Robert Evans, Cody Johnston, and Katie Stoll dissect the violent history of American border militias, tracing the Texas Rangers' role in suppressing indigenous groups and Mexicans to the Border Patrol's racist origins. They analyze Louis Beam's Klan Border Watch, David Duke's political rise, and Pat Buchanan's 1992 campaign, highlighting how the Clinton administration's "Prevention Through Deterrence" strategy funneled migrants into deadly desert zones. The discussion culminates with the Minuteman Project's 2005 formation, revealing its split between James Gilchrist and Chris Simcox, who sold mailing lists to neo-Nazis while claiming to deliver thousands of migrants, ultimately exposing how these vigilante groups weaponized fear under the guise of patriotism. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Guaranteed Human Podcasts00:02:12
This is an iHeart podcast.
Guaranteed human.
When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He is not going to get away with this.
He's going to get what he deserves.
We always say that, trust your girlfriends.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi, I'm Bob Pippman, chairman and CEO of iHeartMedia, and I'm kicking off a brand new season of my podcast, Math and Magic: Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing.
Math and Magic takes you behind the scenes of the biggest businesses and industries while sharing insights from the smartest minds in marketing.
Coming up this season on Math and Magic, CEO of Liquid Death, Mike Cesario.
People think that creative ideas are like these light bulb moments that happen when you're in the shower.
Or it's really like a stone sculpture.
You're constantly just chipping away and refining.
Take to interactive CEO Strauss Salnik and our own chief business officer, Lisa Coffey.
Listen to Math and Magic on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
This is Amy Roebach, alongside TJ Holmes from the Amy and TJ podcast.
And there is so much news, information, commentary coming at you all day and from all over the place.
What's fact, what's fake, and sometimes what the F.
So let's cut the crap, okay?
Follow the Amy and TJ podcast, a one-stop news and pop culture shop to get you caught up and on with your day.
And listen to Amy and TJ on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
It's Financial Literacy Month, and the podcast Eating While Broke is bringing real conversations about money, growth, and building your future.
This month, hear from top streamer Zoe Spencer and venture capitalist Lakeisha Landrum Pierre as they share their journeys from starting out to leveling up.
There's an economic component to communities thriving.
If there's not enough money and entrepreneurship happening in communities, they've failed.
Fact, Fake, and the F Word00:15:00
Listen to Eating While Broke from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
What's pumping my cream?
Woo-woo!
I'm Robert Evans, host of Behind the Bastards, the podcast where we tell you everything you don't know about the very worst people in all of history.
My guests today, the inimitable, the unstoppable, the dynamic duo.
Sexier than Obama, deadlier than Osama, Cody Johnston, and Katie Stoll.
This is the best intro in the world.
Wow.
I really worked on that one.
Thank you so much.
I loved every second of it.
Also, you could have just said Obama for the second one and it would have worked.
Well, yeah.
I appreciate you went to the extreme.
I did.
I always like comparing my guests to famous terrorists.
Yeah, it felt right.
It goes well every time.
How are y'all doing today?
Great.
Great.
Absolutely excellent.
We do have, of course, our coffee mate in the room with us, one pump, one cream.
One pump, one cream.
It expired in January, 2019.
Delicious.
That's very cool.
I do have, because I throw things now on the air, because I've become a prima donna.
This time it is a loaf of Izzio Artisan Bakery San Francisco style sourdough.
Delicious.
So I will be throwing this in anger at several points.
I do think that Coffee Mate might have curdled by now, but it might make a good spread for the sourdough.
Oh, that's a good idea, Katie.
Just putting that out there.
And if I wanted one cream spread on the sourdough, how many pumps would that be, do you think?
One.
Wouldn't be one pump.
One pump is one podcast.
For long ago, it's so old now and curdled.
It might need two or three pumps.
At least to get it started.
Yeah.
Speaking of getting it started, you guys hear about that border militia?
We did, but that apprehended hundreds of migrants at gunpoint.
Yeah.
You want to hear the whole history of civilian border militias?
I really do.
Oh, I thought we were just going to hang out.
Okay, no.
Okay, okay.
That's what I told Cody to get him here.
But when the coffee is on the table, it's working time.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's what every pump says.
Got to get those pumps and the equal number of creams, ideally.
We should get new coffee, man.
X pump is X cream.
X pump.
Except that clearly nobody wants to use it.
So I don't know if you do need any more cream.
Yeah, it's only a prop now.
It's just a prop.
It's ambient cream.
Okay, let's get into it.
So, when I was a little kid, growing up in Texas, I learned about the glorious war my white ancestors had fought against the brutal Mexican government and the evil cross-dressing Santa Ana.
There was a lot I did not learn, though, like that the Texas revolutionaries had been fighting for the right to own human beings, and that Santa Ana was one of the founding fathers of cock fighting.
I did, however, learn a lot about the Alamo.
From there, my Texas history course went from the short-lived and incompetently led Republic of Texas to the Civil War, and that's basically it.
I don't remember learning much about Texas in the 1920s or anything about the border aside from some hagiographic tales of the very first Texas Rangers.
Now, in case you don't know, the Texas Rangers are basically the Lone Star State's FBI, only with more spin kicking.
See the documentary Walker, Texas Ranger, for more information on the Rangers and their current incarnation.
I did not, however, learn much about what the Rangers had gotten up to pre and post-Civil War days.
According to Kelly Hernandez, author of Migra, a history of the U.S. Border Patrol, quote, they battled indigenous groups for dominance in the region, chased down runaway slaves who struck for freedom deep within Mexico, and settled scores with anyone who challenged the Anglo-American project in Texas.
The Rangers proved particularly useful in helping Anglo-American landholders win favorable settlements of land when labor disputes with Texas Mexicans.
Whatever the task, however, raw physical violence was the Rangers' principal strategy.
Yeah, yeah.
So cool.
Very cool.
That's how you do it.
That's how you do it.
Raw physical violence.
The art of the raw physical violence.
Yes.
Just shooting people.
Now, I found that quote and several others in a wonderful intercept article that makes it very clear just how much unchecked violence was key to early border patrol strategies.
Because the Texas Rangers evolved from a force bent on maintaining white dominance in Texas to, in the early 1900s, this nation's first real border patrol.
Here's the intercept.
Quote, The early years of the 20th century, from 1910 to 1920, were particularly bloody, with hundreds of Mexicans murdered and lynched in the Texas borderlands.
The dead included women and children, the aged and the young, longtime residents and recent arrivals, says the Refusing to Forget Project, an initiative started by a collective of border-based historians and researchers.
They were killed by strangers, by neighbors, by vigilantes, and at the hands of local law enforcement officers and the Texas Rangers.
