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May 30, 2020 - The Muckrake Political Podcast
54:52
🚨EMERGENCY PODCAST 🚨White Terrorist Cells Escalating Protests

In the wake of another night of protests and destruction, Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss growing evidence that white supremacist terrorist cells are infiltrating the events, causing destruction, and attempting to escalate the crisis in order to throw America into chaos Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Time Text
So let's be very clear.
The situation in Minneapolis is no longer, in any way, about the murder of George Floyd.
It is about attacking civil society, instilling fear, and disrupting our great cities.
We didn't make an enormous number of arrests, but every single person we arrested last night, I'm told, was from out of state.
Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Muckrake Podcast.
We have an emergency show this morning because we need to react to what's going on across the country and also specifically in Minneapolis.
For the past several nights, there's been a lot of unrest and looting and burning and anger rooted in a senseless killing of a man by a cop.
So, Jared, you're the one who really wanted to hop on this morning and get something out there, and I'm kind of curious to hear what your prime motivation was.
Yeah, I, you know, this is one of those situations where, um, I mean, I have to say a few things before we get to the meat of this podcast, because, um, you know, Nick, when we started this podcast, like we did it, like we're not making any money off this podcast.
We're not, we're not, we're not conspiracy theorists.
We're not selling a bunch of, you know, silver, oxidate, man, bone broth, whatever.
You know, we did this because we were concerned about what was happening in this country and we thought that we could help with that and provide some information and background.
So I just want to say first off, I don't like having this conversation and I don't like what we're getting ready to talk about.
This is coming from a place where it's like I've seen enough in the last couple of days that has me really worried and you know life has been really awful the past few days and I feel heartbroken and sad and angry and I'm sure our listeners do too.
I've been seeing stuff.
As our listeners know, I keep pretty close tabs on white supremacists in this country, particularly, let's just call them white supremacists, domestic terrorists, militias, separatists.
The first thing that people need to understand is that this has been present in this country, I mean, since the founding, but it's taken on a new
Direction and tone and focus in the past few decades These are people who like a Timothy McVeigh Right or any number of mass shooters that we've had, you know that talk about invisible wars and all this They they believe that America They believe America has been taken over by minorities and They believe that there's a Jewish conspiracy to control the world, the New World Order, all that stuff.
And they believe that it is their duty, many of them believe it is their God-ordained duty, to take over the country and institute a fascistic dictatorship, a white Christian ethnostate, however you want to define it.
There's tons of different groups.
Um, part of that has been, and they've operated on this, it is their basic tenet and philosophy, to at some point, at a point of crisis, to accelerate that crisis.
And create a situation where America can be embroiled in a new civil war or a new racial war, however you want to say it.
They have plans on this.
They've looked into everything from psyops to destruction and demolition and urban warfare.
This has been their plan all along and everything that I'm seeing.
Unfortunately, and what I'm hearing from people is that that is currently what's happening.
And this moment, because I want people to hear this out, it doesn't mean that all of this was planned or put together, but it's a pretty opportune time to do something like this.
With a pandemic with an economic crisis with Donald Trump as president I'm not saying Trump is like a puppet master making these people do that's not what we're talking about These people see Donald Trump as an ally.
They're on the same wavelength.
They don't have to communicate or whatever Right now in these protests everything I'm seeing everything I'm reading including reports from on the site and from the the forums and sites and chatter of these people is that they are currently engaging in Interesting.
So you're saying that a lot of the violence and the looting and all that kind of stuff is sort of pre-planned and forced.
It's not out of a rage against, you know, a police officer murdering somebody on the street.
Yeah, so let's, again, this is what we do on this podcast.
Let's give this context and nuance, right?
We don't, we don't need to just throw a blanket thing out there, right?
Like there are protesters right now who are doing damage.
There are people who are mad about George Floyd and they are, you know, I'm sure they're burning things.
They're, you know, knocking things down.
They're breaking shop windows.
They're getting in spats with the police.
That is happening.
There are also, and again, because we're being honest, there are liberal groups that are looking to cause accelerationist moments that are part of this, right?
There are anarchists in this country who want to bring this country to its knees.
They're absolutely there.
But I'm telling you that these people in particular, they are organized, they are armed, and they're mobilized.
I mean, this is something they've been playing.
Like, anarchists, you know, like maybe they see like a riot and they're like, how do we go in and use this for anarchy, right?
That's a spontaneous reaction, and maybe some of them are organized or whatever, but I'm telling you right now that these white supremacist terrorist cells, they have a beacon out on this.
