian shirt for the occasion. Whether
it be your desire to roast a pig, just get
down and dance to the disco, or maybe you want
to hold up in an igloo for the winter. With
the Boogaloo blouse, we have got you covered. The Boogoloo
blouse is made from polyester, five percent Spandex and three
(19:47):
percent lava monster. It feels cool to the touch and
is unbelievably comfortable. Being comfortable while boogalooing is key. With
its bright colors, all of your boujahadeen friends will be
easily able to distinguish between fellow partygoers and those who
seek to in the celebration. Early a. Rourke's face is
featured because he quite famously promised to confiscate a R
fifteens of elected president. By the way, the firearms unknown
(20:09):
page motto is because the Red Coats aren't going to
shoot themselves. Other violent imagery wasn't ready supply. At one
point I came across a squadron of heavily armed members
of the Proud Boys, a far right group with a
range of ties to neo Nazi organizations. The Proud Boys
were armed and armored like the other militiamen, but a
number of them had curious patches on their chest which
(20:30):
said r w D s I'm gonna cut right to
the chase. This stands for right wing death squads, and
I don't think I have to explain its meaning further
than that. During the rally, I asked one of these
proudest of Boys what his patchment, and he seemed to
be less than proud that I knew here was his response.
(20:50):
Can ask what that patch means, the one that says
r w DS. The point I'm making is that, well,
there was no direct violence today, that does not mean
there is nothing to worry about in this rally. What
I saw in Richmond was the coming together of a
potential American insurgent movement tens of thousands strong. And of
(21:11):
course there was no violence on the FBI made sure
of that, and the sheer number of firearms present ensured
the police were extra careful as well. No tear gas
was deployed to clear the streets. Protesters were allowed to
mask up, which is legal under Virginia law. The excuse
given to one of my colleagues is that it was
cold outside. But no, the Virginia gun Kerfuffle was not
(21:32):
interesting because of what happened. The rally itself was mostly
just a bunch of heavily armed men talking to one
another while every so often Alex Jones rolled around the
perimeter and an armored vehicle shouting nonsense. Most of what
(21:57):
is interesting about happened beneath the surface, and that's the
story I'm going to tell now. It all starts with
a fellow named William S. Lynde. He's a Christian conservative
author and a widely cited thinker, and he's one of
the originators of the concept of fourth generation warfare. Wikipedia
defines this as quote conflict characterized by a blurring of
(22:17):
the lines between war and politics. Combatants and civilians. Lynde
is the kind of guy who thinks police should carry
rocket propelled grenades and that mass hanging is the best
solution to inner city crime. He's a major inflection point
for the theory that cultural Marxists are trying to take
over America. If you're listening to this podcast, there is
a very good chance that William S. Lynde wants you dead.
(22:39):
He's also friends with President Donald Trump, or at least
the two have met. They posed together in April two
thousand and sixteen, and Lynde handed him a copy of
his book, The Next Conservatism. This book, which was circulated
widely among Trump's campaign staff, urges the establishment of a
network of local anti government militia groups to fight domestic terrorism.
These group should report two county sheriffs. Len's ideas have
(23:03):
been adopted by the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association
csp OA, basically believes local sheriffs should have their own armies.
During the two thousand sixteen election, the c SPOA leadership
had significant documented ties with a Trump campaign. Today, the
c SPOA works closely with the Oath Keepers. Many of
their members are Virginia sheriffs who head of this rally
(23:24):
have threatened to engage in open rebellion against the state government.
Colepepper County Sheriff Scott Jenkins, for example, has promised to
deputize thousands of armed citizens if Richmond passes gun control regulations.
Dozens of counties have declared themselves Second Amendment sanctuaries, and
this is not isolated to Virginia. The same phenomenon is occurring,
for example, in Oregon, where late last year, conservative legislators
(23:46):
fled the state in order to stall voting on a
gun control bill. While they hid, they were protected by
members of various militias, including the Three Presenters, the oath Keepers,
and constitutional sheriffs. I know this is a lot to
take in, and if you haven't visited the places I've
visit and talked to the folks I've talked to, and
read the things I've read a lot of, it's going
to seem like conspiratorial rambling. All I can do is
(24:06):
assure you that it's not. Another reporter, a better reporter
than me. Bruce Wilson has done a huge amount of
the lake work in documenting these connections. His blog, Fourth
Generation War is important reading. Bruce pays attention to the
media network this nascent insurgency has set up. He lays
out the connections better than I ever could. And I'm
going to quote him now, quote Richard Mack. The top
(24:28):
lobbyist for gun owners of America headed by Larry Pratt.
Now Pratt build his by rolling Stone as the gun
owner's secret weapon. Has praised the activities of civilian militious
under Guatemalan president A Frain Rios Monte, who scorched earth
counter insurgency campaign in Guatemala in the early nineteen eighties,
was ruled to be genocidal. But Pratt also has close
ties to the theocratic Christian Reconstructionism movement. Some experts consider
(24:49):
him a part of CR. Back in the early eighties,
he contributed a chapter on malicious to a key CR
strategy book, and as sociologist James Scaminacci has documented, the
American militia movement has long been a part of the
Christian reconstructionist strategy. It's long game for eventual theocracy. And
I want to break in here and say two things.
One is that Christian reconstructionist is basically Christian dominionism. This
(25:10):
idea that the United States needs to go back to
being a Christian dominated state where, for example, non Christian
behavior would be punishable by, for example, execution, which is
something that's believed by a guy named Matt Shay, who
is a lawmaker up in Washington, who has been found
to have committed the acts of domestic terror on at
least three occasions, but hasn't been arrested because of the
sheer amount of malicious support that he has um. So yeah,
(25:34):
the other thing I should note is that Larry Pratt,
the head of Gun Owners for America, the group that
Richard Mac works for. Larry Pratt was a regular guest
on Alex Jones's Infowar show. So just so you know,
all of these people, all these people who are at
are very connected. All right, I'm gonna quote from Bruce
Wilson again, back to Mac, his c s p o A.
