Garrison Davis details the Rise Above Movement's evolution from a DIY Division into a violent California street gang co-founded by Robert Rundo and Ben Daly. Operating between 2017 and 2018, RAM targeted Antifa protesters with impunity, often dropping charges against attackers while felonying defenders, and maintained ties to Hammerskins and the Proud Boys. Their activities escalated at the Unite the Right rally, leading to FBI arrests in October 2018, yet legal loopholes allowed some members to evade prison, illustrating how white supremacist groups exploit judicial biases to sustain street violence. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
|
Time
Text
Women Take Matters Into Their Own Hands00:02:41
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.
I got you.
I got you.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Ago Modern.
My next guest, it's Will Farrell.
My dad gave me the best advice ever.
He goes, just give it a shot.
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 life.
Listen to Thanksgiving on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
In 2023, bachelor star Clayton Eckard was accused of fathering twins, but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax.
You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
I doctored the test once.
It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern.
Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
Greg Goespiece and Michael Manchini.
My mind was blown.
I'm Stephanie Young.
This is Love Trapped.
Laura, Scottsdale Police.
As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
10-10 shots five, City Hall building.
How did this ever happen in City Hall?
Somebody tell me that, Jeffrey Woods.
A shocking public murder.
This is one of the most dramatic events that really ever happened in New York City politics.
I screamed, get down, get down.
Those are shots.
A tragedy that's now forgotten.
And a mystery that may or may not have been political, that may have been about sex.
Listen to Rorschach, murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What's really having some motherfucking trouble getting adjusted to the new year and coming back from vacation, my me.
The Rise of American Fascism00:16:26
Oh, wow.
That say off balance from the get-go.
I'm Robert Evans.
This is behind the bastards podcast where Sophie laughs at me for my foibles and we talk about bad people.
How many years into this are we?
Yeah.
All right.
Now, I don't know when this episode is going to air.
Maybe sometime in early February, but this is the first episode we're recording in 2021.
And I have just come back, as has Sophie from two weeks of vacation.
I worked everywhere.
I think I speak for both of us when I say, motherfucker.
It is hard to get back into the swing of things, which is why Garrison Davis is here today to read our episode to me so that I get to skip out on writing for a little while longer.
And I don't know, maybe play a fucking video game or something.
How are you doing, Garrison?
Great.
I just woke up and I have coffee in one hand and scrolling through my 20-page monster essay in the other hand.
You've truly adapted to the podcasting lifestyle, which involves waking up at 12.35, frantically getting on a Zoom call because Sophie yells at you for being late and then reading 20 pages about a Nazi.
Yeah.
Now, here's my question.
So you have the coffee.
Do you have a secret weapon near your podcasting station?
I have about 20 Ascreama sticks to my right and about, I don't know, five bladed weapons to my left.
I got a Mauser.
That thing is so cool.
Yours is so, so much better.
It's so cool.
I just have the machete Robert sent me.
Oh, I have that machete too.
Yeah, it's a good one.
It's a good one.
CRKT.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We need to get you a rifle, Garrison.
But first, let's talk about the reason you might need a rifle.
These Nazis you wrote about today.
Yeah.
Okay.
So I'm getting a little tired with Nazis.
I'll be honest.
They all are.
That's kind of their thing.
They just keep being a problem.
Yeah.
Like this should have ended, I don't know, in the 40s or something, but no.
We have so many other kind of world-ending problems to deal with, like climate change, hunger, evictions, pandemic.
But the fascists just keep popping up and they're adding on to all of these problems.
And I am really not excited about eco-fascism.
Yeah, that's the one I'm most not excited about.
Yeah, that's the thing I see coming the most.
We're not actually going to be explicitly talking about eco-fascism today, although it'll probably come up towards the end because of some of the influences that we'll be talking about.
But we're going to be more focusing on good old-fashioned Nazi street fighting gangs.
Excellent.
But we have a fun twist where it's not just street fighting gangs.
It's also a weird kind of activewear lifestyle brand griffin fascism.
Hell yeah.
That's my shit right there.
Yoga pants.
Yeah.
Ethnic cleansing.
Yeah.
Let's do this.
It's like with this weird brand of like lifestyle fascism with also street fights.
It's great.
Hell yeah.
Capitalize everything, even genocide.
Yes.
So of course, this means we're talking about the not-so-fine folks at Ram or also known as the rise above movement.
If you've ever seen protest footage, especially like a right-wing versus Antifa footage from like pre-2020, you've probably seen RAM members beating up people on the ground.
If you saw footage from like 2017, 2018, you probably saw Ram members beating up children.
Because that's kind of what they were doing for a lot of 2017, especially on the West Coast.
People who we now know to be a part of Ram were popping up all over.
So today we are going to look into the rise and the fall and the sort of kind of grift resurgence of the rise above movement.
This is just another, this is just a side note for me.
I know, Robert, you talk about this a little bit too, but when we try to like cover these groups, there's always kind of a line that you want to draw between like giving them advertising and like covering them in a responsible way so people know, so like people have information about them and about what threats they pose and how to oppose it right.
So I had a bit of I had a bit of trouble on this one, trying to find this line of you know what is too much information.
That's like making it too advertisy versus you know, I think this group is, I think this group's ideology specifically, could be a real problem in America.
Yeah, we call it the Savitri Devi paradox of like okay how, how deep do you get into this thing that people need to know about, but you really don't want to just be platforming yeah yeah, and so it's it's, this is.
This one was a bit tricky, because I think there's going to be a lot of American youth that's very susceptible to what this type of, what this type of group puts out.
So I'm going to get into maybe a little bit more detail than I would usually want to for this group, but I'm going to try to keep it in context for informing people about what to look out for.
Because I think this type of group's never actually gotten a very good stronghold in America.
And I think they very well could because of the weird kind of macho kind of masculine lifestyle activism with like athletics, the kind of thing that we'll be talking all about that more later.
First, first, the kind of the origins of this group, what we know as the rise above movement, which I'll just be calling Ram from now on, first popped onto the scene shortly after Donald Trump's election, alongside a handful of other alt-right groups.
So late 2016 is when they first formed.
Kind of alongside Richard Spencer and the traditionalist Worker Party and those other first wave groups.
Yeah.
Initially, so to tell you kind of to get a little peek about what these people actually believe, they initially referred to themselves as the DIY division.
So division obviously.
They try to hack into that 2012 relevant stream.
Yeah, but also like division, obviously being a reference to Nazis.
But they quickly changed their name, realizing this was probably a terrible name.
So in spring of 2017, they quickly changed their branding to Ram or Rise Above movement.
They had about a few dozen members who lived mostly around Southern California.
The most efficient way to describe them is basically a white supremacist street gang that exists to get into physical combat with all of their ideological enemies.
That's really anyone that isn't them or anyone they see as Antifa.
But it was very explicitly to get into fights with people.
This was like their main, this was their main focus.
Ram has two people usually credited as leaders or co-co-founders, Benjamin Daly and Robert Rundo.
The inspirations for the group is a mix of kind of Nazi skinheads like the Hammerskins and European, Eastern European street fighting white identity movements, which we'll get into more in the next episode a lot.
But I'm going to be kind of calling that lifestyle brand fascism because of the kind of the weird white identity mixed in with like this like selling athletics equipment and stuff.
It's also a real good example of one of the things Umberto Echo talked about in Ur Fascism, his essay trying to kind of explain what fascism is, syncretism, right?
Like fascism in the United States has particularly spread by kind of co-opting aspects of consumerist culture.
And like that's why you'll see a lot of these like lifestyle brands that focus on like beards and tactical gear and like coffee and shit like that.
Yeah.
It's all part of this.
It's an aesthetic as much as it is an ideology.
Yes.
And they are very into aesthetics.
They are very aesthetically focused.
This is one of their actually Rundo will talk about this later.
Actually, he'll bring up this kind of topic when he gives advice for how to start these groups.
And it's not like the OG Nazis weren't snappy dressers.
Aesthetics have always been a big part of fascism.
Aesthetic has always been a giant part.
Yeah.
So the group is, if you look at like, if you look back in 2017, the group is kind of notable for where it falls in the conservative to alt-right to neo-Nazi spectrum.