And matter of fact, while we were waiting to go on the air, the governor of Minnesota came out and said that all the people they're arresting Are from out of state they have and they've even mentioned foreign influences, which is something and I want to throw that out there There's a lot of chatter out there that I'm not going to get into because I haven't seen enough of it.
It's unsubstantiated whatever And and I want to be responsible but the governor just came out and said, you know, these people are They're organized.
They have communications.
They're obviously being organized and directed by people with experience in urban warfare, which speaks, by the way, to ex-military, ex-police, which these are the people in these groups who run them, right?
Who, like, focus them and train them because they are trained.
And on top of that, he even said that the Minnesota and Crime Enforcement and Investigations units have found that these white supremacist groups have sent out a beacon to come to Minnesota and destroy and loot and escalate this thing.
So this isn't from the time that we decided to do this podcast.
This went from These are things that I've heard to these are things that the state of Minnesota is even confirming and it is It's it's it's escalating so and it's gonna get worse.
Yeah, so I mean to play that out I guess the idea being that they're gonna come in they're gonna loot and make this thing worse and it's gonna they want to make it look like it's the black people who are The problem with that is that we've seen all the footage, and it's white people doing a lot of this, which is what made it so strange.
What makes it more strange to me also is that generally, when we have an incident like this, or a tragedy like this, like in Ferguson for instance, well first of all, Ferguson is 67% black.
So the seething rage that yields these kind of things is understandable in a way, in these neighborhoods, in these areas.
I just want to throw out there for background on this.
Ferguson also had incidences of this.
There's been proof and documented evidence that these kinds of groups went in to escalate in Ferguson.
Oh, interesting.
And then if you want to compare to the racial makeup of Minneapolis, it's 19% black people.
So it's almost like you're looking at this footage and as a white person, to me, I would have no problem protesting.
You know, and probably more like in the day.
And that's what happened around the country around Ferguson.
There were protests during the day, but you didn't really see the rioting and looting at night anywhere else but Ferguson.
Here we're having it downtown LA.
I want to say it was in Maryland.
Somewhere else it was happening.
Now I did see the stuff that was going on at the White House.
And so it's just different.
It doesn't feel the same as it had been.
And generally, that accusation is against the left for Soros funding all these people that come down there and foment, you know, all sorts of chaos.
So it's kind of strange to think that maybe this is, you know, all of a sudden it's the other side of this is really doing this.
And I guess what it's to continue to stoke all the people who are sitting at home, the silent majority, the law and order people that, you know, these watchwords that to continue to Develop that notion that black people are dangerous and they're going to loot and they're going to do is that I think that's the point we're talking about right?
Yeah, so there is God, I want to share this with people in a second Yeah, there's a feeling that... And again, you can't speak for all of these people, right?
For some of the people who are doing this, some of these white terrorist cells, they're doing this to chip away at public faith.
They're doing it to recruit and, you know, swell their ranks.
Not all of them are like...
This is a go.
You know what I mean?
When I say this is a go, this is the moment, right?
But there are groups of them that are saying that right now.
I want to throw out, and this is, again, more context, what you just said about, you know, the idea that George Soros pays protesters or whatever, which is part of the New World Order conspiracy theory, right?
It's the idea that there is a wealthy Jewish person who's controlling all these things.
And I want to get people to understand this because it's...
It's really, really easy to fall into conspiracy theories.
Right?
We've talked about it on this show.
Conspiracy theories are simplified explanations of complicated matters.
Right?
So I want to share a couple things that the President of the United States said today.
Because we saw there were protesters at the White House, right?
So here's a couple of tweets from Donald Trump.
The professionally managed so-called, quote unquote, protesters at the White House had little to do with the memory of George Floyd.
OK.
Then another time, and this was earlier.
Great job last night at the White House by the U.S.
Secret Service.
They were not only totally professional, but very cool.
I was inside watching every move.
Couldn't have felt more safe.
They let the quote-unquote protesters, right?
And then he went on to talk about how they would have been greeted by vicious dogs and ominous weapons.
He says that many Secret Service agents were just waiting for actions.
We put the young ones on the front line, sir.
They love it.
Okay, so here's what I want to say here.
Again, I'm not claiming that Donald Trump is like on the phone telling people to do this, right?
Like, and that's the easiest way to do it is like there's like the puppet master or whatever.
The people who are doing this believe that Donald Trump feels the same things as they do, right?
They finally have a, well not finally, I mean we've had white nationalist presidents before, but we have a white nationalist authoritarian fascist in office.
They're giving him reasons to do things.
Do you know what I mean?
The military is going into Minneapolis tonight, right?
I mean, we're looking at possibilities of things like martial laws.