(25:55):
And remember that's the Constitutional Sheriff's Group. VP of Operations
is a guy named Sam Bushman runs a tiny but
national radio network, Liberty News Radio, which carries a show
called The Political Cesspool, which is the premier white supremacist
radio show in America. Barn None, but also lan R
happens to carry the radio show of Washington State legislator
Matt Shay, who was just exposed for his involvement in
(26:15):
domestic terrorism pursuant to his plan for creating a fifty
first Biblical state in eastern Washington State. It wasn't the
first time the show Liberty Roundtable had featured Matt Shay. Now,
back in two sixteen, when I was writing on Trump
and Land, I noticed something quite extraordinary going on with
the l R show. Suddenly, top members and surrogates of
the Trump for President efforts started appearing on the show
day after day, including appearances from Trump's two sons. Now,
(26:40):
these were individuals who could have been on Fox almost
at will. So were they doing on a tiny radio
network with one big station and five to six stations
the size of GNATS Two answers. First, the entrance point
for the whole thing was when the Trump campaign reached
out to get one of the Trump Boys on the
Political Cesspool, which remember Bushman's radio network hosts. Now a
quick digression. The Cesspool is hosted by James Edwards, who
(27:01):
is on the board for the Council of Conservative Citizens Together.
Everything down, down Down, Now the c c C Council
of Conservative Citizens is a fascist, far right organization than,
(27:22):
among other things, creates propaganda aimed at convincing white people
that black people are going to murder them. Charleston church
shooter Dylan Roof directly credited the c c C and
its propaganda with inspiring his massacre. Through Dylan Roof, we
can tie the more mainstream tendrils of this movement, which
connect right to Trump's large adult sons, to its fringe elements.
(27:42):
The Bull Patrol is a loose association of fascist want
to be terrorists, so named because they idolized Dylan Roof,
who had a bowl haircut. The Bull Patrol is closely
tied ideologically to Adam Off, a division, a neo Nazi
terrorist group responsible for five murders. Many Adam Often members
were also members of the Base, the fascist terrorist social
at work the FBI just busted in the act of
planning an attack on Richmond. Both the Base and Adam
(28:04):
Often advocates something called accelerationism, the idea that the United
States needs to be pushed into a violent collapse in
order to make possible the rise of a white supremacist state.
William S Lynde is also an accelerationist. In two thousand fourteen,
he wrote a novel titled Victoria, a Novel of fourth
Generation War. The basic plot is that Christian militias overthrow
(28:25):
the federal government, leading to a re establishment of the
Confederacy and the massacre of millions of black Americans via
tactical nuclear warhead Slavery is reestablished, and the book ends
with the heroes launching a crusade against Islam. I feel
like I need to continuously reiterate that I understand how
easy it is to write all of this off as
a handful of nuts lar Larper's lone wolf assholes. I
want to assure you that people like myself and Bruce
(28:47):
Wilson are not the only ones worried. Dr James scammon
Cheney is a sociologist and a retired senior U. S.
Army analyst. In two thousand nine, after the rise of
the anti Obama birth conspiracy theory championed by now President
at Trump, doctor scammon Cheney wrote this The birth claim
not only delegitimized President Obama but called into question the
citizens status of tens of millions of people. As a
(29:09):
former military intelligence analyst, I utilized the skills that I
had acquired, for example, examining the source of their strategy,
their organizations, their networks, and their tactics. I began to
understand that the Christian Right and its armed wing and
the Patriot militia were radical revolutionaries, and that, to me
is a key finding that progressives need to consider. The
Patriot movement of the nineteen nineties and today is the
armed wing of the Christian Right. If you read the
(29:30):
literature on the Patriot militia from scholars and journalists, there
is no analysis of the social basis of the militia,
and there is no analysis of the command, control, communications,
intelligent structure of the militia. Nowhere does a large armed
formation exists that is not under political control in pursuing
political goals. I hope my analysis, while entirely supportive, elevates
the strategic warning and gives progressive analysts the perspective to
(29:54):
see that the movement is much more unified than previously
thought and driven by a fourth generation warfare strategy that
comes from the central core of the Christian Right. This
is all really scary stuff, and it's it's unpleasant. It's
unpleasant for me to read about and to write about.
But it's important because what we're seeing, and what I
saw in Richmond, and what we're going to continue to
(30:15):
see over the next year and probably into the future,
is this movement grow. And this movement is driven by
fourth generation warfare. It's driven by this combination of sort
of traditional military techniques, the forming of armed groups of militias,
um potentially assassinations or acts of occupation, marches like the
one that we saw Enrichmond, intimidation tactics, but also this
(30:38):
media infrastructure that has welded all these different people together,
including a lot of folks who wouldn't necessarily otherwise be
very violent individuals or negative individuals, have gotten swept up
into this because of this belief that their freedom is
under attack, that they are fighting for their own lives
against a group of people that would destroy them. It
(31:00):
is a very frightening situation, and in considering it, I
am driven back continuously to something that William S. Lynde
wrote in nineteen eighty nine for the Marine Corps Gazette
when he outlined his theory a fourth generation warfare, television
news may become a more powerful operational weapon than armored divisions.