Some were summarily executed after being taken captive or shot under the flimsy pretext of trying to escape.
Some were left in the open to rot, others desecrated by being burnt, decapitated, or tortured by means such as having beer bottles rammed in their mouths.
So that's the start of Border Patrol.
What if we didn't do any of that?
Like, what if somebody looked at that and was like, we shouldn't allow that?
Well, but then you wouldn't be a country.
Okay.
Okay, but what if there's a fuzzy definition of country here?
What if you could, though?
That's just all I'm saying is what if you could be a country and not do that.
Sounds like some pie-in-the-sky leftist woo-woo coffee bacon.
Okay, okay, okay, okay.
Keep dreaming, Cody.
Okay, but imagine, okay.
All right.
No, you're right.
Yes, too lofty.
Imagine all the people torturing migrants with beer bottles rammed in their mouths.
I want to imagine not that, though.
What if I, what if, what if not that?
What if not that?
What if laws?
What if not that?
What if laws?
This is poetic.
But they broke the law by crossing an imaginary line.
They had to come.
If they didn't want a beer bottle rammed in them, they shouldn't have come here.
Yeah.
That's true.
And then just by virtue of being here, they're criminals.
So they're illegal.
Human beings that are illegal.
I mean, do we even want to say human beings?
Like, would these people doing this?
Rolly use that word?
When you refer to them as human beings, that makes me bread throwing angry.
Don't take it back, Cody.
I'm not actually going to say that.
Listen, if they didn't want these things to happen to them, then they shouldn't come here.
We don't want to do it.
This is deterrent.
Oh, it's a deterrent beer bottle.
This is an example.
Yeah.
So you know what you're getting.
Yeah.
I hate it.
Did it work?
No.
Oh, oh, okay.
I did a paper-tapping gesture.
I'm not sure if this sounds like a good idea.
Which does not in any way translate to the audio format that we work exclusively in.
But it was very comedic in the room.
Thank you.
Yeah.
I'm glad it worked in the room.
In the roaring 20s, inequality soared while an oppressive drug prohibition state led to outbursts of violent crime across the United States.
By 1924, some Americans had decided that the cause of their problems were all the goddamn immigrants.
We've talked a bit about this a little in other episodes.
The second KKK made halting immigration a keystone of its politics, although they were mostly focused on stopping immigrants from the bad parts of Europe.
But down south, in Texas, many Americans decided the problem was Mexican immigrants.
The need for Mexican farm labor meant that no real restrictions were put in place on immigration, but the government created the Border Patrol as a salve to people who wanted something done.
I capitalized the S in something.
I heard that with the way you inflected.
That's why.
Yeah.
Because they wanted something done.
Yeah.
But people, racists in Texas were like, I don't want these Mexicans coming in.
And the agribusiness companies were like, we can't harvest food without them.
So we're not going to, like, we're going to lobby the government to not restrict them from coming in.
And racists were like, but that makes me angry.
So the government was like, have Border Patrol.
That's where they come from.
And now I toss the bread.
There goes the bread that also says eat more toast on it.
You know what I'm noticing right now is an issue with my tossing bread today?
It doesn't bounce back.
Like the bagels would pop right back to me.
I could boomerang.
I'm going to test it right now.
Well, I'm going to have to have Daniel go get it.
Yeah, thank you.
I did some extra work for somebody.
For somebody.
Yeah, yeah.
Because I am a prima donna.
Yeah, diva.
Yeah.
Like Beyonce.
A queen.
I have taken that on myself.
Oh, no, no, no.
I'll keep throwing the bread.
Are you going to get the bagels?
All right.
Let's continue while he grabs my toss and bagels.
Now, the early Border Patrol was very much cut from the cloth of the Texas Rangers.
The Intercept interviewed Francisco Cantu, a former Border Patrol agent, who told them, quote, I often heard romanticized stories of the Old Patrol, a lament for the days when agents had free reins across the borderlands, lighting abandoned cars on fire and tuning up smugglers and migrants at will.
As young trainees, my colleagues and I were taken to storied places in the desert, a remote past where earlier generations of agents were rumored to have pushed migrants from clifftops and hidden their corpses.
A stretch of road where an agent had run over a Native American lying drunk and asleep in the road, an isolated patch of scrubland where agents had force-fed smugglers fistfuls of marijuana and turned them loose to rock through the wilderness barefoot and stripped to their underwear.
There was a lot to digest there.
Yeah.
Thank you, Daniel.
What does turning up mean?
Tuning up.
Tuning means beating the shit out of.
Oof.
Yeah.
Of course, as time went on, the Border Patrol became gradually more professional and somewhat less like a bunch of drunken sociopaths.
Good.
Less being the operative word, not unlike.
And we're not going to talk enough about the number of people who are killed by Border Patrol every year.
Some violence still persists, but it's obviously less than it was in the 20s.
Sure.
Just like we don't, you know, there's still problems with prescription drug companies, but we don't sell children morphine.
Right.
A lot of things are less than the 20s.
Yeah.
Yeah, as a general rule.
It doesn't make it okay.
It doesn't make it okay.
So, literally almost enough.
100 years ago.
Yeah.
So the Border Patrol became less sociopathic, but the desire to fight immigration with hooliganry remained.
Enter Louis Beam.
You guys ever heard of Louis Beam?
No.
Oh, he is someone we will be talking about a lot in my upcoming audiobook, The War on Everyone, because he's like, if George Lincoln Rockwell is like the George Washington of American fascism, Louis Beam is like the Abraham Lincoln of Nazis.
Okay.
Yeah.
That actually does not scan at all.
So I don't know why I said it, but I mean, I scanned it.
I gotcha.
Yeah.
Be careful.
Louis Beam did an 18-month extended tour in Vietnam as a helicopter machine gunner.
He saw extensive combat and spent roughly a thousand hours shooting bullets at people, accounting for between 12 and 51 kills.
When he came home, it was as a radicalized far-right white nationalist with fervent anti-communist views.
In the early 1970s, Beam created the Klan Border Watch, part of a new trend towards paramilitary training among the KKK.
Beam stated at the time, when our government officials refuse to enforce the laws of the country, we will enforce them ourselves.
Okay.
Great.
That's what the why the Constitution.
Yeah, our God-given right to take the law into our own hands.
Exactly.
Yeah, exactly.
If the government won't stop people who are critical to the infrastructure and economy of this nation from entering illegally because the legal pathways are a gigantic pain in the ass, then it's got to be up to the KKK to do it.
That just makes sense.
That doesn't make me question any of my feelings about immigration or immigrants or what people think about getting rid of them.
Yeah.
I'll just take those two things at face value and never think about it again.