We're looking at the possibility of mass chaos, and people take advantage of that.
That doesn't mean that it's like chess.
Right.
It is chess on their end.
They're trying to provoke a thing.
And right now this is the unfortunate part about it.
We're in the middle of a pandemic.
We're at the beginning of a possible depression.
Donald Trump may lose in November, right?
If they're going to do it, Now's a good time to do it.
Do you know what I mean?
Right, right, right.
I mean, in the absolute cynical, the most cynical, you know, thing imaginable, which is actually making me nervous even saying this is it kind of, you know, like George Bush, when the HW, when he had the war in Iraq, his war, you know, they timed it badly.
Because if they had timed it a little bit later, he would have won the election in 92.
But because they timed it too early, he couldn't ride in on that.
So, in the most cynical version of this, it's like, yes, this is the timing where you'd probably start to do this, because, I mean, you know, it could lead into the election, and then they could wreak all sorts of havoc that way.
But here's the other thing we can't forget, is that we've already had Donald Trump echo the sheriff in Miami with the, when the looting starts, the shooting starts, right?
Which is all about just...
arresting black people and stop and frisk all these horrible policies.
Then he mentions vicious dogs if there was a notion of a breach of the White House grounds.
That's civil rights.
Yes, evocation.
And again, his addled brain might not really be able to connect those dots consciously, but there's no question.
He obviously knew it and knew what was going on.
So there are these layers that are insightful no matter what you want to say, and certainly the antennas are up of the people you're talking about on all those boards.
They're the ones who are listening for it, whether or not Trump is even trying to overtly signal this, and that's going to be the go time.
So it's really, yeah, it's never been a situation where we've had a president like this, who's had a megaphone as loud as he has now, like with Twitter for instance, to be able to, in a second, ignite all of this.
Yeah, one thing that people need to understand is that, you know, Donald Trump is naturally an authoritarian.
It's not a decision.
He doesn't wake up in the morning and it's like, I'm going to be a fascist authoritarian.
Authoritarians are naturally like that, like they have an inborn, like an inherent insecurity that makes them do the things that they do, right?
He's perfect for that and I can tell you from the very beginning he's been manipulated and moved and Excited by Pete.
I mean, this is the kind of stuff Steve Bannon dreamed of it really is I mean, this is the this is the idea This is the kind of thing that like people like that have looked at and the unfortunate truth of it is this When there are moments of crisis, they present windows of opportunity, right?
I mean, there are times where things line up like this.
It's almost like it's like an eclipse.
You know, it's like a planet moves here or, you know, the moon moves here or whatever, and suddenly the sun is blocked out.
And it's one of those situations where If you were going to sketch up a perfect moment for these people to realize the plans that they have been waiting to unfurl...
This is it.
Like, this right here is it.
It is a moment of racial tension.
It's a moment of societal and political crisis.
And they have the guy in charge that they need in charge.
Right.
And it's like an alignment of planets.
And they know it.
I mean, they say it.
They will say it in so many words.
They know that if they want to make this happen, that now is the time to happen.
Well, here's the solace we've taken in the past for a lot, a lot of years, was that the number of those people that you're talking about has been small, and that they wouldn't have the ability.
Now, that said, even a Timothy McVeigh, one or two people, if anybody had helped him, you know, can cause just an untold amount of damage, and that is an issue that we have here as well.
And by the way, and again, I should have talked about this when I brought up McVeigh earlier.
For those unfamiliar, Timothy McVeigh was part of this fascistic movement.
He wanted to strike against the so-called New World Order and he wanted to, you know, lead to like white ethnostates and he was inspired by a book called the Turner Diaries and if you haven't already look up the Turner Diaries read the synopsis of it I can promise you it's even worse than the synopsis and the Turner Diaries is the Bible of this movement and the entire plot of the Turner Diaries is that a white Americans white fascist Americans rise up and
They foment racial tensions leading to a race war in which they take over the country and install a fascistic dictatorship.
That's what he was trying to do by bombing the Oklahoma City Federal Building.
And that's what these people are trying to do.
That is their actual goal.
This isn't conspiracy theory.
It's not tinfoil hat stuff.
And these are the same people who are going into our legislatures with guns.
These are the same ones who, like, unite the right rally in Charlottesville.
Like, these people are real, and this is what they're actually trying to do.
I have an anecdotal thing, which, you know, it doesn't stand up to journalistic muster, but, you know, it's a podcast.
So I was watching in my timeline where there were these two men, you know, in the middle of the Minneapolis, you know, whatever we want to call it's going on there.
And they point out on the corner right outside the courthouse a pretty big pile of bricks And the guy was like, you know, I was just here doing jury duty, like, there were no bricks here before.