(31:21):
If there's one thing I saw in Richmond, it's that
this idea that this this media ecosystem that the right
has crafted for itself, has rendered the people within it
completely immune to outside argument, completely immune to logic. And
I think what we're seeing, at least from the liberals,
(31:41):
from the Democratic Party, is this group of people who
are still functioning as if this is not the case,
as if these people can be reached rationally by argument,
as if you can convince them by the simple fact
that they lost an election that things that they don't
like are going to happen. They don't believe that. They
(32:02):
don't believe that your elections, they don't believe that your
politicians are legitimate. And so far they've been responsible for
minimal violence, if you consider the dozens killed by far
right extremists in the last couple of years to be minimal,
minimal violence compared to what might happen. My worry is
(32:23):
what will happen in the future. I don't want to
send to dire dark with this. I think it is
very serious. I think the situation is very serious. I
think the the lack of action taken by the people
in power has made it more serious, but I don't
think the situation is hopeless. And one thing I would
note is that of all the folks, the thousands of
(32:44):
folks that I saw and the hundreds of folks that
I talked to at the rally on UM, I would
say less than half were actually members of you know,
one militia group or another. UM. Most of them, there
were large groups of militia who are were alarmed and organized,
you know, using microphone, communication networks and what not to
to work with each other as they traveled around, and
(33:06):
anticipation that you know, the boogaloo might break out. But
most of the people there were just gun owners, UM,
folks who have been riled up and frightened by this
very effective propaganda campaign. But not folks who are are
crazy or violent, or or particularly obsessed with the idea
of harming people. They're people who by and large have
gotten very bad information fed at them, and most of
(33:27):
them are people from a lower socioeconomic group. While there
were a number of folks who had very expensive, you know, firearms,
some upwards of ten thousand dollars, many of the guns
I saw were very simple shotguns and hunting rifles, humble guns,
from people who are afraid that part of their life
and their culture is going to be taken away because
they've been propagandized too. And unfortunately, the liberal middle in
(33:49):
our country has kind of given up on reaching these
people and has not, in my lifetime, tried very hard
to do so. And it feels when it has, you know,
what it considers to be an electoral mandate, that it
can start throwing out whatever laws at wants, and that
there will be no consequences, that nothing will happen, and
that they don't need to reach these people because you know,
(34:10):
they've beaten them. And I think this is a very
poor strategy. But one of the things that gave me
some hope at the rally is that I was not
the only one who thought this way. There were a
number of left wing activists, members of groups like the
John Brown Gun Club, which is a very far left
wing UH firearms advocacy organization that seeks to particularly provide
(34:31):
firearms training to disenfranchised groups. These people were traveling around
the rally wearing body armor and carrying rifles just like
all the other militia folks. Um you can only tell
them apart if you understood the symbols on their armor,
and they were handing out pamphlets titled to those who
seek Liberty. And I'd like to read that pamphlet. Now,
who are we? We're a coalition of left libertarians from
(34:53):
various organizations across the South and Northeast who support the
rights of communities and individuals to organize and manage themselves
free from the tyranny of corrupt politicians and the greedy
corporations they serve. We are in opposition to all forms
of unjust hierarchy and all those who seek to oppress
and enact violence upon us and our neighbors. Why are
we here, Like many here, we staunchly oppose these bills.
(35:16):
This effort by the Democrat government of Virginia is a
short sighted attempt to cement power. This is just the
latest battle in the ongoing war between out of touch
political parties to out maneuver one another. The casualties of
this war are poor and working people and other marginalized groups.
The right to collective and individual defense is universal. This
right is already unjustly denied to many people for a
(35:37):
multitude of reasons. We join the broader Second Amendment movement
against red flag laws, restrictions and access to equipment, and
the criminalization of organizing and training for the legitimate defense
of ourselves in our communities. We rally with you to
ensure that our rights will not be further limited by
a state that wishes to see us docile and accepting
of their illegitimate rule. Knowing this, we came to speak
(35:57):
to you, the individuals gathered here today in response to YEARNY.
Our collective response to the oppression of the state is
a meeting point. Despite other ideological differences, the Second Amendment
movement and the voices of the militia community declared that
they are we the people. Militias assert that they are
a civil resource for the whole of the community, regardless
of race, religion, gender, or nation of origin. We challenge
(36:17):
them to live up to those assertions and take definitive
actions against fascists and white nationalists. The fascists in our
midst would seek to establish a reign of terror, enforce
segregation and outright elimination of all those who challenge their
world view, a world where all things serve the state,
where everything and everyone becomes property to be exploited and controlled.
In direct contrast, we desire and envision of future built
(36:38):
on a foundation of liberty, autonomy, equity, and justice. A
future where free communities, not nation states, decide how our
daily lives are administered. One where the only universal law
is peace to all but tyrants and aggressors, and every
community is armed with the means of defense and survival.
We ask you to define your friends and enemies by
the kind of world that you would want for your children.
We hope that you will take this to heart and
(36:59):
no that should you choose to challenge the stomic oppression
and struggle for liberation, self determination, and justice for all people,
you will not be alone. Now, I can't tell you
whether or not that reached any of the people they
handed it to, but I can tell you it was
an attempt, and I can tell you it's more likely
to de escalate, to pull us back from the brink,
to reduce the potential of this network turning into a
(37:22):
full blown insurgency. It is more likely to do that
than any action taken by the democratic state legislatures in
favor of gun control in the city of Richmond. And
that I think is a good note to end all everything.
(37:44):
I still worst year ever is a production of I
heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit
the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Worst Year Ever, A production of I Heart
Radio Together Everything So Down, Down Down. The sound you
(00:37):
were hearing is roughly twenty two voices from roughly men
and women carrying twenty guns and chanting their violent opposition
to all forms of gun control. On January I found
myself in Richmond, Virginia, attending probably the largest anti gun
control protest in the history of the United States. This
(00:58):
event started as the annual Will Lobby Day rally for
the Virginia Citizens Defense League v c d L. Lobby
days exist all over the country, and their days for
NGOs and the like to assemble in state capitals and
plead their cases on various bills. It's pure coincidence that
Richmond's lobby Day happens to coincide with Martin Luther King
Jr's birthday, although that didn't make the number of Confederate
(01:20):
flags I saw any less awkward. Now. The head of
the v c d L is a fellow named Philip
Van Cleave, and he does not want you or anyone
else to confuse his group for a mainstream lobbying organization.
And a two thousand nineteen letter to a local newspaper,
he described the v c d L as an extremist organization,
writing there's nothing wrong with being extreme and the preservation
(01:41):
of our civil rights. V c d L is proud
to be categorized as an extremist organization, and we will
fully intend to continue being such. If you're someone outside
of Virginia and you have heard of Van Cleave, it's
probably because back in two eighteen, Sasha Baron Cohen tricked
him into making a firearms training video aimed at toddlers. Yeah,
they haven't quite developed what we call conscious where you
(02:05):
you feel guilty about doing something wrong. That's developing if
you're near any right and wrong. If they don't haven't
developed that yet, they could be very effective soldiers. The
whole mess cost Van Cleave a great deal of mainstream respect,
but now it's one of the few reliable truths of
our era is that mainstream respect is worth slightly less
than soiled toilet paper. The fringe right has continued to
support Van Cleave, and hundreds of armed activists show up
(02:26):
every year for vcd LS lobby. Days before my flight
to Richmond, I hopped on Skype and talked to State
Senator Lee Carter. Virginia's only elected Socialist legislator. He told
me about the history of this gathering. Happened when the
Republicans were in control. Um. It never amounted to more
than about two hundred people. UM. And people were there
to demonstrate and to talk to legislators. UM. Now you know,
(02:51):
there's there's a lot of symbolism behind a bunch of armed,
mostly white guys. UM. You know, having a demonstration in
the capital of the Confederacy on Margot king Day every year.