Online, they were much more open about their white supremacist views than, say, the Proud Boys, but they weren't quite at like Adam Laughlin levels.
They're kind of this little in-between between being like super openly Nazi all the time, but also they're beyond just doing dog whistles.
Like, you know, like they would, they would post Hitler memes on social media and they would like share daily storm articles.
But when they're in like in the streets, they fell back and hid behind the anti-immigrant, pro-free speech, pro-traditional masculinity thing, while also using a myriad of anti-Semitic dog whistles.
In an interview, I think Rundo said that someone asked him about, quote, the 14 words.
And Rundo's like, oh, haha.
Well, I'll say I'm a fan of the 14 words.
It's like, he's, it's like, so they, they were more open on the streets.
14 words.
Yeah, we must secure a future for, it's a thing about how like we have to make the world safe for white children.
It's a phrase that's 14 words.
That's a, it's a just, it's kind of a, just a, a sim, it's like a, it's, it's like, it's almost like a code that people use back and forth to signal their ideology.
Yeah, we've gone into detail with it about it in the war on everyone and the Rockwell episodes and a few other places.
Yeah, continue.
But yeah, so they're a little bit more dog whistly in the streets, more open online.
So it's kind of, they fall into this weird kind of in-between.
I mean, the Proud Boys are more open now than what they were in 2017, but even still, you know, they have, it's a little different because like Ram wouldn't allow people of color inside Ram, whereas the Proud Boys do.
For, you know, whatever propaganda reasons.
Here's how Ram described their group on an Instagram post from 2017 in June.
Quote, we want to rise above all of today's destructive culture and see the rebirth of our people, strong in mental and physical capabilities as our forefathers were.
In a time when you can be harmed for your political beliefs or ashamed for your heritage, we are here to defend our identity and shared goals.
So like, that's the kind of, that's the kind of propaganda they put out and kind of like the phrasing that they use.
There's a little bit of Identity Europa kind of stuff, and this group ties into Identity Europa a little bit later on.
But they're more openly white supremacists than the Proud Boys at this point, definitely.
North California Anti-Racist Action, which is like an anti-fascist information collective, they put together a really good piece on the early days of Ram back in July of 2017, way before the mainstream media started paying attention in the wake of the violence at Charlottesville.
The anti-racist action article describes Ram like this.
Note, they use some loaded terms here that we'll try to kind of define later.
But here's how anti-racist action describes Rams as an organization.
Rise Above Movement is a loose collective of violent neo-Nazis and fascists from Southern California that organizes and trains primarily to engage in fighting and violence at political rallies.
They've been a central participant in the recent wave of far-right protest movements in California during the first half of 2017, which have attempted to mobilize a broad range of right-wing constituents under the banner of protecting so-called free speech, unyielding support for Trump and apathy towards Muslims, immigrants, and other oppressed groups.
So, you know, when like Berkeley was happening and all these other things, you know, this group was right there in California trying to capitalize on the new popularity that this kind of, you know, quote activism was doing with these, you know, lots of different right-wing kind of rallies at this time.
Back to the anti-racist action kind of definition.
The group's ideology appears to be a mishmash, mostly equal parts of Identity Europa's flaccid identitarian discourse inspired itself by fascist organizations like Generation Identity from France, and the fetish and the fetishization of masculinity, physical fitness, and violence mixed in with shallow, anti-corporate, anti-consumerist themes like in the film Fight Club.
Propaganda by the overwhelmingly, but propaganda by the group overwhelmingly contains the usual fascistic themes of emasculated young men needing to reclaim their identities through learning to fight and engaging in purifying violence.
So very, they basically are just a Nazi fight club.
One of the things that's really interesting about not just Ram, but about kind of the way in which American fascism, you know, starting like not starting in 2016, but ramping up in 2016 and up through the Trump years, is it kind of recreated the process that we saw happen in the early chunk of the 20th century?
Like, and Ram is specifically, we talked about Gabriel Bonunzio in an earlier episode, like that.
He's all about the aesthetics.
He's about manliness.
He's about like the purifying nature of violence, the sacredness of action for action's sake.
Like they were at that stage of it.
And obviously, like the kind of mainstream of American fascism has moved on and gotten much larger and more dangerous.
But it's interesting to me that the same pattern has kind of repeated itself here.
Yeah.
And it was, this was, this was all very intentional.
Like, if you look at like the anti-racist action kind of brief definition or not, not so brief definition, then compare that to like, so this was a Ram here.
I'm going to read a Ram post from Gab, circa December 2017.
Gab.
So yeah.
Robert, do you want to explain what Gab is to the listeners that have a better life than we do?
Yeah, Gab was the first Twitter for Nazis before Parlor was popular as Twitter for Nazis.
And Gab largely became defunct after someone who had repeatedly talked about killing Jewish people on Gab shot 11 Jewish people to death at the Tree of Life Synagogue.
Yeah.
So here's a post from Ram from Gab, kind of echoing some sentiments that the anti-racist action article kind of laid out.
The Rise of Up Movement is the premier MMA fight club of the alt-right, representing the United States.
Their dedication is to promote an active lifestyle and common values among young people and a future for European people.
This is achieved through training, creative thinking, and activism.
The main task of Ram is to revive the spirit of a warrior and see the rebirth of the values of the Western civilization's forefathers.
Oh, the spirit of the warrior.
So yeah, the warrior spirit's going to be a big reoccurring theme here.
I've been familiar with the warrior spirit kind of concept for a while because actually that there's a sector of the parkour community that talks about that.
So like I've been, and I was always weary of that, even before I really knew what fascism was.
It always just felt weird to me and felt a little problematic.
Yeah, for sure.
But we'll actually, we'll be talking about warrior spirit later on, probably more in part two.
Because there's a whole bunch of fascist writing about the warrior spirit or the warrior lifestyle, warrior mentality or whatever.
Of course, this also ties into police training, which I'm sure is just a coincidence.
I'm sure there's no correlation.
I'm sure there's no correlation between the aesthetics of violence and the warrior culture that Ram appropriated and capitalized on and the aesthetics of violence and warrior culture that is hugely popular among law enforcement and law enforcement trainers like Grossman.
I'm sure there's absolutely no comparisons between any of those things.
It is fun, though, because Ram does hate law enforcement, which is going to be very funny later.
Origins and Nazi Influences00:06:27
Well, yeah, yeah.
And that's the, like, you've got the two chunks of the right that are currently like the, there's like the hates cops because I'm an actual Nazi chunk of the right.
And then there's the back the blue chunk of the right.
And at the moment in 2021, we seem to be watching the hates cops chunk of the right eating the back the blue type, which is now they're getting pepper balls, which is very fun.
Yeah.
Anyway, yeah, we will talk more about that.
I don't hate it.
Yeah.
No, I'm fine with just watching from the sidelines.
Anyway, so in late 2017, ProPublica interviewed a quote leader of Ram.
So this is probably either Ben Daly or Robert Rondo, but it doesn't identify who.
And here's what the article says on the actual origin of the group.
Quote, Ram, the leader said, came together organically.
It started when he encountered a few other guys with similar political beliefs, including two active duty U.S. Marines while exercising at different gyms in Southern California.
They all liked Trump, but didn't think his agenda went far enough.
The men began hanging out.
Their numbers grew.
Many came from rough backgrounds.
They'd been strung out on drugs or spent time behind bars and currently labored at tough blue-collar jobs.
Soon, they had a name and a mission.
They would physically take on the foes of the far right.
So that's how their kind of origin is described in that article based on the interview they did.
Just some dudes hanging out in gyms talking about politics and realizing that they're all kind of Nazis, which they were.
There's a lot of actually ties.
There's lots of ties to the actual Hammerskins, which we'll talk more about later, which again are like one of the first big Nazi skinhead gangs.
Yeah, and we're talking like 90s, early 2000s.
Actually, the first named U.S. Antifa group, Rose City Antifa, formed to oppose a Hammerskin rally in I think 2006 in Portland.
Yeah, the Hammerskins will come back here very soon.
Ram's combination of influences makes it a pretty unique group inside the states and one I think that young men can be especially susceptible to under the right conditions.