Like, how is this possible that all of a sudden there's this big pile of bricks, like, to incite us, hey, invite us to start throwing this stuff.
Now, another anecdotal one, and, you know, I don't know how you feel about even talking about it, but, like, you know, there's this notion that maybe, like, you know, some of these windows that were broken out in the beginning of the rioting was by, like, maybe a cop in Minneapolis.
Did you see that?
Yeah, it sounds more and more like that's being confirmed.
Confirmed, really?
I thought you were going to tell me that it actually wasn't.
No, everything I keep seeing is there's more and more corroboration with them.
Yeah, and so it's like there's so many of these weird signs.
And again, like you're saying, the confluence of events to allow this crazy right wing notion to sweep in.
These are also little things that when you start to put them together and again It's it does feel a bit like a conspiracy theory But I don't know how else to explain it when you have so many different examples of like what's going on here It is it is concerning.
You know that I was surprised living in LA.
You know what was going on downtown You know, again, generally when we have these protests, they're very peaceful, they're during the day.
So, here's the other question I have is, if there is any legitimacy to these protests, and the people really are just people who want to go out and, you know, are these people who are in reaction to perhaps the COVID-19, you know, shutdown, and they've been stuck in their houses for so long, and there's just sort of pent-up angst and anxiety and anger out of that, and that could also be part of the Venn diagram?
That's part of all of it.
I mean, there's no other way to put it.
I mean, again, we try really hard not to paint with broad brushes here.
There are people out there who are angry about this murder, and let's call it what it is.
It's a murder.
We all saw it.
He was murdered.
There are people who are angry about it, and they're tired with the state, and they're tired of police brutality.
Yeah, they're they're out there writing and they're destroying that's happening.
And I have to tell you, I speaking personally, and again, like, this podcast, I feel like this has become a really intimate undertaking and people listening, you know, I'm exhausted.
I'm so frustrated and I'm so sad and this past week, I don't know about you Nick, but this past week has been brutal in the worst kinds of ways and you know I'm seeing it with everybody and the people I love and it just breaks my heart and I'm angry too.
And I understand it.
I understand the people who are angry and are lashing out.
But that is also part, that's a layer of this, right?
Like, there's this other layer of intentional destruction and manipulation that is underneath all of it.
And it is on the left, but I'm telling you, it's especially on the right.
I mean, you're watching You're watching paramilitary operations in America's cities.
You know what I mean?
Like we're watching, and this is the other part, we have to give this context, and I know everyone rolls their eyes whenever, you know, we have to talk about Nazis, but we have to learn from these things.
When a state is about to fail, When authoritarian is about to take over, it's when paramilitary organizations operate in the open doing these types of things, right?
It's the strong arm of extralegal measures that normalizes it and foments frustration and leads to things like martial law and, you know, things like ghettos and targeting.
And I want to say again, we're not doing this podcast To be alarmist right like lately it's not like we're sitting here hoping that this thing is like very very popular or something it's the last thing on my mind like I want the people who listen to understand what's happening and I want them to be prepared right like I said to you it is it is a smart thing right now if you can to go out and get some supplies
Because right now things are fomenting and sort of bubbling up that can get really bad.
And I don't know about you, I feel it and I see it.
We felt something coming and we felt some weird stuff bubbling up and it feels like this thing is escalating in a hurry.
I mean, to me it still feels like, oh, I'm watching something on TV, even though it's about three miles away in downtown LA.
It doesn't quite feel like that.
Here's my question, because we're kind of dancing around a little bit as far as, your fear of this playing out would be that there'll just be mass looting and rioting across the country, and then all of a sudden the military will have to sweep in and lock everything down for several nights.
Are we talking about that kind of situation?
You know, I was sitting with this for a while, and you know, it's something like this.
It's both really hard to predict and easy to predict at the exact same time, right?
And you're right, we're dancing around it, so let's go ahead and talk about it.
What these people want is they want to create a situation in which there is racial violence.
And I don't mean Like, you know, just incidents in the street, like mass racial violence, right, between black and white Americans.
They're looking to create a situation like that, which accelerates what they see as the decline of America, and so it'll be a failed state and they can, you know, take it over and shape it.
There are different things that can happen here.
We have a president who is authoritarian, and authoritarians, when they fail, they want more power, right?
They blame conspiracies, they blame minorities, and they want more power.
That is one possibility.
We could see the possibility of this thing spreading.
I mean, the protests are already spreading, right?
And rightfully so, with people who are tired of all this shit.
But there's also...