But um, but it was symbolish, no violent UM. So
(03:12):
this year, unfortunately, there are a lot of outside groups
that have decided to latch onto this. So I would
no longer characterize this as a rally, and a VCDL
is still planning on going through with their rally as normal.
But it will not be normal. It will not be
normal because last year Virginia's Democratic Party swept the state
(03:34):
legislature and the governorship. Once they had power, the Democrats
decided to push a raft of new gun control laws.
Some of what they've advocated seems reasonably even to me.
A guy who owns multiple air fifteen carries a gun
on a near daily basis. They're pushing for universal background checks,
mandatory reporting for lost and stolen firearms in safe storage requirements.
Pretty sane, reasonable stuff. But other measures are much more controversial.
(03:58):
There are some proposals that are just outright not good
in my view. So things like one handgun a month,
which in my opinion won't do anything. Because we have
A t S data from before and after Virginia got
rid of its one handgun a month law a few
years ago. What that show was. You know that the
(04:19):
total number of firearms confiscated by the A T S
and connection with a crime didn't change. What changed was
the mix. It was fewer long arms and more pistols,
but the total number remained unchanged. And so you know,
I feel that one handgun a month is a burden
on peaceful collectors that doesn't really do anything to address
public safety. If you're listening to this and you come
(04:41):
from more of a traditional liberal background, particularly if you
grew up in a place like Los Angeles or New
York or Boston, you know, a city with strict firearm laws,
it may seem ludicrous to you that people would protest
any of this, And you need to understand that on
the right wing, logic and reason have long since departed
the gun control debate. There are tins of thou sense
of heavily armed men and women organized into cells around
(05:02):
the nation who would rather die and kill than accept
a new assault weapons band. The reasons why are extremely complex,
but the short of it is that for decades, bad
actors on the fringe right have executed an exceptionally successful
campaign to convince millions that even moderate gun control laws
are an inevitable precursor to mass confiscation and tyranny. For
(05:24):
an example of how these folks talk about gun laws,
here's an exerpt from a speech given by Stuart Rhodes,
head of a nationwide militia called the Oath Keepers, to
an audience of his followers. Someone's going to complain the
face officer when the police officer does. That's pretty much
what youbody can do it. So that's if you're looking
at down the road and put the laws in place,
and these truck and turn the data one person in
(05:45):
a time, one veteran time, one gun over at a time.
That's how they're going to do into how do you
go don't register your gun, sure, but if they know,
but if they know where you're at, and then you
got guns, what are you gonna do? That's why you agree,
That's why you need the neighbors behind you. If every
(06:05):
old guy shoots and when they come to their door,
will only lose a few guys in over sixty and
it will be over. But I'll say better off. Your
should be behind you, all your gas together in the posts.
(06:28):
The kind of thinging you see I display here, the
kind of leads people to think modest gun control proposals
are the prelude to a war of elimination. Well, that's
been carefully nurtured by decades of propaganda. You may not
understand it, but you do have to live with its impacts.
Which is why Lee Carter spent the twentie hiding out
in a safe house under a river of death threats.
And no, not because he was part of the push
(06:48):
for more gun control. It's because he proposed a build
that would have allowed teachers to go on strike. In Virginia,
all public employees have been prom limited from going on
strike for up of seventy years. Um. You know, as
far as I can tell, it goes back to nineteen fifty.
But that's as far back as our electronic records system
goes so I don't know how long before that it
(07:10):
was actually put in the law. And so, you know,
with with the teacher strikes that we've seen in other states,
you know, Colorado, Kentucky, West Virginia, California, in Illinois, UM,
I saw teachers that were able to stand together and
raise the alarm on the conditions of their schools, say
that it's much better for the students if we walk
(07:32):
out for a few days and demand change and get it,
then to continue as if everything's fine. And so I
put in a bill last year to legalize all public
employee strikes. So just completely removed that section of the
code that for him. UM. Unfortunately, that bill died last
(07:53):
year without even getting hearing, and it didn't get a
hearing because a lot of my fellow legislators were so
afraid of this topic. They didn't even want to have
a conversation because they thought if police were allowed to
go on strikes that it would lead to chaos. The
data shows that that's not true. You know, we've seen
from other places where police have had slowdowns or strikes
(08:14):
and things have been fine. UM. But you know this,
this was the view among my fellow legislators. So I decided, Okay,
let's let's avoid the discussion about the merits of the
police state with what I'm trying to do is legalized
feature strikes. And so I narrowed the scope of the bill.
(08:36):
I took it from an outright repeal of the prohibition too,
narrowing the applicability of the prohibition um to just law
enforcement officers, you know, changing where it said any employee
of the commonwealth to any public safety employee of the
count the wealth. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people
out there who uh read that will um and read
(09:01):
the sections of the laws that already exists, and thought
that that was new language. And so they said, you know, um,
this guy is trying to fire cops who don't go
around and grab everybody's cuts. All this confusion was not
due to a simple misunderstanding. It is the result of
a concerted propaganda campaign doing a little bit of forensic digging,
(09:24):
you know, kind of trying to trying to find the
origin of this conspiracy theory. The earliest mentioned that I
could find of it was from a local affiliate of
the Fraternal Order of Police Associates in Charlotte'sville. Um so um,
you know, there's there's two sorts of competing police CLAUSEI unions.