You know what I love is never thinking about things again.
Just never think about it again.
Just never think about it again.
It's easier that way.
It's way easier that way.
Now, we're going to, as I said, talk about Louis Beam so much more during The War on Everyone, my upcoming very fun audiobook that everyone's going to love, find uplifting, and dare I say, shamefully erotic.
But for the purposes of our story today, the tale of the Klan Border Watch has a lot more to do with two different and somewhat more comical racists, Tom Metzger and David Duke.
Yeah, there it is.
Oh, you knew David Deam.
David Dean, yeah.
Now, Metzger was Beam's counterpart in the California Ku Klux Klan, and Duke was...
Well, we'll get to David Duke in a little bit.
Anyway, here's how Bring the War Home by Kathleen Ballou describes the Klan Border Patrol.
Quote.
The patrols functioned both as a publicity stunt and as a way to inculcate real anti-immigrant hostility and encourage acts of violence.
Some patrols worked as photo opportunities for the press.
In one such incident, Duke and California KKK members hung Klan Border Watch signs on their cars and drove to the border near San Diego and Tijuana.
When no undocumented immigrants appeared, Duke boasted to reporters, I think some Mexicans are afraid to enter the country because of the Klan.
See, there's that deterrent working.
There's that deterrent working.
Yeah, that's because if the KKK being there, it didn't work.
So, like, let's just take your kids away.
That's the next step.
It's a logical progression.
It's a logical step.
It doesn't work.
Okay, well, I guess, like, tear gas, you know.
That doesn't work.
Next stop bullets.
I didn't want to think about it more.
I was going to put that away.
I wasn't going to.
Just not analyze that until the shooting started.
I honestly can't even remember what you're talking about.
I'll put it away.
There you go.
You know what I'm about to put away?
These throwing bagels.
They really get right under my feet.
We got to stick with the throwing bagels.
This toss and bread is tossing dough.
Toss and dough doesn't work.
What are you laughing at, Sophie?
This is very important.
I'm doing a very important podcast right now.
All right, nerd.
What if the Toss and Bread Company offered to sponsor this show?
You know, I have too much integrity.
That's what I like to hear.
I mean, I'll let them sponsor the show, but I'm not going to lie and say that the tossing bread is better than the throwing bagels.
Exactly.
Exactly.
You got to be honest.
Anyone can advertise as long as the truth can be told.
The bread is for curdled cream.
And that's what we stand behind.
I mean, it's, I'll say this: it's more fun to throw the bread, but the bounce back is so much more satisfying on the toss and bagels.
What are you going to do?
I mean, I'm going to throw the bagels a lot.
Yeah.
Four pumps, one cream?
I mean, we could test that out.
Let's not.
Let's not.
But let's do someday.
Yes.
When we inevitably do the drunk episode of this podcast, we'll figure out exactly how these relate to one of those little creamer packets you get in a 7-Eleven.
In one year, when it's a year-old.
If it's a year-old cream, we'll figure it out.
Yeah.
Drunk Episode Bagel Plans00:04:49
So, Tom Metzger and David Duke are both important figures in the development of the American fascist movement.
But today, I want to go into a little bit more detail about David Duke.
He's been racist longer than most Americans have been alive.
During the 1960s, when he was in high school, he was already an ardent white nationalist.
When he went to college in 1969, he became a student organizer for the National Socialist White People's Party, a direct descendant of George Lincoln Rockwell's Nazi Party.
Duke also started the White Student Alliance and the White Youth Alliance.
He was particularly active in Louisiana State University's free speech alley.
According to Leonard Zeskin's Blood and Politics, quote, In one incident from those early years, Duke donned a Nazi stormtrooper uniform complete with swastika armband and strode around for the cameras with a picket sign protesting a campus speech by noted left-wing attorney William Kunstler.
Free speech.
I agree.
All this checks out.
Sounds like a real good conservative.
Sounds like a real good guy.
What if, let's say, he and these people were to get a lot of power?
Do you think that they would care about free speech?
Yeah, of course.
You think that they would defend free speech for people who maybe disagree with them?
No, no, that's not free speech, Cody.
Free speech is my ability to talk about what I want.
I don't give a who toller about someone else.
I was reading about a free speech activist, a guy named Heitler, Hitler, something like that, in Germany.
I think it's pronounced Heitler.
Heitler.
Yeah, and he came to power actually in the early 1930s.
I even read further in the book that I'm reading about him, but I think he was a real free speech crusader.
Well, because he thought was more than power.
I haven't finished the book.
I'll get through it one of these days.
Next time.
We can talk about Heitler.
The California Border Patrol was Duke's brain baby first and foremost, although Metzger handled most of the logistics.
Blood and Politics describes the media campaign he crafted around these patrols, relating a press conference in October of 1977.
David Duke stepped out of a rented helicopter and onto the grounds of the San Yesidro Port of Entry south of San Diego, a federal office used by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, INS, to regulate traffic on the border with Mexico.
Dressed in a light blue business suit, Duke was surrounded by an entourage of tough-looking men in street clothes, all members of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
They faced a protest group, angry at the Klan's public appearance.
An egg splattered on Duke's clothes, and a rock broke the windshield of a Klansman's car.
Police arrested the rock thrower while an INS agent in charge welcomed the Klansmen and gave them a guided tour of the port facility.
For Duke and company, this visit was the first stop in an effort to stir up opposition to brown-skinned immigrants.
We believe very strongly white people are becoming second-class citizens in this country, Duke told the press.
When I think of America, I think of a white country.
Honestly, that just makes...
We try to keep this light and fun, but my blood boils a little bit.
Like, I feel my shoulders inching up to my ears.
Because you're angry at the anti-free speech people who tossed a rock at that class.
You got me.
No one let him speak.
Yeah.
I mean, I think you're doing a great job because you're like relaying the message.
He's speaking right now.
Yeah, these rock throwers, these egg throwers.
They might as well be shooting guns.
They might as well be shooting guns and should be treated as such.
Also, what about those poor baby eggs?
Those poor baby chickens.
Exactly.
That could have been a third of an omelette.
Yeah.
As the current president of the United States says, maybe we should treat them throwing rocks as if they were guns.
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
Because, you know, when you toss a rock, that can go at a solid 15, 20 feet per second.
And, you know, a rifle is only like 3,000 feet per second.
It's not that it's not that different.
What's a bullet but a tiny rock?
Exactly.
What's math but numbers?
You know?
Come on.
Duke officially announced his Klan Border Watch several days later in Sacramento.
He said 500 to 1,000 Klansmen would patrol the border crossings in areas in between the fences in search of illegal immigrants.
The reality was less impressive.