I'm sorry, but there's no other way to do it but to put it in context.
We just saw, and what is time?
How long have we been doing this?
Down here in Georgia.
We just saw two men gun a man down in the road.
You know what I mean?
And incidents like that are not going to slow down during all of this, right?
We're going to see radicalized people carrying out asymmetrical attacks.
We're going to see, unfortunately, and I hate to bring this up because this was what this was a terrible day.
Do you remember it was back in 2016 and it was after it was in the middle of all this stuff.
Do you remember the shooting in Dallas where the police were at the funeral and like the guy unloaded?
People don't like to think about it but all around America there were all kinds of incidents that came from that like moments of like showdowns between people and cops and you know it sort of breeds right and it felt very much that day and if people remember it felt very much that day like something dangerous was happening or we were moving near a cliff.
These people intentionally want to push us off that cliff, and what happens after that is anybody's guess, but I can tell you that there is a fascistic movement in this country, and those people are not afraid to embrace this stuff.
They've told us what they believe, they told us how they feel, so it isn't necessarily... there's no telling really how it manifests, but they're trying to manifest Something.
Right.
And then, you know, Trump continually evokes this military, you know, language where he wants, you know, the mayor, you know, to be, you know, he looks at the mayor who looks like, you know, he doesn't he doesn't have a crew cut.
He's not standing ramrod straight up and down.
And he looks at him as being weak.
Now, by the way, their response is pretty bad.
three days ago.
It appears they were not prepared at all for this.
Now, that said, with a city like Minneapolis, you probably would put them lower on the list of someone who would be really concerned about having race riots or any kind of looting riot or issues like that in the streets anyway.
But this military invocation of words, even with the point when he had said that George Floyd will not have died in vain.
Now, this is a psychopath who doesn't have any empathy, And this is him, I think, trying to imitate empathy, what he sees people and how he's supposed to say it.
But, like, even that phrase really was so out of... inappropriate.
Because when you die in vain, it's like when you're a soldier and you go off to war to protect your country and we're going to make sure that Vietnam, we're going to finish that or whatever those instances are.
Here was a guy that was pinned to the ground by his neck with a knee for eight or nine minutes until he basically died.
This is not a notion of dying in vain or not dying in vain.
This is simply they just needed justice.
And by the way, if you think that this didn't do anything, right, they had fired the cops, but they didn't really do anything else besides that.
And now they finally charge him with murder only after several days of what was going on.
So if you don't think that that has any weight, people marching in the streets and making protests like this, it clearly does, right?
They were probably not going to charge him with murder, at least not yesterday when they did, in the absence of what was going on.
Yeah, and again, this is one of the reasons why we started doing this podcast in the first place.
We have been taught that authoritarianism and fascism sort of announces itself.
You know, that it's sort of, and the way that we've thought about it is like, and this is a weird analogy, but it's hopefully illuminating.
Like Cobra, you know, in G.I.
Joe.
The idea that fascism comes out and says, I am evil and I believe in evil things and I want to accomplish evil goals, right?
That's the simplistic story of fascism that Americans have been told and force fed.
What you're going to see, and it already makes my stomach hurt thinking about it.
It's so disgusting.
You're going to see, while racial violence and racial discrimination and racial oppression happens, you're going to see the people who are enabling that hide behind faux concern.
Right?
They're going to be like, oh, you know, it's the same thing that happened the other day with the Biden situation that he had, where he went on The Breakfast Club and said stupid shit.
Immediately, all of these white nationalists are like, oh, who's the racist now?
All this stuff.
We've talked about it before on this podcast.
These people, and this is like post-modern advanced level stuff.
They project everything they do.
We talked about it.
The China thing, they're already making China into Russia in 2016, right?
They did it and now they're accusing other people of doing it.
As this happens, it's going to hide behind semantics and faux outrage and faux progressivism, even.
I mean, Donald Trump is going to pretend that he is a champion for this person who has died, right?
Even as he called people out to shoot people.
It's going to be disgusting.
You know, it's going to be really, really revolting and disgusting, but that's how these people work.
It's going to be clothed.
Yeah.
Let me ask you this.
You know, I certainly, I've marched and I've protested plenty of times in the last several years.
I don't know if I feel comfortable right now doing it.
Do you?
If you would have wanted me in the daytime at noon or something, but that would probably be it.
I... and that is... man, that's the catch-22 of all this.
There's so much bad shit happening.
We need mass action.
But, I mean, on top of that, it's... people are gonna get sick.
Yeah.
You know?
Yeah.
They just are.
And on top of that, like... Man, I hate talking about this.
This is such a bullshit thing that we have to talk about.