In their prime, Ram just utilized the same kind of meme-centric social media outreach common among the alt-right, the joke-filled posts about white identity, victimhood, and heritage, while also being very lifestyle-focused, emphasizing the importance of physical fitness, masculine athleticism, and street combat training, drawing from skinheads, in particular the Hammerskin Nation, who also did combat training.
And actually, they did combat training alongside Ram.
And Ram and Hammerskins shared a few members.
I know one thing Wondo talks about when he's talking about advice for how to start groups and why he started this group is like he was upset that the alt-right fell into a few kind of factions and feel like he felt like his faction wasn't really represented.
There was like the whole like, there was the whole like, you know, the Richard Spencer kind of smart intellectual people in suits doing debates type thing.
And there was like the very meme-y right, and then there was the very kind of LARPy right where, you know, dress up in like tactical gear and go stand in front of a building.
And Rondo thought all these were stupid.
He's like, he's like, kids don't usually dress up in suits and do debates.
That's not really what a lot of young kids do, but they do watch UFC.
So this is what his kind of big thing was.
It was like, if I can get the kids that watch UFC, if I can get the young teens that do that, I think that's going to be more of a breeding ground than like the Richard Spencer dressing up in suits, trying to look all like cool.
I mean, fucking Joe Rogan proves them right in that.
That's not a dumb tactic.
No, it's not, which is why I want to talk about this.
And we need to like watch out for this in the next few years because he is right about that.
I mean, I would dress up in suits and do debates, but I'm me.
Yeah, you wear a bow tie.
Yeah.
So I'm a little different there.
A momentary bow tie.
Yeah, my, yeah.
That's, that's, that's where it comes from.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um.
Anyway, um, let's see.
Oh, yeah.
Um, here in in a, uh, in a, in a YouTube video, which we'll talk more about his, uh, Rondo's YouTube videos later, but um, here's here, uh, this is, uh, this is a quote from one of his YouTube videos.
I can't remember what chapter it is in Mein Kampf, but the one that he says that we need more people to take a boxing than we need intellectuals.
Yeah.
I mean, and kind of perfectly embodying that by saying, I don't remember where in Mein Kampf it was.
But somewhere, somewhere there, there's a quote.
Apparently, when Rondo was in jail, he was like allowed a copy of Mein Kampf.
Hmm, that seems like a bad idea.
Not a good, not a good idea.
But people can't have dice to play Dungeons and Dragons.
That's satanic, Robert.
They might use it to gamble.
Oh, and that, yeah.
So one key element that separates Ram from skinheads is their aesthetic.
Instead of shaved heads, bomber jackets, and boots, they have, you know, tapered, fashion haircuts that became common among 2017, half-skull masks popularized by Adam Waffen, and as California Anti-Racist Action perfectly puts it, quote, Richard Spencer in activewear kind of look, which does really kind of describe what these guys look like.
I just hate that that's a sentence somebody wrote.
Yeah, and it's frustrating how accurate it is.
Yeah.
The activewear thing will be circling back to multiple times as seemingly another big influence for the group is the Russian white supremacist mixed martial arts clothing company called White Rex, which we'll talk about a few more times later on the note of one other note on the lifestyle brand element from the anti-racist action article.
Quote, the group's propaganda also emphasizes an anti-drug or straight-edge message, which is again a common theme among certain segments of the neo-Nazis who view substances, excluding alcohol, apparently, as part of the global Jewish conspiracy to weaken the white race.
Despite this, many members use a wide range of substances and have histories of being arrested for like drunken fighting and possession in the past.
Just a ton of them, yeah.
A Disturbing Pattern of Crime00:05:04
Yeah.
One Ram member, Tyler Lobb, has a long history of arrests for driving under the influence, drunken fighting, carrying a switchblade and robbery.
And he also, he actually managed to get himself shot during a drunken fight in like 2014.
See, these are the kind of people who need to hear the gospel of my favorite drink, the actual, the lifestyle beverage that I push for behind the bastards, a 2020 highball, which I'm now rolling over into a 2021 highball, which my New Year's recipe for this is you get a pint glass, you fill that pint glass up 80% of the way with 409.
Robert, no, no, just a dash of medical bleach.
And you got to make sure it's medical bleach.
Steal it from a hospital.
Break into a hospital with a gun, steal some medical bleach, and a dollop of that on top of the 409, and then just a scooter of lemon.
Don't do any of that.
I think it'll cure the Nazi problem.
It'll deal.
Yeah, exactly.
If we can get the Nazis drinking 2021 highballs, we'll have less of a problem with them.
Robert.
Because if it's healthy.
Can we omit the part where people have to go guns blazing into a hospital?
No.
No, you don't have to go guns either.
That's the most American thing you can do, Sophie.
If you carry out an armed robbery on a hospital, they'll probably let you take the bleach.
Okay, this is not a Batman movie.
This is Behind the Bastards, and it's time for an ad break.
Don't do any of that shit.
God bless you.
Speaking of crime, I'd like to point out the services that support this podcast.
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 that, 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.
They said, oh, hell no.
I vowed I will be his last target.
He's gonna get what he deserves.
Listen to the girlfriends.
Trust me, babe.
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Ago Modern.
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 and I know it's a place to 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.
In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckard found himself at the center of a paternity scandal.
The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story.
This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth.
You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
I doctored the test once.
It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case.
I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for.
Sunlight's the greatest disinfectant.
They would uncover a disturbing pattern.
Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
Greg Gillespie and Michael Marancini.
My mind was blown.
I'm Stephanie Young.
This is Love Trap.
Laura, Scottsdale Police.
As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at Americopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges.
This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona.
Listen to Love Trapped Podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
10-10 shots fired.
City Hall building.
A silver .40 caliber handgun was recovered at the scene.
From iHeart Podcasts and Best Case Studios, this is Rorschach, murder at City Hall.
How could this have happened in City Hall?
Attacks at City Hall00:15:26
Somebody tell me that.
Jeffrey Hood did.
July 2003.
Councilman James E. Davis arrives at New York City Hall with a guest.
Both men are carrying concealed weapons.
And in less than 30 minutes, both of them will be dead.
Everybody in the chamber's ducks.
A shocking public murder.
I scream, get down, get down.
Those are shots.
Those are shots.
Get down.
A charismatic politician.
You know, he just bent the rules all the time.
I still have a weapon.
And I could shoot you.
And an outsider with a secret.
He alleged he was a victim of flat down.
That may or may not have been political.
That may have been about sex.
Listening to Rorschach, Murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
All right, we're back.
Please continue, Garrison.
Yay!
No drugs for these Nazis.
So they say...
Except for drinking and driving.
Except for a lot of alcohol.
But I mean, like, Rondo does truly believe in the straight edge thing.
Like, in terms of, like, drugs and stuff.
They really are anti-drug.
So was Hitler, except for all the methamphetamine.
Yeah, and also, like, Tyler Lobb, the guy that got into a, who got shot during a drunken fight, was like, was in like a Xanax club when that happened.
So, like, come on.
Like, come on, come on, buddy.
Like, you.
Hey, man, medicinal drugs don't count, bro.
Yeah.
But, like, they actually are serious about the whole strange thing in terms of like, in terms of propaganda, at least.
Yeah, yeah.
And it's definitely like, that's a pretty common stream among Nazis.
Like, you have to keep yourself pure and healthy for the race.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Speaking of propaganda, Ram themselves relied heavily on social media propaganda for recruiting.
They would often produce videos of them doing combat training or working out.
Per the SPLC, Southern Poverty Law Center, their promotional media is, quote, targeted towards men who find the idea of a real-world fight club appealing.
White supremacy supplies the justification for violence, and ultimately this group has been about street fighting.
Which I don't fully agree with the last part there.
I spent way, way too much time reading about Ram and watching their videos this past like two weeks.
And they absolutely care about white supremacy, maybe above all else.
But I can see truth, elements of truth in this sentiment.
And we'll come back to this topic later when we talk about Ram's co-founder, Robert Rundomore, because I think there is definitely a little bit of that violence above everything in him.
But I mean, it is very, you know, there is a lot of white supremacy.