Less than 200 Klansmen actually showed up to drive around, and their activity at the border was limited to a few weeks.
The Knights of Texas started patrolling their border at the same time, but in both cases, the border watchers were more PR than practical.
The Klan's newspaper, The Crusader, published a special article to commemorate this heroic action.
No single action in the last decade has done more to bring public attention and awareness on the border problem.
Now, it would be more accurate to state that no single action did more to bring public awareness to the cause of white nationalism.
Focusing on the border and illegal immigration was a hugely successful PR move for America's most organized racists.
As David Duke himself noted, when a hundred reporters are gathered around hanging on every word, when they hope you accomplish your objectives by their own misguided sensationalism, if indeed it was a media stunt, it was by their own presence and admission that it was a very brilliant one.
That's irrelevant to anything today.
Media Stunt Brilliance00:04:52
Yeah, no, it does not tie into my favorite thing about coming on this podcast because it's how relevant it is today.
Hearing stories and stuff that has nothing to do with what's going on.
Like, because I like to, you know, we read the news all the time.
We talk about it all the time.
And so you want to shut that part of your brain off.
And talk about things that never happened anymore.
You just want to hear stories that are like, here's this random thing that happened.
Yeah, that doesn't tie into anything else.
Nothing.
You know what does tie in to anything else?
Ads for products and services.
Oh, yes.
It might even be an ad.
For Sarah Lee, deluxe, throwing bagels.
Yeah.
They bounce right back.
Products!
There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
We always say, trust your girlfriends.
I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends...
Oh my god, this is the same man.
A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
I felt like I got hit by a truck.
I thought, how could this happen to me?
The cops didn't seem to care.
So they take matters into their own hands.
I said, oh, hell no.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He's going to get what he deserves.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, I'm Nora Jones and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back.
I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting.
Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians.
Over the past two seasons, I've had special guests like Dave Grohl, Leve, Mavis Staples, Remy Wolf, Jeff Tweedy, really too many to name.
And this season, I've sat down with Alessia Cara, Sarah McLaughlin, John Legend, and more.
Check out my new episode with Josh Grobin.
You related to the Phantom at that point.
Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
That's so funny.
Share each day with me each night, each morning.
Say you love me.
You know I.
So come hang out with us in the studio and listen to Playing Along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Ego Modem.
My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
It's Will Farrell.
My dad gave me the best advice ever.
I went and had lunch with him one day and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
I'm working my way up through it.
I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent.
He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
Yeah.
He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
And he's like, just give it a shot.
He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
Yeah, it would not be.
Right, it wouldn't be that.
There's a lot of luck.
Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I feel like it was a little bit unbelievable until I really start making money.
It's financial literacy month, and the podcast Eating Wall Broke is bringing real conversations about money, growth, and building your future.
This month, hear from top streamer Zoe Spencer and venture capitalist Lakeisha Landrum Pierre as they share their journeys from starting out to leveling up.
If I'm outside with my parents and they see all these people come up to me for pictures, it's like, what?
Today now, obviously, it's like 100%.
They believe everything, but at first, it was just like, you got to go get a real job.
There's an economic component to communities thriving.
If there's not enough money and entrepreneurship happening in communities, they fail.
And what I mean by fail is they don't have money to pay for food.
They cannot feed their kids.
They do not have homes.
Communities don't work unless there's money flowing through them.
Listen to Eating Wall Broke from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
CIA Funded Hyper Masculinity00:03:13
We're back.
Just like these bagels were back after I threw them because they bounce right back, which should be the tagline if the fucking Sarah Lee people knew how to advertise a product.
Are you listening to them?
Hire a Sarah Lee.
I can sell some motherfucking bagels.
They bounce right back.
They bounce right back.
Bagel rings.
Bagel rings.
Oh, good.
I love it.
We've got another career.
Yeah, this feels more organic than pitching Doritos.
Because I love tossing bagels.
Yep.
Even more than you love?
That can be a euphemism for a lot of things, too.
Tossing bagels.
Yep.
Woof.
Yep.
My mind went places.
Yeah, it does.
Especially if you're a fan of bagel salad, as I am.
Yeah.
Chopped out bagels.
And a coffee meet.
Louis Coffee Mate.
Yeah, that's the cream.
It's a reduction in the salad cream.
Ew.
This is.
I've been on this podcast a lot.
This is the worst thing I've ever heard.
Let's talk about stuff that's even worse.
Cool.
So, while David Duke and Lewis Beam were content to mostly use the question of illegal immigration to drum up interest in their super cool clubs, other Americans remained frustrated by the fact that no actual action had been taken to stop migrants from coming over.
Enter Civilian Materiel Assistance, or the CMA.
The CMA was founded in 1983 by a wholesale grocer from Arizona who wanted to provide aid to anti-communist guerrillas fighting in Nicaragua.
This aid eventually turned into actual volunteer fighters, several of whom died in that country.
Kathleen Ballou notes that, quote, in Nicaragua, CMA acted covertly on behalf of the U.S. government.
It was funded by the CIA and supplied by the U.S. military.
Cool.
That's that good shit.
Now, the 1980s were a time in which a lot of civil wars were raging all across Latin America.
Most of those wars were funded and in some ways supported by the CIA and the U.S. military.
For example, also during this period, the Guatemalan government was fighting an insurgency.
They dumped suspected guerrilla fighters into the ocean out of helicopters so no one would find their bodies and disrupt the military aid they received from the United States.
All this violence and unrest across the region led a lot of people to flee their homes and search for a better, less violent life in the United States.
The CMA was not a fan of this.
According to the Intercept, quote, In the summer of 1986, approximately 20 heavily armed men and military fatigue stepped into the darkness of the Arizona desert.
It was July 4th weekend outside the remote border town of Lochiel, and the gunmen were on the hunt, carrying M16s and AK-47s with Israeli night vision goggles strapped to their heads.
The vigilantes soon found what they were looking for: two carloads of Mexican nationals.
J.R. Hagen, the crucifix-wearing Vietnam veteran who led the operation, would later say that the vehicles came to a stop on their own.
Other members of his team disagreed, telling reporters that they booby-trapped the road, tearing the tires of one of the vehicles to shreds before opening fire.
It was the latest in a series of escalating CMA actions, which had also included clandestine forays into Mexico.
The militia members held 16 men, women, and children at gunpoint for an hour and a half before Border Patrol agents arrived to take them away.
Very big discrepancies in those stories.
I love that they're protecting the U.S. border by invading Mexico.
Vigilante Gunmen on Border00:15:37
Unbelievable.
And it's fine.
It's almost like these hyper-masculine people, they need a war to be fighting.