So it was when I was covering the election in 2016, right, and I was going to all these Trump rallies and interacting with all these Trump people, and I kept telling people, you know, I keep having these conversations with Trump supporters, and they told you, if you were white, if you were a white man who looked like me, they would tell you that, you know, yeah, they wanted revolutions, they wanted to kill people, they wanted to lock up their opponents, like they were all for fascistic stuff, and
I told people, I was like, this thing is not going to end well, right?
Because it just escalates.
The story just escalates and escalates and escalates.
And I was like, if we get out of this without major bloodshed, we're going to be lucky.
Well, we end up having bloodshed.
You know, we have mass shooters going out killing people because of this.
We don't like talking about it.
You know, Heather Heyer gets killed in Charlottesville.
Trump inspires people to send bombs to Democratic leadership and journalists.
And who knows how many murders had political bents to them and how many people these people have killed, right?
Would I feel comfortable right now?
I feel... God, I hate saying this.
I feel like we are marching up to some really tragic stuff.
And God, it breaks my heart to say that.
And I'm so heartbroken right now about this and so much other stuff.
But it feels like this is the escalation that has been moving.
Well, you know, when you start seeing phrases like, you know, Minnesota governor authorizes full mobilization of the state's National Guard.
You know, it's been a long time, but it's not that long ago, 1971, in Ohio, when the National Guard just, you know, somebody opened fire.
And they never figured out what happened there, but it certainly caused, you know, four deaths.
And, you know, that triggered a lot of things in America in a way that, you know, once you start bringing that kind of military power into these kind of things, it's scary.
It still invokes unrest with me.
And I'm really glad that you brought up the early 70s and 60s, because here's the thing, you know, when you watch on, I don't know, like a CNN documentary or you watch or, you know, like Time Life history books, right?
It's like hippies in the streets, like a picture of Martin Luther King.
Maybe it's a picture from.
Yeah, people holding up peace signs and flowers and, you know, you see maybe Ohio.
You know, you see occasionally some unrest or whatever, right?
People don't understand, like, that era was bloody.
And it's like you brought up the dogs, right?
It was like turning on your TV and seeing civil rights leaders mauled by dogs and beaten by cops and people in the streets spitting at them and throwing rocks at them and killing them.
On top of that, and here's the other thing, this is the untold history of all this, there were bombings?
All the time.
I mean just hundreds of bombings.
Just people, and the leftist, rightist, all of them going out bombing, fighting in the streets, blood running into the gutters, leaders being assassinated, right?
All this stuff happened.
And we block it out because we make this quaint little, like you said, the peace sign, right?
And flowers.
And bell bottoms.
America does this stuff, and if you talk to people who are in like the front lines of that, so I've known plenty of people who are active in the counterculture and the anti-war and civil rights movements, they tell you it was a war.
Like it was a war in the streets, and there was always the possibility of revolution, right?
It was right on the precipice of revolution, and people need to understand This stuff happens.
Like, it happens.
And by the way, it's not just then.
There's a cycle in America of this stuff happening.
Like, we don't get told the history of, like, Tulsa race riots where, like, you know, African Americans are gunned down and killed in the streets and neighborhoods are set on fire or, you know, the Red Summer or any of it.
It happens.
It has happened, and it happens.
Here's the thing.
It's no coincidence that it was Nixon in the White House when all that was happening.
It's no coincidence that we have, depending on the leader, and I don't even want to get it partisan to Democrat-Republican, but depending on the leader, you don't have a lot of those issues a lot of the times for different presidents.
And I kind of liken it a little bit to when Saddam Hussein was toppled, and the whole country fell into unrest, and there was just the most horrible atrocities being performed across the board by, like, everybody.
And I often wondered, I said, well, were those people just sitting in their houses?
Were these rapists and murderers, whatever?
Were they just sitting in their house with their pipes just waiting to, as soon as Saddam went away, they could just go out and wreak havoc?
Or is this some sort of reaction to having the kind of leadership that they had for decades and decades and decades, and it just sort of is almost inevitable that that's going to happen like it does?
Well, the more you look at what we have with Trump, and after these three years, it seems to be a little bit more of a direct connection, only because we're not even in a state that Iraq was in under Hussein, you know, We've had liberties that those people in Iraq never had.
You do see there is this energy out there, obviously I don't think it's as extreme as what we saw there, well it's not, but there just seems to be a connection between that when you have this kind of fascistic leadership and it's rubbed in the faces of everybody.
And here's the scariest thing, you weren't ready for this, Is that those, that notion, that feeling we have now about what, how it's inciting these people?
Well, I'm sure those people felt the same way about Obama for eight years.