(09:47):
You know, there's there's a Fraternal Order of Police and
the Fraternal Order of Police associates. So it started with
with s o P A Lodge five in Charlottesville. There, Um,
it was shared by the Virginia s OP. So you know,
it went from a local in one organization to the
statewide and the other and then um, you know, from
(10:08):
there it got shared through you know, the pro gun
right wing Facebook group network UM, and it ended up
with UM one of my fellow delegates, Nick Fredi's Paul
Pepper who's currently running for Congress. You know, he's going
on a right wing mediator to try to not support
in the Republican base because the primary. And he decided
(10:33):
to say, you know, Lee Carter put in this bill
to fire police who don't go along with Governor Northom's
gun confiscation, and it spread like wildfire from there. It
ended up you know, the claim was repeated by a
YouTube personality named I ract Veteran to an half varion subscribers, UM.
(10:54):
And you know, it even ended up in a Wall
Street Journal opinion piece. And they never reached out to me.
For comment, because of course I would have said, the
record strates that that's not what the bill does. The
horrific absurdity of least situation has been compounded by the
fact that, as a socialist, he actually opposes many of
the good control laws proposed by his Democratic colleagues. What
(11:15):
I believe about guns in particular is that you know, yes,
there are some changes to gun laws that can be
made to make people safer, universal background checks, mandatory reporting
for lost stolen firearms, things like that. But but you know,
the big ticket troposals, the assault weapons bands and and um,
you know, red flag laws. These are things that that
(11:38):
make people sort of feel like they've done something about guns,
but won't actually benefit public safety. Um. And specifically, you
know that the the driving force of my my gun
policy is what I saw and what the nation saw
on August Row seventeen, when the Nazis attacked Charlotte Still
(11:59):
and so then I decided that it is critically important
that anyone who Nazis would want to kill should have
the ability to stop Nazis from murdering them. And so
he finds himself caught between an outraged horde of paranoid
heavily armed militia living in their own media ecosystem, and
utterly convinced he wants to take their guns and probably
(12:20):
murder them. Well together, everything down, down, down. And then
on the other side, Lee is dealing with a crowd
of liberal democratic politicians who see going after assault weapons
as good for their political career and don't really believe
(12:41):
anyone would ever shoot them over the idea. I think
the notion of an assault weapons done rests on an
extraordinarily strong space in institutions, right, an unwavering state and
institutions that, uh, you know, the government and all of
its attendages are there to help people, um. And you
(13:02):
know that includes police and uh, you know that that
these mass shootings that we're that we're seeing our aberrations,
they're they're one offs that are happening because people have
fool and so you will move the tool and they
won't happen. Um. But you know, part of that also
is sort of transferring that faith and institutions into how
(13:25):
they analyze the actions of others. You know, for for
a lot of particularly liberal politicians, the faith that they
have in institutions is so strong that they can't even
conceive of the fact that it's not shared by everyone
in our society, and so you know, they don't even
a lot of them don't even recognize that there are
(13:47):
groups out there who have been telling themselves for thirty years,
an assault weapons ban is you know, the first step
of the government coming to kill us, right, you know,
these these are these these right wing anti government groups
have been telling themselves this. Vince Waco and Ruby Ridge.
(14:08):
I mean, we even had a state senator in the
hearing on one of these bills mentioned Ruby Ridge in
his comments opposing the assault Weapons down bill, and I
mean you could you could see the n r A
crowd that was in attendance that you know, if you
watch the live stream of that hearing, they pan to
(14:28):
the crowd and it was, you know, a bunch of
people in n r A shirts nod in their head
as soon as he said the words Ruby Rich. So
it's it's sort of the people that are pushing for
this policy are doing is from a good place. I
fundamentally believe that, but they just cannot allow themselves to
(14:50):
recognize that there are people out there who have been
telling themselves for a very long time that an assault
weapon span is the last straw and what they do,
and we need to start. Those people absolutely exist, and
thousands of them showed up to march on Richmond. It's
probably now that I should note, h if you haven't
(15:10):
noticed already, that this is going to be a little
bit of an abnormal episode of worst year ever, because
I'm the only one speaking in it. Um, that's because
I flew out to Richmond alone to cover this. We'll
have Katie and Cody back in later in the week
for a follow up, but we'll talk more about what
I saw at the rally and what happened. But I
wanted to get this out now because you know, this
is fresh in the news and I think people need
(15:32):
to understand what I saw while I was there. So yeah,
thousands and thousands and thousands of people who believe that like,
we're right on the verge of calamity, and it's going
to be calamity pushed by nefarious socialists seeking to take
their guns. Um, those people exist, and I'd like to
present you with an example of just one of them,
(15:53):
a member of a three percenter militia named Chris Hill.
In this clip, he actually supports red flag laws. So
long as existed, disarmed anti fascists and communists so he
can murder them. Red flag laws. I don't think anybody
in the right mind would give two ships or flying
fuck if the red flag laws were designed to take
(16:13):
the firearms away from the card carrying communists that run
around with their Antifa red flags, beating people up, hitting
them with locks and socks, stabbing them, um all of
that ship. If that outburd the case, I would be
supportive of a red flag law. You're recognized communists, you're
(16:35):
a member of Antifa, you run around with with your
Antifa flag. Hell yeah, sending the swat team, disarmed the
bastard and let them go through the the wringer, or
it wouldn't even be going through the ringer. Designate them
as terrorists first, designated them as terrorists first, and you
(16:58):
arrest them under suspicion of terrorist activity. Simple as that.
But instan targeting me, it's misdirected. Now, the bulk of
the mainstream news you've seen about this rally will have
focused around one of two things. Number one, wacky pictures
of men with giant guns and ill fitting body armor,
and number two, the fact that it was a peaceful rally,
(17:18):
and this is true. I saw no violence on January,
but part of that has to do with the fact
that in the days immediately prior to the rally, the
FBI arrested six members of a neo Nazi terrorist organization
called the Base. They had plans to show up in
Richmond with an legal automatic weapon and fift hundred rounds
of ammunition. One of the arrested men was a Canadian
(17:38):
military demolitions expert on the run from the law in
his own country. But calling this rally peaceful also ignores
the sheer amount of fantasizing about violence that I saw there.