They need to have some battle at their planet.
I get it.
I like guns.
That's why we have football.
I get the desire to LARP with a fucking AR-15.
Go do it on your friend's land and shoot at old cars.
Don't fuck with people's lives and shoot their vehicles.
Play a video game.
Play a fucking video game.
Yeah.
Maze attacks.
Unbelievable.
Yeah, like go fuck up another country and then when they come here, you stop them with guns.
I love because it's really, I was like, okay, one guy said that they stopped on their own, but they disagreed.
And I was waiting for you, like, no, they stopped.
They like held up guns and they stopped the car.
No, no, they booby-trapped those.
No, We like we like put shit down.
We weren't just standing in the middle of the road.
This is.
They do want a war zone.
Yeah.
Yeah, no, they want a war.
They want a civil war.
They want a revolution.
There's a, what, Hannity's old website in like 2009 and all these polls of like, what revolution do you prefer?
Yeah.
And it's like, I want a civil war.
No, I want like revolt against the government.
Just like all these different options.
There's one thing they want.
They have all those cool toys and they want an excuse to use them.
So nobody voted for the Industrial Revolution?
No.
Oh, man.
That was my favorite.
I don't think it was.
Like, what's your favorite?
I just, you know what?
You know what I love?
Is cute little tykes working in factories.
That just, I love it.
Yeah, that really gets me.
The key word is cute.
It's cute.
It's cute.
What do they think they are?
Adults?
When they're little hands that go into those grain threshers and they just try to pull the stuff out faster than it can cut their fingers on.
It's a fun thing.
It's so cute.
Wholesome.
Well, adult hands wouldn't be able to do that.
No, they wouldn't.
And they'd be less cute.
And it would be less cute.
Oh, my God.
In there.
The little, the little, cute, little fake limbs for them, the little peg legs and stuff when they lose their legs in the thresholders.
I like their coffin.
That little black black lungs.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Think of how little those black lungs are, too.
It's adorable.
Nitty bitty.
I love a good white.
It's like little licorice jelly beans in their chest.
Yeah.
Aw, that's so cute.
Yeah.
You took it too far.
You did.
You really did.
Jelly beans are cute with the colours.
No, you know what?
Oh, shit.
Yep, it hit Katie's mic.
If I throw it out the other wall, will that be?
What is that expression, Sophie?
I just said a t-shirt idea to TeePublic that was like a protester throwing something, but instead of it being like fire, it's a throwing bag.
Oh, that's a great idea.
Do you want your bagels back?
Yes, please.
Thank you.
Yeah, instead of a Molotov, it's a Molotov cocked bagel.
It's basically like your business card on the back of your visitor, but instead of it being like a weapon, it's throwing.
I love that.
There's something here.
Molotov locks, too?
Something?
We're close.
We're getting there.
We're getting there.
I'm proud of you guys.
I'm proud of all of us.
We'll probably cut some of that out.
Dan says, no, sir.
Yeah.
Nope.
1991 was an important year for America's political racists.
It's the year David Duke ran for governor of Louisiana.
He lost, but he won almost 39% of the popular vote, which is a lot of votes.
That's the magic number.
Yeah.
It's like that, like, that range.
There's always that range of people who will vote for this kind of thing.
It's like the president's current approval rating.
Yeah, and then I don't know what you're talking about or who you're talking about.
It was also the year of the Gulf War, and many of America's white supremacists were very much against that war happening.
The Populist Party was founded by Willis Cartow in 1984.
Willis will get an episode himself, but the short of it is he was modern America's first successful intellectual Nazi.
Think of him as the Richard Spencer of the 1980s and 90s.
He kept his power level just wrapped up enough to avoid being tarred with the same brush as George Lincoln Rockwell.
But he shared Rockwell's ultimate goal: uniting the American right behind white supremacist politics.
The Populist Party was a major early vehicle for David Duke's political career.
In 1991, they picketed and protested the Gulf War.
Blood and Politics cites one of the leaflets they handed out by the hundreds.
Quote: If the Populist Party were in power, we would have hundreds of thousands of troops on the Mexican border, not in desert sand dunes 10,000 miles away.
There would be no affirmative action, quotas, or other anti-white racist schemes.
Anti-white racist schemes.
That's my, oh, God.
You're like waiting for like no more wars.
No, no, no, no.
Just not.
We want it closer.
We want to do it closer.
We want a war on those unarmed people trying to cross the border.
Got to kill those women and children.
Gotta shoot those people.
We want to be able to see the war from our backyard.
I want to be able to go partake in the war.
I want to.
I want a war, but I also don't want to have to go too far from a kitchen.
Well, you don't want to have to fight a war in a gross foreign country.
No.
You know, you want to force it.
I want to kill some people.
I want to go home to my own bed.
Exactly.
America first.
War here forever.
Yeah, import, don't export.
Exactly.
We've got a war deficit trade-wise.
Yeah, the war gap.
Yeah, yeah.
By 1992, or in 1992, Pat Buchanan ran in the Republican Party primary against George H.W. Bush.
So did Tom Metzger, for that matter.
Buchanan made border security the keystone issue of his campaign.
During a press event at the border in May, he told the LA Times, quote, I am calling attention to a national disgrace.
The failure of the national government of the United States to protect the borders of the United States from an illegal invasion that involves at least a million aliens a year.
As a consequence of that, we have social problems and economic problems and drug problems.
Oh.
Unfortunately for Pat, Tom Metzger showed up at the border that same day, intent on attacking Pat Buchanan from the right.
Here's how Blood and Politics relates what happened next.
The only problem was Metzger, who waited with great fanfare for Buchanan to appear.
Where was the great white hope?
He sneered like a perfect villain in a street theater.
I want to talk with him.
When Buchanan finally did appear, he was forced to huddle in a small circle of supporters to avoid contact with Metzger.
But the Ornry Aryan worked his way into camera range nevertheless.
Pat, he yelled as all the cameras swung away from the candidate and toward him.
What are we going to do about all those rich Republicans making millions off the wetbacks in the Imperial Valley?
As the cameras swung back and forth, Buchanan beat a hasty retreat after less than 15 minutes of photoless opportunity.
With the cameras all to himself, Metzger then staged his own press conference.
If he were president, he argued voluably, he would station National Guard troops like a picket fence along the border with orders to shoot to kill.
The immigration problem would be over in one night, he declared.
Yes.
Wrong.
That's wrong.
But also cool.
But also gross.
But also gross.
That's a yeah, that's it's always fascinating.
Yeah.
Hearing current stories.
Like a picket fence.
But just like, yeah, that with guns.
A guy from Pat Buchanan from the right.
Yeah.
That's a thing.