It's not just finding a justification for violence.
It is also they just really care about white supremacy.
Back to social media propaganda.
From the Ram account, they would post videos, pictures, and memes boasting over the people they beat up, usually showcasing footage or photos of the assaults.
And of course, this would all kind of...
This wasn't a great idea.
I mean, it was good for recruiting, but this would absolutely contribute to their downfall.
Because, you know, they're just bragging about all the crimes they're doing in very explicit detail.
So the ironic thing is that they stress that people, quote, get offline and get active and to quit non-stop meme despite their incriminating non-stop meme about the people that they've beat up and their non-stop producing of propaganda videos, which I mean, I get, yeah, I know you need to recruit and stuff, but when you have such a, such a, they have such a, such a focus on like the getting offline type of thing, despite their heavily, mostly online presence for recruiting.
Another gab post from January 2018 says a new year and a new direction for the alt-right.
Time to leave behind the online memes and countless hour shitposting and act like we really do want a world that exists beyond discords and etchy websites.
Train, organize, get active, repeat.
So, I mean, I get it, right?
They want to recruit new members and to get away from the alt-rights kind of keyboard warrior, gamergate kind of history.
They're not the ones who like being associated with fucking Pepe's and shit.
No, they find it very annoying.
And they find a lot of people spend too much time doing that instead of beating up children in the streets or killing Jewish people or whatever.
So this type of propaganda is the easiest way to encourage and influence people to take real world action.
But I still appreciate the irony and the complete lack of security culture that they have in terms of non-stop posting about people they've beat up.
Like they would constantly make memes about the people that they've like beat up in the streets.
Like non-stop.
It's amazing.
And it's, I mean, part of that is like it's silly that they did that, but it's not as unwise as I guess it might seem because again, the cops never went after those people for a long time.
A long time.
I mean, the cops never did.
They got dealt with with the FBI later, but we'll talk about why.
But yeah, there's a reason in general why the right is so bad at security culture, and it's because the cops tend to like them.
Yep.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So in the vein of like moving beyond online posting and into real world action, it's time to discuss what Ram actually did at rallies and who these people are.
So Ram's public debut was in March 2017 at a MAGA rally in Huntington Beach, California.
At this point, there were probably about a dozen people and they were still calling themselves the DIY division.
They held a massive banner that read, Defend America.
Holding above it, there was a sign that read Dag Goyam No, which is variants of that phrase or a popular anti-anti-Semitic phrase among the right.
I'm not going to explain what it means, but believe you me, it's very anti-Semitic.
So at the Huntington Beach rally, Ram members were the first ones to start fights with anti-fascists that soon turned into a very messy brawl.
Fights initially started when a Ram member later identified as Tyler Lobb, the same guy who got into a drunken street fight and got shot at a Xanax club.
Same guy.
He started stuff by attacking a POC journalist and punched them repeatedly in the face.
Then Ram co-founder Robert Rondo, who also leads all their fight training, he is predominantly seen in pictures unmasked and in videos pummeling a black block protester on the ground with his fists and elbows.
Footage of the attack becomes a meme for the alt-right and is used heavily in recruitment propaganda.
At this time, we have terrible nicknames being given to a whole bunch of right-wing kind of street people.
So he got nicknamed based elbow man, which is very stupid.
But, you know, again, this is used for meming and propaganda and recruiting.
Despite clear evidence, yeah, it's not fun.
I mean, we're going to have to use a nickname alongside such luminaries as Based Stickman.
Don't worry, Robert.
We're talking about the same thing.
We're talking about Based Stickman.
Oh, good.
Oh, good.
I love Kyle Chapman.
He's coming up.
Don't worry.
He ties into Ram too.
Everyone does.
Even Joey Gibson ties into Ram at some point.
It's great that the names, the nicknames of all of these chuds who are only noteworthy for hitting people in the face and not getting arrested will be stuck in my head until the end of my days.
I don't know the name of, I don't know, like the sniper who tried to kill me.
It's very, very fun.
I love America.
Despite clear evidence of the assault, police did not arrest Rondo, nor would he ever face city or state charges.
No, why would he?
Yeah.
Alternatively, police were quick to arrest three anti-fascists in Huntington Beach who defended themselves from defended themselves, PLC journalists and others from Ram's attacks.
The three anti-fascists were charged with, quote, felony illegal use of pepper spray.
Yeah, that'll really fuck you up, that pepper spray.
They charged with a felony for using pepper spray for defending themselves against Nazis.
Thankfully, yeah, thankfully, three months later, the DA dropped the charges because they were stupid.
Yeah, because it was lunacy.
Yeah, but the police decided to arrest three anti-fascists that day and let all the Nazis go and charge them.
You fuck their lives up with, I mean, like, it's fucked up forever if it gets dropped, but it fucks you up while those charges are on you.
Yeah, I mean, I just applied for citizenship.
And if I was ever charged with something and it was dropped, I would have to put that on my application.
I was charged with felony right at this one point, two years later dropped, but I still have to say that.
You have to put that in a lot of stuff.
It's terrible.
That's why I'm glad you're much faster than the cops.
And I'm glad that I got my stuff papers all submitted now, which is which is good.
Anyway, felony, illegal use of pepper spray, which is maybe one of the funniest felonies that I've ever heard.
I've lost count of the number of people who have pepper sprayed me at rallies.
So many.
Like August 22nd alone.
There's so much mace in the air.
Yeah.
Also, I got maced by DHS like four nights ago.
They had giant, they had mace cannons.
Yeah, I saw those.
The super soakers.
Yeah, they had mace super soakers.
I would constitute that a felony, illegal use of pepper spray, but whatever.
Anyway.
See, it's been months since I've been maced by DHS.
Now you've got me jealous.
That was great.
Actually, the tear gas was a little pleasant.
It was a little nostalgic.
Because it was only a little bit.
And it was almost fun.
Just a whiff.
Just a whiff.
So let's flash forward to April 15th.
It's like a month after this mega rally in Huntington Beach.
But April 15th, Berkeley, California.
This is when Ram first came under the eyes of anti-fascist researchers.
This was the second big Berkeley rally with upwards of a thousand people.
This is when Ram starts making connections with other neo-Nazi and alt-right groups.
Ram themselves attended the rally with the neo-Nazi, quote, race realist group, Identity Europa.
And they actually carpooled with its leader, a leader who is a former Marine, Nathan Domingo, which side note here, I always thought Domingo was like in his 40s or 50s because he looks very old, but he's like 34.
It's shocking.
I was so confused.
It's all the cocaine, which they don't talk about because they're a little too smart to usually talk about it.
But all of these guys are doing a fuckload of blow, especially the proud boys.
Like, it ages these motherfuckers.
It's amazing.
He was born in 1986, which he looks 50 years old.
Yeah, he's two years older than me.
Shocking.
I was very surprised.
Anyway, Ram carpooled with this asshole, who's also a convicted felon for doing a racist armed robbery of a Middle Eastern cab driver, and he's also a former Marine.
Domingo got national attention on April 15th after footage went viral of him sucker punching a 95-pound woman.
This not only turns Domingo into an alt-right meme slash hero, it gave Identity Europa a lot of free press and led to a harassment campaign against the victim.
Mother Jones reports, quote, after the punching video went viral, the alt-right unleashed a doxing campaign against the victim and her family, publishing their home address, phone numbers, home address, and phone numbers online.
She received rape threats and other abusive messages, and images of pornography work that she'd done were turned into memes and posted on her grandmother's Facebook page.
So that's not great that they assaulted someone and then harassed them online for a long time afterwards.
Yeah, but in said viral footage, right behind Domingo, you can see a young man in a gray shirt, half skull mask, shaved sides, and black goggles with orange lenses.
This is Robert Bowman, a Ram member wearing what would become the Ram uniform, gray activewear, skull mask, goggles, and that Richard Spencer haircut.
Members would also usually have their hands taped up MMA style.
Earlier that day, Ram co-founder Robert Rundo attacked anti-fascist demonstrators after they insulted him about skipping leg days at the gym.
Okay, well, he's right on that.
You never insult a man's quads.