In the far right, the term boogaloo refers to a
coming second civil war. On January twenty, I saw patches
and blasted with Pepe's that identified the bearer of the
patch as a member of the Boogaloo ber gaide. I
(18:00):
saw a protest sign and someone's hands with I have
a dream of a Boogaloo written on it in cruel
mockery of Martin Luther King junior. Day I saw an
armored truck drive down the street covered in American flags
with Boogaloo written on the front of the cab. I
saw variations of different boogaloo license plates on cars from
multiple states. Even seemingly innocuous and zany things wound up
(18:22):
being connected to this violent fantasy of internessing warfare. At
one point, I snagged several shots of heavily armed militiamen
wearing brightly colored Hawaiian shirts underneath their body armor. I
shared the pictures on Twitter, calling his men members of
the Marguaritaville Light Infantry, and there was much laughter. I
assumed the shirts were part of a lighthearted jest on
the parts of these militiamen. Maybe they were trying to
(18:42):
seem less threatening, you know, in their weapons and equipment.
Maybe they didn't want to scare people. But then when
I got back to my hotel room, I did some digging.
A simple Google search for Hawaiian shirt boogaloo led me
to numerous returns which showed that online big luoo has
evolved into yet another's synonym for boogaloo. And of course,
what do you wear at a luow Hawaiian shirt? Here's
(19:03):
an example I found on the Facebook page Firearms Unknown,
which has more than twenty eight thousand followers. The post
in question starts with an image of a man in
a Hawaiian shirt at a gun store holding a scoped
A R fifteen. Beto O'Rourke's head is photoshopped onto his body.
The text underneath this image reads quote, the big Luau
is coming. Be prepared and go in style with the
(19:26):
firearms unknown Boogaloo blouse. Everyone knows you can't attend to
luou in anything but a Hawaiian shirt, and the Boogoloo
blouse is the perfect Hawaiian shirt for the occasion. Whether
it be your desire to roast a pig, just get
down and dance to the disco, or maybe you want
to hold up in an igloo for the winter. With
the Boogaloo blouse, we have got you covered. The Boogoloo
blouse is made from polyester, five percent Spandex and three
(19:47):
percent lava monster. It feels cool to the touch and
is unbelievably comfortable. Being comfortable while boogalooing is key. With
its bright colors, all of your boujahadeen friends will be
easily able to distinguish between fellow partygoers and those who
seek to in the celebration. Early a. Rourke's face is
featured because he quite famously promised to confiscate a R
fifteens of elected president. By the way, the firearms unknown
(20:09):
page motto is because the Red Coats aren't going to
shoot themselves. Other violent imagery wasn't ready supply. At one
point I came across a squadron of heavily armed members
of the Proud Boys, a far right group with a
range of ties to neo Nazi organizations. The Proud Boys
were armed and armored like the other militiamen, but a
number of them had curious patches on their chest which
(20:30):
said r w D s I'm gonna cut right to
the chase. This stands for right wing death squads, and
I don't think I have to explain its meaning further
than that. During the rally, I asked one of these
proudest of Boys what his patchment, and he seemed to
be less than proud that I knew here was his response.
(20:50):
Can ask what that patch means, the one that says
r w DS. The point I'm making is that, well,
there was no direct violence today, that does not mean
there is nothing to worry about in this rally. What
I saw in Richmond was the coming together of a
potential American insurgent movement tens of thousands strong. And of
(21:11):
course there was no violence on the FBI made sure
of that, and the sheer number of firearms present ensured
the police were extra careful as well. No tear gas
was deployed to clear the streets. Protesters were allowed to
mask up, which is legal under Virginia law. The excuse
given to one of my colleagues is that it was
cold outside. But no, the Virginia gun Kerfuffle was not
(21:32):
interesting because of what happened. The rally itself was mostly
just a bunch of heavily armed men talking to one
another while every so often Alex Jones rolled around the
perimeter and an armored vehicle shouting nonsense. Most of what
(21:57):
is interesting about happened beneath the surface, and that's the
story I'm going to tell now. It all starts with
a fellow named William S. Lynde. He's a Christian conservative
author and a widely cited thinker, and he's one of
the originators of the concept of fourth generation warfare. Wikipedia
defines this as quote conflict characterized by a blurring of
(22:17):
the lines between war and politics. Combatants and civilians. Lynde
is the kind of guy who thinks police should carry
rocket propelled grenades and that mass hanging is the best
solution to inner city crime. He's a major inflection point
for the theory that cultural Marxists are trying to take
over America. If you're listening to this podcast, there is
a very good chance that William S. Lynde wants you dead.
(22:39):
He's also friends with President Donald Trump, or at least
the two have met. They posed together in April two
thousand and sixteen, and Lynde handed him a copy of
his book, The Next Conservatism. This book, which was circulated
widely among Trump's campaign staff, urges the establishment of a
network of local anti government militia groups to fight domestic terrorism.
These group should report two county sheriffs. Len's ideas have
(23:03):
been adopted by the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association
csp OA, basically believes local sheriffs should have their own armies.
During the two thousand sixteen election, the c SPOA leadership
had significant documented ties with a Trump campaign. Today, the
c SPOA works closely with the Oath Keepers. Many of
their members are Virginia sheriffs who head of this rally
(23:24):
have threatened to engage in open rebellion against the state government.
Colepepper County Sheriff Scott Jenkins, for example, has promised to
deputize thousands of armed citizens if Richmond passes gun control regulations.
Dozens of counties have declared themselves Second Amendment sanctuaries, and
this is not isolated to Virginia. The same phenomenon is occurring,
for example, in Oregon, where late last year, conservative legislators
(23:46):
fled the state in order to stall voting on a
gun control bill. While they hid, they were protected by
members of various militias, including the Three Presenters, the oath Keepers,
and constitutional sheriffs. I know this is a lot to
take in, and if you haven't visited the places I've
visit and talked to the folks I've talked to, and
read the things I've read a lot of, it's going
to seem like conspiratorial rambling. All I can do is
(24:06):
assure you that it's not. Another reporter, a better reporter
than me. Bruce Wilson has done a huge amount of
the lake work in documenting these connections. His blog, Fourth
Generation War is important reading. Bruce pays attention to the
media network this nascent insurgency has set up. He lays
out the connections better than I ever could. And I'm
going to quote him now, quote Richard Mack. The top
(24:28):
lobbyist for gun owners of America headed by Larry Pratt.