That's a feat.
Yeah.
There is a feature.
Okay.
It's like I've seen that conversation happen online many, many times, but just like, oh, yeah, two candidates are doing their Twitter argument, but in real life.
Yeah.
And pulling them to the right.
This is what we had to do before Twitter: show up at the border and shout at each other.
Now, obviously, the 1992 election did not go to any Republican.
Slick Willie, noted lawyer and probable rapist, won.
In the mid-1990s, Clinton's Border Patrol launched the Prevention Through Deterrence campaign.
This basically focused the Border Patrol in several specific border cities in an attempt to funnel migrants into the Sonoran desert by basically blocking off all of the easy ways into the country.
The idea was that migrants would realize there were no safe routes into the United States and thus stop trying to enter.
I'm sure that worked.
Seems like people fleeing war and in some cases literal genocide in their homes would be stopped by crossing an additional desert.
Right.
Desperation and the human drive for survival is easily deterred.
Yes, it very, very easily.
By like a single extra obstacle.
Exactly.
Yeah.
That isn't necessarily a worse obstacle than ones they've already gotten to the city of the world.
That's a key way to get people to stop trying to do something.
It's like go through hell and be like, what about hell light?
Yeah, what about a slightly less worse?
Anyway, let's read the next paragraph.
Oh no!
It turns out thousands of migrants tried to cross and hundreds of them died in the Sonoran desert.
In many cases, they died due to lack of water, heat stroke, and all the other terrible things that can happen to a body whilst traveling through the desert on foot.
But a number of those migrants, we will never know how many, died violently.
In 2000, Eusebio de Haro, a Mexican man, was shot to death by Texas landowner Sam Blackwood.
Eusebio had asked Sam for water.
Blackwood was convicted of a misdemeanor deadly conduct charge and fined $4,000.
Several members of the jury hugged members of his family after the verdict was given.
All of this, finally, brings me to the Minutemen.
Yep.
Now, if you're like me, the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps were the first vigilante border militia you ever heard about.
They started in April of 2005 as the brainchild of a man named Chris Simcox.
Now, Chris was born in 1961.
His childhood occurred while David Duke was wearing a swastika in Free Speech Alley and Louis Beam was machine gunning people in Vietnam.
In his early years, Chris's life gave little hint that he would follow down an even vaguely similar path to those men.
He moved out to LA with dreams of becoming an actor.
After several years of failure, he became a kindergarten teacher instead and taught at the Wildwood School for 13 years.
What?
I'm just like, I don't like where this is going.
You're really not going to like where this is going, guys.
By September 11th, 2001, he'd transitioned to running a private tutoring business.
According to the nation, quote, he appeared to suffer a mental breakdown in the days after the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks, refusing to communicate with anyone unless they first recited the preamble to the U.S. Constitution and leaving a series of bizarre messages on his ex-wife's answering machine about stockpiling weapons.
I'm going on a great adventure, Simcox told his son three weeks after the attacks.
This doesn't end well.
Adventures aren't well.
Adventures are fun.
Yeah, adventures are fun.
I love adventures.
I've never heard of a badger or Avengers.
Adventures.
Avengers.
Both are fun.
Both are fun.
And nobody dies, and either of them.
That's my favorite thing about Adventure, the never dying part.
This adventure was Chris moving out to Tombstone, Arizona, and getting a gig as a fake gunfighter in a local show for tourists.
His dreams are coming true.
His dreams are coming.
This is going to be fun.
This is going to be fun.
It's going to be fun.
He also sunk some of his savings into buying the Tombstone Tumbleweed, a small local paper.
Chris changed its editorial direction from local news to ranting violently about immigrants.
The next year, 2002, he founded the Tombstone Militia, which his own newspaper described as a committee of vigilantes.
The Tombstone Militia started patrolling the border irregularly.
In January 2003, Chris was arrested for illegal.
Legally, like infrequently or like weirdly.
Actually, we did it.
Literally both.
That's how you do it.
We wear duck costumes.
Well, we don't do it that often.
In 2003, Chris was arrested for illegally carrying a firearm in a national park during one of these missions.
The nation notes, also in his possession were a police scanner and a toy figure of Wyatt Earp riding a horse.
So it is weirdly too.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
All right, everything's adding up.
Yeah.
In April of 2005, Chris teamed up with Jim Gilchrist, a retired accountant in Orange County, to start the Minuteman project.
According to Chris, citizen border patrols were needed to do the job the government refuses to do and protect the country from people he called invaders.
That's a new word.
All of this is new.
Not the same language that Louis Beam, the Nazi, used to justify the Klan Border Patrol a couple of decades earlier.
Very totally different.
Not the same word.
Identical language.
Yeah, not the same word that any of these people use, or the president specifically, or the Christchurch shooter.
Should I keep.
I mean, should I keep...
Yeah, you keep it.
No, You know what?
I'll just, I'll just, you know what, actually.
Does one of you want to throw these bagels in anger?
At that wall?
Wherever you want.
You toss those bagels.
Nothing in here can be damaged.
Oh, this is solid toss.
They still bounce back to Vigilante.
It all bounces back to Robert.
And the invasion is over.
Does this play well on podcasts?
Oh, yeah.
People love a good bagel throw.
It's the cornerstone of my show.
The Minuteman project lasted a month, and it mostly involved groups of volunteers sitting in lawn chairs near the border looking for migrants with binoculars.
While it was unimpressive on the ground, the Minuteman project was a huge PR success.
Fox paid particular attention, but coverage spanned the gamut of mainstream news sources.
I found an NBC News article from June 2005, about two months after the Minutemen's first outing.
Quote, Headlines from the Arizona event gave the group momentum and turned what some believe to be nothing more than a publicity stunt into a national movement.
The group has since hired lawyers, reorganized into separate corporations, filed to legally protect the name Minuteman Project, hired a Washington-based media consultant, and started an aggressive fundraising campaign.
And representatives of the group have been to Washington to lobby Congress and relate the lessons learned from their time on the border.
So, unless the work continues, it's just going to be viewed as a dog and pony show, said James Gilchrist, one of the Minuteman leaders.
When the Arizona project wrapped up, he and Simcox unabashedly acknowledged that among their chief considerations in Arizona was getting media attention.
So, if you know one thing about the kind of people who create volunteer militias, it's that they're all impossible assholes who hate each other.
Simcox and Gilchrist did not get along.
And less than a month after blowing up, you know, press-wise, the Minuteman project.
Yeah.
I'm hungover again, so I'm reading some of this like a shithead.
Less than a month after blowing up in the news, the Minuteman fractured into two separate groups.