So some teenagers insulted him about his leg, about him not doing leg days, and then also apparently they insulted him for having a presumably small penis.
Triggered by the jokes, Rondo crossed over police barricades and started attacking random people.
I bet he suffered serious legal consequences for breaking across a police barricade to assault people.
Rondo was briefly arrested and then let go the same day, released without charges.
Oh, cool.
Why would you charge him with anything?
Yeah.
No, but like he went over a police barricade to beat up teenagers after they insulted his legs.
I don't know how to respond to this without being petty.
So that's.
I love how often police have like shoved and threatened us with arrest for standing in a street instead of a sidewalk when the street was closed to traffic.
But he gets to charge across a police barricade and punch people.
It's fucking rules.
I love America.
The anti-racist action article points out, quote, Rondo's actions clearly show a desire to not only escalate the situation to violence, but also a desire to physically provoke and attack anti-fascists at all costs.
Nathan Domingo of Identity Europo was also never arrested or charged over his assaulting of a very small woman, despite bragging about it on like mainstream news outlets.
Like he bragged about his assault and nothing ever happened to him because, again, why?
Later that day, other Ram members, including Tim Gillen, Robert Bowman, Spencer Curry, and co-founder Benjamin Daly, can be seen in their Ram uniform assaulting various anti-fascists and then bragging about it on social media while posting pictures of the attacks.
What made Ram different in these street brawls was their ability to attack as a unit because they all trained together on a weekly basis.
Like they actually, you know, like they actually did physical combat training together.
So like they attacked not as just individuals, but they attacked as a group.
They're described by ProPublica as quote, fighting as a pack.
Whilst attacking someone, Ram member Robert Bowman got pepper sprayed in the face with his goggles down.
And then he was ushered away.
He was ushered to safety by Joey Gibson of Patriot Prayer.
He's a fun little tie-in for people in the Pacific Northwest.
Yeah, so Joey Gibson saved one of the Ram people after getting pepper sprayed.
Even though he had goggles, they just weren't on, I guess.
I don't know.
But yeah, this whole fighting as a pack thing, which made them a little bit more formidable in combat versus like the Proud Boys, which generally do not attack as a group and they mainly attack as individuals.
So that's what made them a little bit more effective in combat.
Bridging Street Fighting and Online Recruitment00:08:26
We still have a few more Nazi crossovers to get to here.
At the Berkeley rally, Ram also teamed up with white nationalist videographer and live streamer Vincent James Fox.
Vincent would stream the rallies via YouTube and his website.
Vincent previously was friendly with Ram at the Huntington Beach rally.
He's the one that dubbed Rondo as base doubl man.
Great.
Vincent James would not only happily cover these far-right attacks, he would also like incite them.
He can be heard yelling, get the fucking cock, as five Ram members jump a black black protester and begin beating on them.
So basically, the guy with the video camera would be behind Ram people.
He'll point out different people to attack.
And then Ram would go attack that person and then they would go back and attack someone else.
After rallies, Vincent would make propaganda videos for Ram and he hands them all of his footage for Ram to make their own videos and memes and stuff.
So like we had, they had, they had like this kind of like relationship circle here for, like they would protect him at a rally and he would give them footage to do propaganda stuff with.
Um awesome yeah not not not not, great again.
None of these people really got in trouble for this with the city police or state police at all and they would only get in trouble like many years later after, like dozens of articles are posted about them.
You know beating up random people, and even still their charges are minuscule compared to what anti-fascists get.
The thing that is should be clear to everyone about the Nazis is that, like this current swarm of Nazis that are about to descend on D will have descended on Dc for the third time by the time this, this episode airs, is that like if one of two things had happened, either one, the first time they beat up a bunch of people, several of them had received serious felony charges and had been prosecuted or if the first time they'd come out to beat up a bunch of people, they had been surrounded by a swarm of counter demonstrators and pummeled um,
they would not have kept coming out and none of this would still be a problem.
It would have looked like shit for them and they wouldn't have kept going out into the street because it wouldn't have been there, like the fact that they were not um, the fact that they were able to continue doing this and have positive experiences getting to beat people up, getting it on video, getting their fun nicknames, getting shit go viral and they didn't suffer consequences from law enforcement.
And they weren't there, just weren't enough people at a lot of these rallies to like, really beat them into the fucking ground or, if there were, the cops stopped them from doing it, like that's why they're still here, that's why this is still a problem, very frustrating.
Yeah, still still a problem.
Um it's, it's going to be for for at least a while still.
Um, eagle-eyed anti-fascists noticed RAM co-founder Ben Daly doing a particular salute at the Berkeley rally, um, a closed fist Roman salute that moves in it, that moves into an x with both arms and both fists clenched, which is Hammersky history nerd.
Yeah um sure, so.
I know i've mentioned Hammerskins a few times already and uh, we've I guess we've we've already kind of um uh, talked about them a little bit, but they're they're uh, they're considered to be the largest or most widespread Nazi skinhood organization.
Um, they have numerous ties to brutal white supremacists, assaults, beatings and murders.
Um, in 2012, of a quote fully patched hammerskin member um an army veteran if you see a pattern here I keep mentioning all a lot of these people are in the Marines or in the ARMY, because this is a pattern here um, but fully patched hammerskin member and an army veteran, Wade Michael Page, massacred six people inside a sick temple.
Uh, inside a Sikh temple in Wisconsin.
Um in in a yeah, so he, uh what this is?
Yeah 2012, six people died in this attack.
There's been about probably like a.
There's been like around like a dozen other hammerskin murders um in the past few decades across uh the globe.
Um uh, in 2017 uh, Bendaly and RAM started actively recruiting hammerskin members um uh, Skylar Segberg whatever stupid name.
Um, Matthew Brands Letter also dumb name and Spencer Curry anyway, there's three three three, three noted hammerskins that anti-fascists have, like repeatedly identified joined RAM in 2017, with Skylar and Spencer being part of a Hammerskin band.
Because again, these are the type of Nazis that have like quote quote, quote unquote, punk bands, which, you know, any punk will say is actually, you know, it's not punk, it's anti-punk.
Yeah, you kind of can't be punk and also in favor of the state using massive force to institute genocide.
That's not super punk.
Not really punk.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But yeah, so like these people were in like, you know, skinhead bands and a Matt Bronzetter or whatever his stupid name is and an accomplice beat beat a Jewish man unconscious and robbed him in Orange County Park back in 2011, which was like a noted like hammer skin attack.
So like same guy now active in Ram and all these guys are like in their 20s now, right?
So like these, this is, they're not like old guys.
They're like, they were doing this as teens and they're doing, you know, and they were doing stuff like Ram in their 20s.
They're still, they're still in their 20s.
Brandstetter or whatever his name is, was convicted of aggravated assault with a hate crime enhancement and sent to prison for 20 months for beating this Jewish man unconscious.
Again, back in like 2011.
The anti-racist action article notes, quote, many of these individuals, such as Skyler, also connected with neo-Nazi members of groups such as the Golden State Skinheads, who stabbed six anti-fascists and anti-racist protesters in Sacramento in June of like 2016 under the banner of the Traditional Workers' Party, or traditionalist Workers' Party.
So it's clear that, yeah, it's clear that the DIY division, as it's known back then, is a political collective working hard to bridge the gap between the more internet-based alt-right brand of white nationalism, which is targeted to appeal to a younger, more generally educated upper-class white man, and the more traditional boots in the ground and street violence tactics characterized by neo-Nazi skinhead politics.
So again, they're trying to kind of bridge this gap between kind of getting into the street and doing fighting while also still recruiting young people online, which is why I am particularly concerned with what this, you know, what a similar organization could do in the next few years.
So after this big rally in Berkeley, Ram also connected with far-right figure Kyle Chapman, who, I don't know, I don't know if he deserves to sell ambassadors episode because he is just incredibly stupid.
But this is.
Yeah, no, he just, like, he punches people a lot.
Yeah, this is basically.
He says a bunch of fashion stuff.
He was part of the Proud Boys for a little bit.
He started the Fraternal Order of the Alt Knights, which again, super nerd.
Like, like, Ram actually hates all these people.
Like, like, Runder will talk about this.
Like, he hates nerds, right?