Now Pratt build his by rolling Stone as the gun
owner's secret weapon. Has praised the activities of civilian militious
under Guatemalan president A Frain Rios Monte, who scorched earth
counter insurgency campaign in Guatemala in the early nineteen eighties,
was ruled to be genocidal. But Pratt also has close
ties to the theocratic Christian Reconstructionism movement. Some experts consider
(24:49):
him a part of CR. Back in the early eighties,
he contributed a chapter on malicious to a key CR
strategy book, and as sociologist James Scaminacci has documented, the
American militia movement has long been a part of the
Christian reconstructionist strategy. It's long game for eventual theocracy. And
I want to break in here and say two things.
One is that Christian reconstructionist is basically Christian dominionism. This
(25:10):
idea that the United States needs to go back to
being a Christian dominated state where, for example, non Christian
behavior would be punishable by, for example, execution, which is
something that's believed by a guy named Matt Shay, who
is a lawmaker up in Washington, who has been found
to have committed the acts of domestic terror on at
least three occasions, but hasn't been arrested because of the
sheer amount of malicious support that he has um. So yeah,
(25:34):
the other thing I should note is that Larry Pratt,
the head of Gun Owners for America, the group that
Richard Mac works for. Larry Pratt was a regular guest
on Alex Jones's Infowar show. So just so you know,
all of these people, all these people who are at
are very connected. All right, I'm gonna quote from Bruce
Wilson again, back to Mac, his c s p o A.
(25:55):
And remember that's the Constitutional Sheriff's Group. VP of Operations
is a guy named Sam Bushman runs a tiny but
national radio network, Liberty News Radio, which carries a show
called The Political Cesspool, which is the premier white supremacist
radio show in America. Barn None, but also lan R
happens to carry the radio show of Washington State legislator
Matt Shay, who was just exposed for his involvement in
(26:15):
domestic terrorism pursuant to his plan for creating a fifty
first Biblical state in eastern Washington State. It wasn't the
first time the show Liberty Roundtable had featured Matt Shay. Now,
back in two sixteen, when I was writing on Trump
and Land, I noticed something quite extraordinary going on with
the l R show. Suddenly, top members and surrogates of
the Trump for President efforts started appearing on the show
day after day, including appearances from Trump's two sons. Now,
(26:40):
these were individuals who could have been on Fox almost
at will. So were they doing on a tiny radio
network with one big station and five to six stations
the size of GNATS Two answers. First, the entrance point
for the whole thing was when the Trump campaign reached
out to get one of the Trump Boys on the
Political Cesspool, which remember Bushman's radio network hosts. Now a
quick digression. The Cesspool is hosted by James Edwards, who
(27:01):
is on the board for the Council of Conservative Citizens Together.
Everything down, down Down, Now the c c C Council
of Conservative Citizens is a fascist, far right organization than,
(27:22):
among other things, creates propaganda aimed at convincing white people
that black people are going to murder them. Charleston church
shooter Dylan Roof directly credited the c c C and
its propaganda with inspiring his massacre. Through Dylan Roof, we
can tie the more mainstream tendrils of this movement, which
connect right to Trump's large adult sons, to its fringe elements.
(27:42):
The Bull Patrol is a loose association of fascist want
to be terrorists, so named because they idolized Dylan Roof,
who had a bowl haircut. The Bull Patrol is closely
tied ideologically to Adam Off, a division, a neo Nazi
terrorist group responsible for five murders. Many Adam Often members
were also members of the Base, the fascist terrorist social
at work the FBI just busted in the act of
planning an attack on Richmond. Both the Base and Adam
(28:04):
Often advocates something called accelerationism, the idea that the United
States needs to be pushed into a violent collapse in
order to make possible the rise of a white supremacist state.
William S Lynde is also an accelerationist. In two thousand fourteen,
he wrote a novel titled Victoria, a Novel of fourth
Generation War. The basic plot is that Christian militias overthrow
(28:25):
the federal government, leading to a re establishment of the
Confederacy and the massacre of millions of black Americans via
tactical nuclear warhead Slavery is reestablished, and the book ends
with the heroes launching a crusade against Islam. I feel
like I need to continuously reiterate that I understand how
easy it is to write all of this off as
a handful of nuts lar Larper's lone wolf assholes. I
want to assure you that people like myself and Bruce
(28:47):
Wilson are not the only ones worried. Dr James scammon
Cheney is a sociologist and a retired senior U. S.
Army analyst. In two thousand nine, after the rise of
the anti Obama birth conspiracy theory championed by now President
at Trump, doctor scammon Cheney wrote this The birth claim
not only delegitimized President Obama but called into question the
citizens status of tens of millions of people. As a
(29:09):
former military intelligence analyst, I utilized the skills that I
had acquired, for example, examining the source of their strategy,
their organizations, their networks, and their tactics. I began to
understand that the Christian Right and its armed wing and
the Patriot militia were radical revolutionaries, and that, to me
is a key finding that progressives need to consider. The
Patriot movement of the nineteen nineties and today is the
armed wing of the Christian Right. If you read the
(29:30):
literature on the Patriot militia from scholars and journalists, there
is no analysis of the social basis of the militia,
and there is no analysis of the command, control, communications,
intelligent structure of the militia. Nowhere does a large armed
formation exists that is not under political control in pursuing
political goals. I hope my analysis, while entirely supportive, elevates
the strategic warning and gives progressive analysts the perspective to
(29:54):
see that the movement is much more unified than previously
thought and driven by a fourth generation warfare strategy that
comes from the central core of the Christian Right. This
is all really scary stuff, and it's it's unpleasant. It's
unpleasant for me to read about and to write about.