Gilchrist created Minuteman Inc., an organization aimed at fighting illegal immigration inside the U.S. by attacking employers violating immigration laws.
Simcox ran the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, or MCDC.
On paper, the two groups were part of the same larger whole.
In reality, they had fairly little to do with each other.
This worked out great for Chris Simcox because it meant he could solicit donations directly to his group without sharing with Gilchrist.
By August of 2006, between 60,000 and 130,000 people had donated money to fund the MCDC's operations.
Chris Simcox claimed that he'd received over $1.6 million.
He claimed at that point to have more than 7,451 casa migrantes, or migrant hunters, in his personal army.
He claims these men had personally delivered 13,000 illegal aliens to the Border Patrol.
Simcox and Gilchrist quickly gained the attention of powerful forces within the American right.
According to The Nation, quote, the cannonball media splash that followed attracted the attention of Diner Consultants.
The Chicago-based political consulting and fundraising operation is run by Philip Sheldon, son of the Traditional Values Coalition, long one of the nation's most vociferous anti-gay crusaders.
Diner is one cog in Philip Sheldon's revenue-generating machine, which also includes Response Unlimited, a direct mail firm promoted as the nation's best and most comprehensive source of mailing lists for conservative and Christian mailers and telemarketers, and perhaps best known for ghoulishly purchasing a list of donors to Terry Schibo's legal fund from her parents several days before her death.
Selling Dead Magazine Lists00:05:10
Cool.
Cool, very cool.
Very cool.
You know what is even cooler?
Another mailing list that Response Unlimited would happily sell to the highest bidder was a list of people who had subscribed to a now-dead magazine called The Spotlight.
You guys ever heard of The Spotlight?
I've heard of Spotlights.
Yeah.
Well, The Spotlight is a literal neo-Nazi news rag that mostly focused on denying the Holocaust.
Sure.
It was published by Willis Cartow, founder of the Populist Party and backer of David Duke.
So Chris Simcox was happy to sell access to his mailing list to these people.
That all checks out.
Cool.
Didn't care for the Nazi stuff.
Didn't care for that.
I thought you were going to like that part.
Not a fan of referring to them as migrant hunters.
Yeah, that's pretty bold.
So much.
Can I just say all of the above?
Yeah.
You can say that.
I'm not a fan of migrant hunting either.
You know what I am a fan of?
Products.
I love products.
Services.
Oh, my gosh.
I didn't know.
Services included.
Before we go out to ads, I'm going to try tossing something I've never tossed.
And this might be an objectively bad idea.
Okay.
Yeah, I'm throwing the coffee, man.
Let's see what happens.
There's no way to know.
One toss all the cream.
It was fine.
It's safe.
Everything's good.
Everything's fine.
Nothing.
Pardon my.
Only because I bapped it away.
Pardon the language, but nothing came out.
But if you want something to come out, the product.
There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
If you play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
We always say, trust your girlfriends.
I'm Anna Sinfield and in this new season of The Girlfriends.
Oh my God, this is the same man.
A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
I felt like I got hit by a truck.
I thought, how could this happen to me?
The cops didn't seem to care.
So they take matters into their own hands.
I said, oh, hell no.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He's going to get what he deserves.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back.
I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting.
Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians.
Over the past two seasons, I've had special guests like Dave Grohl, Leve, Mavis Staples, Remy Wolf, Jeff Tweedy, really too many to name.
And this season, I've sat down with Alessia Cara, Sarah McLaughlin, John Legend, and more.
Check out my new episode with Josh Grobin.
You related to the Phantom at that point.
Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
That's so funny.
Share with me each night, each morning.
Say you love me.
You know I.
So come hang out with us in the studio and listen to Playing Along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Ago Modem.
My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network, it's Will Farrell.
Woo, My dad gave me the best advice ever.
I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
I'm working my way up through it.
I know it's a place they come.
Look for up and coming talent.
He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
Yeah.
He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
And he's like, just give it a shot.
He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
Yeah, it would not be.
Right, it wouldn't be that.
There's a lot of luck.
Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I feel like it was a little bit unbelievable until I really start making money.
It's Financial Literacy Month, and the podcast Eating Wall Broke is bringing real conversations about money, growth, and building your future.
This month, hear from top streamer Zoe Spencer and venture capitalist Lakeisha Landrum Pierre as they share their journeys from starting out to leveling up.
Rebuilding Character Amid Danger00:07:11
If I'm outside with my parents and they see all these people come up to me for pictures, it's like, what?
Today now, obviously, it's like 100%.
They believe everything, but at first it was just like, you got to go get a real job.
There's an economic component to communities thriving.
If there's not enough money and entrepreneurship happening in communities, they fail.
And what I mean by fellows, they don't have money to pay for food.
They cannot feed their kids.
They do not have homes.
Communities don't work unless there's money flowing through them.
Listen to Eating Wild Broke from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
We're back!
God, those ads.
I love that.
I bought it all.
I'm so full from those ads.
So am I.
So am I. You know, let's fill our heads now with some knowledge.
Let's digest some things.
Some knowledge bites.
Okay.
So, we were talking about Response Unlimited, people who buy up all the mailing lists.
They bought the Minuteman's mailing list, or essentially Chris Simcock sold access to that.
The nation actually managed to find out some of the people who purchased access to the Minuteman's mailing list.
It included Judge Roy Moore for his failed gubernatorial campaign, Oliver North's Freedom Alliance, and some organization called Stop Puerto Rico Statehood.
Jesus Christ.
They know they're fucking...
Oh, my goodness.
Data.
Cool.
Yeah.
Now, most new grifters in Chris Simcox's position would have fucked everything up within six months or less of their first grift going viral.
But Chris is a smart dude.
On April 19th, 2006, he showed up on Fox News's Hannity and Combs.
He stated, with zero evidence, that 300,000 Middle Easterners had been apprehended entering the country in the last year.
This is a clear and present danger.
It is the greatest threat to national security and public safety.
The time for negotiating is over.
He then delivered an ultimatum to President George W. Bush.
Declare a state of emergency and deploy the National Guard and military reserves, or by Memorial Day weekend, we're going to break ground and we're going to start helping landowners to build a double-layer security fence along their properties.
Thus was born Fencegate.
Okay.
Okay, okay.
Cool.
President Bush was forced to send 6,000 National Guard troops to the border to placate the Fox-watching crowd.
Chris used the media storm around this to solicit even more donations.
His plan was to buy up miles of private land along the border and build what he called an Israeli-style security fence, including a six-foot trench and concertina wire on top.
By May 9th, just a few weeks after his Fox appearance, the fence had raised $175,000.
A month later, almost $400,000 had been donated.
Week by week, the Minuteman grew more and more tightly woven into the Republican establishment.