So it's very fun to watch his videos because, like, he'll be insulting all these idiots who are like LARPing.
It's very funny.
But yeah, Kyle did this Fraternal Order of the Alt Knights.
He started Resist Marxism, which turned into Super Happy Fun America, which did that Boston Straight Pride parade.
All the same guy who basically was behind all these things.
He's very, very funny.
Also, very dangerous.
And also, I think more recently, Proud Boy stuff, but that's unknown at the moment.
But yeah, Kyle Chapman, all this stuff.
He got connected with Ram after the Berkeley rally.
In the next few months, Ram also connected with various other people affiliated with the Proud Boys, including Juan Cavadide, aka Johnny Benitz, and quote, Luke-based Skywalker Dennis, which I find offensive.
Yes.
As a Luke Skywalker fan, I don't appreciate that.
But these are all Proud Boys noted for beating up people on the streets during the same time.
So they all got acquainted.
In the spring and summer of 2017, Ram and the Proud Boys would put on little monthly get-togethers on different California beaches.
One of these meetups was named America First, Remembering the Victims of Illegals and Refugees.
Like they would just do like basically monthly beach parties with deserve the beach first of all like they all live at the beach like Robert Rondo had like a beachside house.
I mean, and there's don't appreciate that there's a conversation to be said about some of the intersections of fascism and surfer culture.
Like it is.
It is a thing that's been written about.
Beach Meetups in California00:05:32
Yeah, that does that.
Math does add up, but I don't appreciate it.
Very frustrating, very frustrating, which is great, because when we had a not super Nazi but like a noted alt-right figure from Portland moved to a beach town, like last year, and then anti-fascists got her fired from her job at the Beachway yeah and safe, she was like working at the Safeway bakery and she got fired uh, she got.
She got fired because she took a leave of absence.
Uh, because they were giving any worker who was scared of the coronavirus a leaf of absence.
And she took a leave of absence claiming she was scared of the virus and then immediately organized an anti-mask rally.
Yeah um, in the same.
Yeah it's, it's great, it's good.
Yeah, you know what else is great and good and hopefully helps keep us employed, Robert Uh 2021, highball.
No, shot a 409 in hospital bleach with a sprig of lemon.
Jesus christ yeah uh, now you want to drink it real fast.
You can get a second one in you as quick as possible.
It's the doubling up.
That really makes it work.
I'll take, i'll take some notes, Garrison notes.
Oh yeah Garrison you're, you're a growing man.
You know you need a 409 cocktails Garrison, you do not need that.
You're potentially done my coffee and that means it's time to listen to these maybe coffee ads from.
Maybe AH, oh yeah, I hope we get another Black Rifle coffee ads.
I swear to god, if we get a nice Nether Black Rifle coffee ad, I will jump.
The only coffee company that's been repeatedly forced to disavow Kyle Ritten House because he likes their product and has also been attacked by its primary customers for disavowing Kyle Rittenhouse because they made their brand fascism coffee.
Are you tired of masturbating with a cup of normal coffee while watching watching Hitler speeches?
In that case, buy black rifle coffee, the only coffee that makes sense, to masturbate to Hitler too.
Thank you, Black Rifle.
I I resign.
Here we go.
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 gonna get what he deserves.
Listen to the girlfriends, trust me, babe.
On the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Ago Modern.
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, and 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.
Yeah.
Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckard found himself at the center of a paternity scandal.
The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story.
This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth.
You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
I doctored the test once.
It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case.
I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for.
Sunlight's the greatest disinfectant.
They would uncover a disturbing pattern.
Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
Greg Gillespie and Michael Marancini.
My mind was blown.
I'm Stephanie Young.
This is Love Trap.
Laura, Scottsdale Police.
As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news at Americopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges.
This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona.
Listen to the Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
10-10 shots fired.
City Hall building.
A silver .40 caliber handgun was recovered at the scene.
From iHeart Podcasts and Best Case Studios, this is Rorschach, murder at City Hall.
How could this have happened in City Hall?
Book Burnings and Black Sun Flags00:05:04
Somebody tell me that.
Jeffrey Hood did.
July 2003, Councilman James E. Davis arrives at New York City Hall with a guest.
Both men are carrying concealed weapons.
And in less than 30 minutes, both of them will be dead.
Everybody in the chamber's ducks.
A shocking public murder.
I scream, get down, get down.
Those are shots.
Those are shots.
Get down.
A charismatic politician.
You know, he just bent the rules all the time, man.
I still have a weapon.
And I could shoot you.
And an outsider with a secret.
He alleged he was a victim of flat down.
That may or may not have been political.
That may have been about sex.
Listen to Rorschach, murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app.
Apple Podcasts are wherever you get your podcasts.
Well, that was a great coffee.
Thanks, Robert, for sending me my Christmas coffee this year.
Anyway, we're back from the ad break and I did not get Black Rifle coffee because it probably seems terrible.
No.
We drink Deathwish coffee in this house.
Yeah.
People who have not given us money, but who I quite like.
You know what I miss, Robert, is going to the beach to look at the ocean, which the Nazis got to do a lot with the Proud Boys.
Which is weird because, you know, Ram was very openly Nazi at this point.
And Gavin McGinnis was still trying to convince people that his gang wasn't racist or fascist at this point.
And, you know, McGinnis would insist, neo-Nazis don't exist anymore, which is a bit, it's a bit to heart to parse when Ram is doing monthly beach hangouts with the Proud Boys.
So real interesting thing there.
Yeah.
But an observation that the anti-race section article makes is: quote, what's clear is that both these groups need each other.
The Proud Boys need the numbers and muscle of the neo-Nazis, where the neo-Nazis need the cover of the pro-Trump groups.
I think it's a really good observation at this time in, you know, for 2017, for how this was kind of a symbiotic relationship that they kind of both needed to survive at the time.
Speaking of Nazis at the beach, back in Huntington Beach in May of 2017, RAM members gathered around a beach fire.
At a, at a, at a, at a public beach next to the ocean, with a Swastika sun, and ran an iron cross and Celtic runes were scribbled onto the fire pits.
They don't just.
Huntington beach is so nice, this is so.
And uh, they were also flying an American, a Confederate, an iron cross and a black sun flag.
Oh wow really, get in the trifecta, not trifecta, that's four, that's four, that's a quad comparison.
I can't count.
Yeah Robert anyway American Confederate, iron cross and black sun.
We're all.
We're all uh, flying.
So what, what do um?
So unmasked ram members are seeing.
Uh, Tim Gellen and Ben Daly are all seen in pictures.
Um, so what do you think these free speech crusaders are doing near a big beach fire in the middle of the day?
What, what do you?
What do you?
What do you?
What do you think they're?
They're up to, I don't know, maybe burning crosses.
They're doing a book burning close.
Oh, a book burning.
Oh good okay, what book do you?
I, because I have the script haha, I am your overlord.
What, uh?
What book do you think that what?
What do you think that what?
What do you think they're burning?
Oh geez, what book would they burn?
Um, this is a game.
Oh man, there's like so many potentials, there's like there's like five right answers.
So yeah yeah oh okay uh um, i'm I don't know, I really I really don't know.
There's one guess, too many possibilities, one guess uh, catcher in their eye.
No they, they probably like that book actually.
Robert Robert Robert more think, more fucked.
What's like, what's like something that like is really fucked.
What's something that 20 year old Neo-nazis are gonna burn at the beach?
Oh, probably like the Tora.
They got a copy of the Tora and then I mean maybe, but anyway um, among the books being tossed in the fire were um, Anne Franks, a diary of a young girl, oh yeah, that makes sense.
The the novelization of Schindler's List yep, so the novelization of Schindler?
Okay, all right, that's creative.
Um, the Jewish uh, the Jewish Book Of Why?
Um, Cultural Pluralism um, Traffic and Hitler's Hell.
And also, they burned the 9-11 commission report.
But well, now that makes sense because look, you don't have to be a Nazi to know that jet fuel can't melt steel beams.
Oh, but yeah um, they burned at least 20 other books though, that they deemed culturally uh, Marxist or Jewish enough to be burned.