They probably felt that this guy was a fascistic leader who was, you know, fomenting all this outrage and all these things.
I mean, I really do feel like that was what they believe in.
So you can almost argue that it wasn't the three years of Trump that's doing this.
It's like the eight years of Obama and then Trump unleashing it after three.
There's a lot of numbers in there.
I don't know if that even made any sense.
No, it does, because what actually happened and I've written about this, like these people have been living in an alternate reality, right?
And they've been told by the Republican Party and the National Rifle Association and right-wing media, which by the way, all profit from this, right?
They all get fundraising.
They all get ratings.
They get elected.
They do it by spinning a story that Democrats are traitors and dangerous, right?
That they're involved in this New World Order conspiracy.
What we're watching right now is part of that, right?
These people, and you gotta get in the mind of these people, right?
Because unfortunately, I had to do it in order to write my book.
Like, I had to study what they actually believe.
And you have to understand, Obama was the pinnacle of their worst nightmares.
Right?
It was a black man as the President of the United States, and that's bad enough.
But they also truly believed that he was part of the anti-white conspiracy, which is what the New World Order is all about, right?
That conspiracy theory is about white supremacy being endangered by these things.
And I want to throw this out there.
If you actually do the research and you find it, it was American white supremacist paranoia that inspired the fascism of the 1930s and 40s, right?
It was a bunch of Americans like Madison Grant and Stoddard who wrote these books like about how The rising tide of color, or the passing of the great race, right?
And this idea that white supremacy is the best thing the world has, and that these people are going after it, right?
That minorities are being controlled and there are conspiracies that are making it happen.
That's still happening.
That's what inspires fascism, is that insecurity and fear and paranoia that comes from white supremacy.
Because it is a minority group overall in the world, How exhausting is social media right now?
And so they're always, they have to find a way in order to mobilize and use fascism.
That's what we're watching here.
It's the same currents.
It's the same trends.
And you're exactly right.
Trump, and we say it all the time, Trump is not the disease.
He's a symptom.
And everything right now, and I'm sure, you know, you're active on social media.
How exhausting is it?
How exhausting is social media right now?
Oh, it's a never ending stream of, yes, exhaustion.
We talked about this on our last episode, right?
That this machine runs on anxiety, terror, and conflict.
So, everything feels like that right now.
The tinderbox is set.
And real fast, I just, again, I don't want to be alarmist, but this is true.
Leading up to the Civil War, one of the reasons that we got to the Civil War was because Americans came to believe there were two types of Americans.
There were Northerners and Southerners, and the Southerners believed that the Northerners were engaged in a conspiracy against them, right?
And it didn't hurt that burgeoning media, in this case national newspapers, right?
Fomented suspicion and paranoia and conflict because it was profitable.
This is what happens.
This is how this stuff occurs, and it's not just in America.
We just used the Civil War, which of course is, considering where we're at right now, a really frightening thing to bring up.
It happens in other countries.
There's a proven track record of this thing happening, and America is hurtling toward it right now.
That doesn't mean it'll happen.
That doesn't mean it's inevitable, but I'm telling you right now, it is.
There is a probability there that I'm uncomfortable with, and people should be very uncomfortable with.
I mean, I can hear the wheels spinning.
So, you know, the chaos, the country continues to devolve into chaos across the board in many, many cities.
They bring in the military.
We can't have a vote because, you know, things are too crazy right now.
COVID is also a problem.
You know, I suppose that's what you're saying.
And then next thing you know, certain things are enacted.
Emergency laws are enacted to control everything under the guise of keeping everybody safe or whatever.
And, yeah, I mean, every time I would have said that or said that's ridiculous or stop, there's enough evidence over the last three years that sort of indicate that there is that notion.
Well, that would never happen.
Well, it happened last year.
Well, that would never happen.
Well, that happened six months ago.
So I wish I could say you're crazy, but you're not.
Well, I want to throw...
Thank you, I appreciate that.
I want to throw this out there, again, for context.
Conspiracy theories are simplifications of complex problems, right?
Like, a lot of the things that we're experiencing are more complicated than people in smoke-filled rooms, okay?
But I'm telling you, This group that we're talking about?
You don't have to throw Trump in there if you don't want to.
If you want to believe Trump is part of it, that's fine, but that's not what this points to.
It's a symbiotic, parallel relationship.
These people are in on conspiracies.
They conspire with each other.
They want to overtake the government.
They work amongst themselves.
They have a network of white terrorist cells in America.
And it's starting to look like around the world.
Alright?
That's the truth.
There's stuff out there.
I'm hearing stuff about it that is weird.