In mid-2006, it was absorbed into the Declaration Alliance, a group formed by conservative activist Alan Keyes in 1996 to fight abortion and gay rights.
The alliance's president, Mary Lewis, was a former assistant to Bill Crystal, editor of the now-defunct Weekly Standard.
During a Minuteman gathering, Keyes told the assembled militiamen, What we're doing here is not just building a fence.
We are rebuilding a character.
We are redefining a people.
Now, in every press appearance and interview, Simcox has been careful to note that the Minutemen were non-violent.
When Alan Combs, Fox's now-dead pocket Democrat, questioned Chris about the fact that some Minutemen carried guns on patrol, Chris told him, Alan, this is a dangerous place.
There are drug dealers.
Our group in California yesterday came across some drug mules, one of them carrying an AR-15.
You know, our volunteers, thank God for the Second Amendment, are allowed to defend their lives if they're attacked.
And when they put themselves in this dangerous situation, the same as the men and women of Border Patrol, they have that right.
Okay.
The reality of the situation is that Chris Simcox, Jim Gilchrist, and many of their volunteers were champing at the bit for an excuse to murder brown people.
I'm going to play an audio clip from documentary footage shot in 2004.
The first person we're going to hear is Gilchrist.
I'd be able to shoot the Mexicans on site, and that would end the problem.
After two or three Mexicans are shot, they'll stop crossing the border and they'll take their cows home, too.
What?
And here's Simcox.
I feel that the people that are coming across Invading this country.
I think they should be treated as enemies of the state.
We need to start putting them in work camps.
Anyone could have walked through the borders of this country bringing bombs, chemicals, weapons of mass destruction.
I think they should be shot on sight, personally.
Yeah, you know, all those migrants bringing weapons of mass destruction.
Yeah, you know, I looked into it because I wanted to know how many terrorists, al-Qaeda guys, have snuck into America through the southern border.
It's still zero.
It's still zero.
Yeah.
I was wondering if it's still been 18 years.
Yeah, so fingers crossed, that changes.
Yeah, you're saying it's zero now.
Exactly.
18 years after people started worrying about it.
You never know.
It's interesting hearing all these people talk and say these terrible things that many of our public officials say.
And now do.
And now do.
Like the camps.
Like the camps insinuating that maybe we should shoot them.
But we won't.
Maybe we should.
We won't, but we should.
It would be effective.
It would be effective if we did.
We won't, but it would work.
I also like, yeah, the deterrent.
That'll deter them.
And that's what Gilchrist said, that if you start, you only have to kill a few and it'll deter them.
That's literally the same thing Nazi Tom Metzger said 30 years earlier.
Yeah.
You start killing a few and it'll stop it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's important to note that the Minutemen, although they wrapped themselves in more moderate garb and were very tightly woven into the Republican Party, were just as hateful and had intentions just as violent as the neo-Nazis and Klansmen who preceded them.
Yeah, you know how people are talking about Donald Trump and how he's like, oh, look what he's doing to everybody.
Look what he's doing to the Republican Party.
It's interesting how it's less that and more healthy.
He just pumps up the whole expression of it.
He's just the DJ.
They were already dancing.
He's like, he got up and he pumped up the fucking ball.
He's the one pumped one cream to their rhetoric.
Yes, he's the, if I may borrow a name, the spotlight.
Yeah.
Nice.
Nice.
Maybe a little bit.
Nice.
Lots of tie-ins here.
Yeah.
So yes, the Minutemen wrapped themselves in the notion of protecting America, but what they really wanted was an excuse to murder Hispanics.
In part two, we're going to talk about what happened when some of them finally got that chance.
Great.
But first, plugs.
P-zone.
We have P-Zone.
What?
P-Zone?
I mean, you guys plug your stuff.
Drop a P in the P-Zone.
Look, we're here.
We're here on the podcast a lot.
You like that.
We got our own podcast called Even More News.
Cody, you do the rest.
There's also a YouTube show called Some More News on the videos.
And my Twitter is Dr. Mr. Cody.
And the show's Twitter is Some More News.
And Katie's Twitter is Katie Stole.
Social Media Handles00:03:36
That's right.
I have a Twitter.
I'm IRightOK on Twitter.
You can follow me there if you want to be my friend or my enemy.
I'm taking both.
I have, there's t-shirts you can buy on TeePublic.
You can find this podcast on Twitter or The Gram at BastardsPod.
You can find all of the sources for this episode on behindthebastards.com.
I don't think I have any other podcasts to plug.
Sophie, is that correct?
You're just looking like you're angry at me.
Like you're furious.
Am I missing something?
Oh, do you want me to throw the bagels again?
Okay, I'm going to throw the bagels again.
Oh!
Knocked over Katie's drink.
They are getting progressively more dangerous.
But I'm not going to stop.
Why would you?
Why would you?
Exactly.
Just keep going.
That's some America logic.
Speaking of America, I have a podcast about what if Civil War called it could happen here.
Spoilers, it's terrible.
I mean, the podcast is good, but the bad thing is that I hope so.
Anyway, the episode's over.
Go throw some bagels, hug a cat, give a cat bagels.
We're done.
Make a bagel sound.
Episode's over.
When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He is not going to get away with this.
He's going to get what he deserves.
We always say that, trust your girlfriends.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi, I'm Bob Pittman, chairman and CEO of iHeartMedia, and I'm kicking off a brand new season of my podcast, Math and Magic, Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing.
Math and Magic takes you behind the scenes of the biggest businesses and industries while sharing insights from the smartest minds in marketing.
Coming up this season on Math and Magic, CEO of Liquid Death Mike Cesario.
People think that creative ideas are like these light bulb moments that happen when you're in the shower, where it's really like a stone sculpture.
You're constantly just chipping away and refining.
Take to interactive CEO Strauss Selnick and our own chief business officer, Lisa Coffey.
Listen to Math and Magic on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
This is Amy Roebach, alongside TJ Holmes from the Amy and TJ podcast.
And there is so much news, information, commentary coming at you all day and from all over the place.
What's fact, what's fake, and sometimes what the F.
So let's cut the crap, okay?
Follow the Amy and TJ podcast, a one-stop news and pop culture shop to get you caught up and on with your day.
And listen to Amy and TJ on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
It's Financial Literacy Month, and the podcast Eating While Broke is bringing real conversations about money, growth, and building your future.
This month, hear from top streamer Zoe Spencer and venture capitalist Lakeisha Landrum-Pierre as they share their journeys from starting out to leveling up.
There's an economic component to communities thriving.
If there's not enough money and entrepreneurship happening in communities, they've failed.
Listen to Eating While Broke from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.