Um so yeah, they had themselves in a a little, a little book burning in may on the beach flying a black sun flag, back when no one knew what a black sun flag was like.
Legal Battles Over Free Speech00:15:34
A still still a lot of people don't.
Um yeah, but yeah, that's what they were doing.
Shooter put on his body armor.
Yeah I, I mean i'll I'll mention this later, but Robert Rondo eventually gets a Black Sun elbow tattoo.
Bad.
Okay.
Cool guy.
Cool.
Yeah.
Anyway, quick, quick rundown of some of Ram's activities pre-August 2017.
Well, Los Angeles, California, May 1st, Ram members attended the May Day actions hoping to get into fights with left-wing activists.
San Bernardino, California, June 2017, RAM members participated in a quote anti-Sharia law protest protesting a bill that would make quote protesting in support of a bill that would make quote practicing Sharia law illegal.
Just very, very dumb.
That's not how laws work.
They held signs that read, Rape UGEs, stay away, not welcome.
And another sign that was like, defend America, Islamists out.
That depicted a lance wielding crusaders on horseback, chasing away fleeing Muslims.
So that's in June.
Great.
Also, not super historically accurate because let's just say Crusader cavalry didn't have shit on Saladin.
I don't think these people really care about history that much.
About what happened during the actual Crusades?
Yeah, no, not really.
Torrance, California, July 2017, REM members hung a quote, secure borders, secure future banner over the 110 highway or freeway.
I don't know how to say local, local.
I know there's like certain ways to say the numbers.
It's the 110 for 110.
110.
Oh, you got it.
Okay, local.
You were cool and hip, dude.
I know all the California highways now, like the I-5.
Oh, no.
Canadians aren't allowed further south than Reading.
And then finally, also in July 2017, in Santa Monica, RAM members attempted to disrupt a committee for racial justice meeting.
Also, at the time, a lot of RAM members were working at a tree trimming business that was run by Benjamin Daly.
So they were all working at their gangsters.
The only job they could get.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's fun looking.
I mean, their business is currently shut down because Benjamin Daly is currently in prison for things he will do later.
But it's fun going to, but his Yelp page is still up.
So you can read reviews of people saying, hey, you're a fucking Nazi.
But he's like, oh, how rude.
Yeah, it's real stupid.
Real dumb.
So anyway, this leads up to August 2017 and the Unite the Right rally.
At this point, Ram claimed to have over 50 members, although it was way more likely they had around 10 to 15 guys and were just lying about their numbers to make them seem bigger than what they actually were.
But due to their social media presence, they had gained a national reputation as like an intense white supremacist street fighter group.
Tim Gallen and Ben Daly are front and center in one of the most widely circulated photos of the Tiki Torch rally.
They're like right there.
You can see their little faces because they both have very unique heads.
So yeah, they're front and center on August 11th, the night before the big day on August 12th.
Both men, Gillen and Daly, had gun charges from 2014, actually.
And Gillen had been jailed for illegal possession of an unsterilized handgun.
And Daly was arrested and convicted of illegally carrying a concealed snub-nosed 357 Magnum revolver.
So both these guys here apparently had gun charges.
So I don't think they were carrying at this time, but a lot of people made that note.
So I'm like, okay, I guess I'll put it in two.
Sure.
Yeah.
And a lot of people, a lot of these guys who can't legally carry or own guns still do, because again, the police very rarely punish them for breaking the law.
Yeah.
So these guys were chanting, you know, you will not replace us.
Jews will not replace us, chance, alongside fellow RAM member Cole White, unfortunate name for a Nazi, and hundreds of other young men.
So there was at least three or four people from Ram there that night chanting.
The Ram members in Charlottesville participated in attacking the anti-racist, anti-fascist protesters at the University of Virginia campus when the hundreds of Nazis surrounded the few dozen people holding an anti-racist banner.
So Ram was a part of the attack on the people in front of the statue that night.
The next day, August 12th, at the main Unite the Right event, at least four RAM members were present and can be seen attacking anti-fascist counter-protesters starting very early on in the day.
When I was, I mean, I was looking through old footage for this for writing, and I was able to actually like, I've been reading enough about these guys and watching enough other videos that I was like able to like pick out people just like just with my own eyes without having to pause or anything.
I could actually like track certain people throughout the crowd because they were very active in beating up a lot of people on August 12th.
Ben Daly, Tim Gellen, Cole White, and Michael Mizilis.
All these guys were attacking people this day.
The latter, which is also documented attacking people back in Berkeley.
That's Michael Mizilis, who is also a PhD student at the UCLA and possessed government security clearance for work on sensitive research at defense contractor Northrop Grunman.
So that's good.
No, it's not.
I don't like that.
It's not ideal.
Well, at least it's not our dear friends over at Raytheon.
That would really break my heart.
But Raytheon is still peer and one of the best LGBT employers in the nation.
Because at Raytheon, we don't care what you believe or who you love.
We just care that you're willing to make a missile guidance chip that we can use to detonate a school bus in Yemen filled with 33 children.
That's all that matters to Raytheon.
And I think that's beautiful.
I think it's beautiful, Garrison.
Maybe you can give in a good word for Michael Mizilis.
No, no.
They won't hire Nazis at Raytheon.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
So eventually he was fired from Northrop Gunron.
What?
Following reporting of him, you know, being a Nazi.
But yeah, kind of concerning he had government security clearance to work on like sensitive research.
So that's not ideal.
I don't like it, guys.
I don't, I don't.
So after Unite the Right and the murder of Heather Heyer, scrutiny was finally put on these new alt-right groups.
Ram leader interviewed by ProPublica stated that after August, the group is, quote, trying to stay away from rallies because, you know, they killed somebody and beat up, you know, dozens of other people.
So for over a year after Unite the Right, the only legal trouble, the only legal trouble Ram had gotten into was when Rob Rundo was briefly detained in Berkeley.
But so far they had faced no actual consequences for their assaults, despite bragging about them all over social media.
Well, that slowly started to change a little bit.
Between October 17, October 2017 and August 2018, ProPublica and PBS Frontline had began reporting on Ram and their involvement in the violent activities and violent attacks.
A lot of the research done on Ram was first actually done and made public by North California Anti-Racist Action And their really good article that they put out on Ram from July 2017, which I've already quoted from a lot.
And unfortunately, I mean, ProPublica and Frontline did a good job getting this reporting out into the mainstream, but unfortunately, most of their work is actually heavily plagiarized.
Between, it's plagiarized mostly from, all the Ram stuff is plagiarized mostly from the anti-racist action article.
And they also did stuff on Adam Offen, which they plagiarized a lot of work from Jake Hanohan on.
And I know like Frontline won like Emmys for this work and stuff.
I think they were Pulitzer.
Yeah, they wanted Pulitzer.
Jake and his partner were initially left off of the Pulitzer.
Yeah, it's very frustrating.
And they stole most of this work, actually.
Extremely frustrating, but it did get the reporting into the mainstream.
So it got people upset about it.
So that pressured the FBI to actually take some action.
But again, they didn't really credit who did the actual work.
And it's very, very, very frustrating.
But we will.
Yeah.
That's, I mean, for Ram, North California Anti-Racist Action did amazing, amazing work identifying all of these RAM people, finding out lots of information about them.
They were like, I mean, again, they all did this like before like before the Charlottesville rally.
Like they did this before it was popular to start naming these people.
So great, great work there, guys.
So with mounting evidence against Ram from multiple sources, including more and more mainstream outlets, because I mean, The Guardian and other, you know, articles from mainstream publications started referring to the ProPublica stuff.
So it went through the cycle of the Guardian, CNN, whatever.
So with mounting evidence, the FBI started to pay attention.
On Tuesday, October 2nd, 2018, so this is 416 days after the Unite the Right rally.
The FBI arrested four RAM members for their role in the violent August rally.
So timely.
400 days after Unite the Right, FBI arrests four people.
That's Ben Daly, Tim Gellen, Cole White, and Michael Mizilis.
ProPublica article, quoting another ProPublic article post-the attack.
Quote, the four men were charged with having traveled to Charlottesville with the aim of inciting a riot and conspiracy to incite a riot.
And prosecutors submitted an array of photographs and videos capturing the men, pummeling and choking protesters over the two days.