But it's important because what we're seeing, and what I
saw in Richmond, and what we're going to continue to
(30:15):
see over the next year and probably into the future,
is this movement grow. And this movement is driven by
fourth generation warfare. It's driven by this combination of sort
of traditional military techniques, the forming of armed groups of militias,
um potentially assassinations or acts of occupation, marches like the
one that we saw Enrichmond, intimidation tactics, but also this
(30:38):
media infrastructure that has welded all these different people together,
including a lot of folks who wouldn't necessarily otherwise be
very violent individuals or negative individuals, have gotten swept up
into this because of this belief that their freedom is
under attack, that they are fighting for their own lives
against a group of people that would destroy them. It
(31:00):
is a very frightening situation, and in considering it, I
am driven back continuously to something that William S. Lynde
wrote in nineteen eighty nine for the Marine Corps Gazette
when he outlined his theory a fourth generation warfare, television
news may become a more powerful operational weapon than armored divisions.
(31:21):
If there's one thing I saw in Richmond, it's that
this idea that this this media ecosystem that the right
has crafted for itself, has rendered the people within it
completely immune to outside argument, completely immune to logic. And
I think what we're seeing, at least from the liberals,
(31:41):
from the Democratic Party, is this group of people who
are still functioning as if this is not the case,
as if these people can be reached rationally by argument,
as if you can convince them by the simple fact
that they lost an election that things that they don't
like are going to happen. They don't believe that. They
(32:02):
don't believe that your elections, they don't believe that your
politicians are legitimate. And so far they've been responsible for
minimal violence, if you consider the dozens killed by far
right extremists in the last couple of years to be minimal,
minimal violence compared to what might happen. My worry is
(32:23):
what will happen in the future. I don't want to
send to dire dark with this. I think it is
very serious. I think the situation is very serious. I
think the the lack of action taken by the people
in power has made it more serious, but I don't
think the situation is hopeless. And one thing I would
note is that of all the folks, the thousands of
(32:44):
folks that I saw and the hundreds of folks that
I talked to at the rally on UM, I would
say less than half were actually members of you know,
one militia group or another. UM. Most of them, there
were large groups of militia who are were alarmed and organized,
you know, using microphone, communication networks and what not to
to work with each other as they traveled around, and
(33:06):
anticipation that you know, the boogaloo might break out. But
most of the people there were just gun owners, UM,
folks who have been riled up and frightened by this
very effective propaganda campaign. But not folks who are are
crazy or violent, or or particularly obsessed with the idea
of harming people. They're people who by and large have
gotten very bad information fed at them, and most of
(33:27):
them are people from a lower socioeconomic group. While there
were a number of folks who had very expensive, you know, firearms,
some upwards of ten thousand dollars, many of the guns
I saw were very simple shotguns and hunting rifles, humble guns,
from people who are afraid that part of their life
and their culture is going to be taken away because
they've been propagandized too. And unfortunately, the liberal middle in
(33:49):
our country has kind of given up on reaching these
people and has not, in my lifetime, tried very hard
to do so. And it feels when it has, you know,
what it considers to be an electoral mandate, that it
can start throwing out whatever laws at wants, and that
there will be no consequences, that nothing will happen, and
that they don't need to reach these people because you know,
(34:10):
they've beaten them. And I think this is a very
poor strategy. But one of the things that gave me
some hope at the rally is that I was not
the only one who thought this way. There were a
number of left wing activists, members of groups like the
John Brown Gun Club, which is a very far left
wing UH firearms advocacy organization that seeks to particularly provide
(34:31):
firearms training to disenfranchised groups. These people were traveling around
the rally wearing body armor and carrying rifles just like
all the other militia folks. Um you can only tell
them apart if you understood the symbols on their armor,
and they were handing out pamphlets titled to those who
seek Liberty. And I'd like to read that pamphlet. Now,
who are we? We're a coalition of left libertarians from
(34:53):
various organizations across the South and Northeast who support the
rights of communities and individuals to organize and manage themselves
free from the tyranny of corrupt politicians and the greedy
corporations they serve. We are in opposition to all forms
of unjust hierarchy and all those who seek to oppress
and enact violence upon us and our neighbors. Why are
we here, Like many here, we staunchly oppose these bills.
(35:16):
This effort by the Democrat government of Virginia is a
short sighted attempt to cement power. This is just the
latest battle in the ongoing war between out of touch
political parties to out maneuver one another. The casualties of
this war are poor and working people and other marginalized groups.
The right to collective and individual defense is universal. This
right is already unjustly denied to many people for a
(35:37):
multitude of reasons. We join the broader Second Amendment movement
against red flag laws, restrictions and access to equipment, and
the criminalization of organizing and training for the legitimate defense
of ourselves in our communities. We rally with you to
ensure that our rights will not be further limited by
a state that wishes to see us docile and accepting
of their illegitimate rule. Knowing this, we came to speak
(35:57):
to you, the individuals gathered here today in response to YEARNY.
Our collective response to the oppression of the state is
a meeting point. Despite other ideological differences, the Second Amendment
movement and the voices of the militia community declared that
they are we the people. Militias assert that they are
a civil resource for the whole of the community, regardless
of race, religion, gender, or nation of origin. We challenge
(36:17):
them to live up to those assertions and take definitive
actions against fascists and white nationalists. The fascists in our
midst would seek to establish a reign of terror, enforce
segregation and outright elimination of all those who challenge their
world view, a world where all things serve the state,
where everything and everyone becomes property to be exploited and controlled.
In direct contrast, we desire and envision of future built
(36:38):
on a foundation of liberty, autonomy, equity, and justice. A
future where free communities, not nation states, decide how our
daily lives are administered. One where the only universal law
is peace to all but tyrants and aggressors, and every
community is armed with the means of defense and survival.
We ask you to define your friends and enemies by
the kind of world that you would want for your children.
We hope that you will take this to heart and
(36:59):
no that should you choose to challenge the stomic oppression
and struggle for liberation, self determination, and justice for all people,
you will not be alone. Now, I can't tell you
whether or not that reached any of the people they
handed it to, but I can tell you it was
an attempt, and I can tell you it's more likely
to de escalate, to pull us back from the brink,
to reduce the potential of this network turning into a
(37:22):
full blown insurgency. It is more likely to do that
than any action taken by the democratic state legislatures in
favor of gun control in the city of Richmond. And
that I think is a good note to end all everything.
(37:44):
I still worst year ever is a production of I
heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit
the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!