After a few months, the four men eventually all pleaded guilty, admitting their actions were not in self-defense.
And in July 2019, three of the four men who pleaded guilty to federal charges for their role in the violence were sent to prison with terms ranging from 27 months to 37 months.
The fourth man, Kyle White, was let off easy for quickly cooperating with authorities and because he, quote, disavowed his hateful ideology.
So he got to avoid federal prison for disavowing his hateful ideology.
Yeah.
Only serving seven months in like a jail after his arrest, you know, but before the trial.
So yeah, I mean, I would disavow a lot if it could get me out of federal prison, but whatever.
But hey, three out of four Nazis ain't bad.
The justice system prevails.
Yay, not actually, not so fast.
In late October 2018, FBI brought charges against four other RAM members, including co-founder Robert Rundo, Tyler Lobb, again, the Xanax drunken fight guy, Robert Bowman, and Aaron Eason.
I don't know how to say his name.
Who cares?
But FBI brought charges against these four guys for their involvement in the mega rally in Huntington Beach.
So this was like, I don't know, 500, almost 600 days after the Huntington Beach rally.
Jesus.
Great work, FBI.
Real timely.
But, you know, the FBI is bringing charges against teenagers with umbrellas in Portland, though, at much faster rate.
No, they're bringing charges for people, you know, in August.
They brought charges, you know, back in October.
So it's like two months against that teenager with an umbrella.
So they're really on the front line there.
But it takes 600 days to get the Nazis to write about their assaults.
Anyway.
Better late than never.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So four of the people got brought charges against them for the Huntington Beach stuff, as well as the various others, you know, events.
Around the time, Ben Daly and three of the RAM members were arrested in, you know, so like the Charlottesville people were arrested in like early October.
Around the same time, Robert Rondo's house in Huntington Beach got raided by the FBI, deploying flashbangs into his bedroom.
Amazing.
But Rondo wasn't arrested that day.
He was there, but they didn't arrest him.
So they raided his house.
They're like, all right, we didn't find anything.
You're free to go.
Shortly after this, he attempted to flee to Ukraine, where there's like a white nationalist stronghold.
But because of travel restrictions put on him by American authorities, he got flagged as a tier one operator of domestic terrorism.
And so he was turned back to the U.S. after attempting to transfer flights in London.
Weeks later, he made his second attempt to flee.
He walked across the border into Mexico and made his way to El Salvador to, quote, take a vacation and see the beaches.
Later this month, while getting on a flight from El Salvador to Argentina, he was arrested and sent back to the States.
So he tried multiple times to flee to other countries because he knew that people were going to come to get him eventually.
So he tried to get away and did not do it very successfully.
To see the beaches.
Yeah, to take a vacation.
He wasn't fleeing.
He was taking a vacation.
Yeah.
That is a good time to take a vacation.
Look, it's not bad at timing things necessarily.
So three of the RAM members got arrested as well.
This new group of arrests follows similar charges as the previous set of Ram arrests citing felony rioting violations.
This time, only one of the members pleaded guilty.
This was Tyler Lobb.
The other three did not plead guilty to the charges.
And in June of 2019, United States District Court Judge Cormack J. Kearney, funny name, dropped all of the federal rioting charges for all of the Ram members in this latest bout of arrests on the grounds that the statute used to prosecute the men infringed upon their First Amendment rights to free speech.
So the idea that you can't assault people and then brag about it, I guess, was a violation of the First Amendment.
Judge Carney, a conservative Republican appointed by George W. Bush, wrote the charges were unconstitutionally overbroad in violation of the First Amendment.
It is easy to champion free speech when it advocates a viewpoint in which we agree.
It's much harder when the speech promotes ideas we find abhorrent.
But an essential function of free speech is to invite dispute.
I don't care what idiots Antifa are.
You're both young men.
You don't want to be in custody for years.
So he's speaking to Rondo and a few other people being like, I don't care if you want to beat a Fantifa.
You're both young men.
You should not be in prison for a long time.
The Unconstitutional Verdict00:06:42
So that's great that they were let off the hook from that.
Per courthouse news lawyers, courthouse is like a law website, I guess.
I don't know.
Lawyers for RAM members stated the charges the men faced, conspiracy to commit writing and travel or use of the interstate commerce with intent to write, do not pertain to the actual physical violence that took place.
The law can't go and suppress everyone's First Amendment rights, adding, quote, people who commit crimes will continue to be punished, which makes no sense because these people committed crimes and absolutely got punished in no way, got let off.
So in total, I guess four members of Ram got arrested by the FBI, actually got charged, and the other four did not.
So yay, I don't know.
So it's very stupid because these guys got arrested by the FBI and then a federal judge dropped the charges for half of them, citing First Amendment violations, I guess.
But this was about felony writing and beating people up.
So it's a weird thing.
And it's very uncommon for, if you know how the FBI works, they don't generally charge people unless they are very confident.
It's like weird for them.
It's one of the reasons why federal charges very rarely don't get convicted, right?
Like it's they generally put stuff out when they're fairly confident.
So it's weird that they drop so many charges against these guys.
And it kind of suggests maybe, I don't know, maybe there was pushback behind the scenes to right-wing vigilantes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't know.
Not great.
So four got arrested and sent to prison for at least a little bit of time and the other four did not.
But the story of Ram is not over yet.
While one of their leaders, Ben Daly, is still in federal prison, the other, Robert Rundo, is out frolicking around Europe trying to establish a new brand, which we will have the not pleasure of hearing about in part two.
So yay!
More fake brands of clothing coming up soon.
Stay tuned.
Great.
Stay tuned.
Awesome.
Well, I feel great.
So good.
Want to go to the beach?
I would love to go to the beach again sometime and not do a book burning, which seems like a waste of time at the beach.
Go to the beach.
Mace some people, you know.
Felony illegal use of pepper spray?
Yeah.
Well, I only like to use it legally, which is why I put on a swastika before I pepper spray people.
There you go.
Great.
Well, that's the episode.
I don't know what else to say here.
Nazis suck.
Garrison, where can people follow you?
Oh, yeah.
I guess it's the end of a podcast.
Yeah.
So I have a Twitter account that I occasionally post videos on from protests, I guess, called At Hungry Bowtie.
I guess have a YouTube page where I post some of the same videos, but edited together with funny music now, which I'm doing more of because it's more fun and less depressing.
Yeah.
And I guess I also have a, have a, I work on a podcast called Uprising, A Guide from Portland.
If you've heard of that, it's about the Portland BLM uprising in 2000.
That sounds fascinating.
Oh, you will love it, Robert.
It's great.
We talk about a whole bunch of stuff about protests and defense.
Yeah.
Oh, good.
Great.
Fans of the show.
Wonderful.
Oh, you listen, Sophie.
That's good.
Yeah.
Highly recommend.
Yeah.
Those are the main things.
That's so cool.
Absolutely.
Glad to know about all that.
Robert, I think this is where we bid everybody goodbye.
Yeah.
You know, I would like you all to just kind of, you know, think a lot about where this nation is heading, about kind of what we've seen since 2017 with groups like Ram, and then pick up a gun, go to your nearby nearest hospital.
God damn it.
I think it's the end of the episode.
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.
What's up, everyone?
I'm Ago Modern.
My next guest, it's Will Farrell.
My dad gave me the best advice ever.
He goes, just give it a shot.
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 hanging in there.
Yeah, it would not be.
Right, it wouldn't be that.
There's a lot of life.
Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
In 2023, bachelor star Clayton Eckard was accused of fathering twins, but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax.
You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
I doctored the test once.
It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern.
Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
Ray Gillespie and Michael Manchini.
My mind was blown.
I'm Stephanie Young.
This is Love Trapped.
Laura, Scottsdale Police.
As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
10-10 shots fired in the City Hall building.
How did this ever happen in City Hall?
Somebody tell me that.
A shocking public murder.
This is one of the most dramatic events that really ever happened in New York City politics.
They screamed, get down, get down.
Those are shots.
A tragedy that's now forgotten.
And a mystery that may or may not have been political.
That may have been about sex.
Listen to Rorschach, Murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.