There's proof out there that they organize.
They help each other.
And to put it in a better light, right?
Think about ISIS or Al Qaeda.
Right?
You have a group of extremists who are conspiring among themselves to bring about a certain event or a certain political change.
Right?
They have cells all over the world.
Right?
That's what white terrorism is too.
White people are not immune to that sort of extremism.
In fact, white supremacy breeds that.
These groups are just like them, and you need to understand they actually do conspire.
They actually do come up with plans and do this stuff.
So conspiracy theories a lot of the times aren't real, and they're weaponized misinformation and propaganda.
This thing's real.
It's not a conspiracy theory to believe that they are engaged in conspiracies.
It's reality.
And what we're watching right now, they hide behind that.
Right?
Because there's gonna be people who hear this and are like, oh, this is conspiracy theory.
It's not.
Like, this is proven.
I mean, if you don't believe it, go read up on the literature.
Like, this stuff is there.
Even Trump's government recognizes it.
Right?
The FBI has said this is like one of the biggest problems America faces.
If you don't believe it, go look at it.
But these people are engaged in conspiracies and they are active.
And they are incredibly dangerous.
And we need to recognize that before this whole thing takes off like they want it to.
Yeah, I don't have anything to add to that.
It does remind me a little bit of the Manson stuff.
This is what he wanted to do.
He wanted to inspire a race war by murdering some white people and make it look like black people did it.
We can't seem to get away from that, you know, no matter how far how, you know, that guy was discredited.
He was thrown in jail, all these different things.
And like, you know, he's sort of a joke, I think, at this point.
He certainly doesn't inspire the fear.
I feel like he had paralyzed L.A., you know, with how scared people were about all that.
And now it's like, you know, all those things.
They make these movies about these kind of people now, and they're kind of glorified in a way.
American white supremacy and racism against African Americans has always been our biggest Achilles heel and weakness.
It has hurt society.
It's cost so many lives.
It's hurt progress.
I mean, we talked the other day about the Cold War.
If our beliefs were pure, The Cold War wouldn't have even been a problem, right?
The reason we had to interfere in other countries was because people recognized our hypocrisy.
It is.
It is something that has been used against us by the USSR, by Russia.
Actually, there are two different things.
USSR, Russia, Iran, North Korea, all these people, and anytime they've had a problem with America, they've been able to point at racism, right?
Or the disconnect between whites and blacks in America.
This has always been an opportunity, which is one of the reasons why it is good for everybody to destroy white supremacy, right?
It even helps white people because it actually holds them back too, right?
They have power and they have privilege, but it also allows them to be manipulated.
It allows them to be subjugated.
It allows economic manipulation to take place.
It would be good for everybody to get rid of this, but you're exactly right with something like a Manson or with one of these people.
It's a tinderbox.
And it's always been a tinderbox and it's always been something that can be used against us and weaponized because it is our Achilles heel.
That's the unfortunate truth.
Do you think that, because I know what motivated Manson or what he manipulated to motivate his followers, but do you think that there's a, it's a coincidence that Trump is demanding that churches be able to hold services despite issues with social distancing?
Because clearly there's a religious aspect to a lot of this.
Absolutely, there is a lot of these people that we're talking about consider themselves Christian.
I've written about this pretty extensively if people want to read more about it.
I have an article in the New Republic called the cult of the Shining City embraces the plague.
Yeah, unfortunately there's this really perverted white supremacist Christianity at the heart of all of this.
And it's based on this idea, and it's a neo-confederate religion, it's based on the idea that God has a chosen race, and it's white people.
And he chose America as a white nation to be his champion, right?
And that that's that's the basis of white supremacy is what it is.
And or at least American, you know, religious, secular myth.
This cult of the Shining City stuff is absolutely at the heart of it.
And.
They truly believe, and this sounds nuts to people, but they need to understand I was raised in it and a lot of other people were raised in it, to believe that America is under attack by satanic forces, Jewish people, if you want to get down into the nuts and bolts of it, right?
That America is under satanic attack and that Satan and Jews manipulate minorities and poor people and all these people in order to overtake America.
So yeah, there's absolutely a religious aspect to all of this and it sounds nuts, but it's true.
Yeah, it's frustrating because we can point to Islamic extremism as well to manipulate this.
I will say that the Christians might even play, they'll do a little lip service to the Jews being the chosen people, but then make sure the whites are the ones who get all, you know, are the ones who are raised up to heaven, you know, all that kind of stuff.
Yeah, that whole idea is just based on the idea that the Jewish people, and in particular Israel, are like, again, it's like a chess piece, right?
They don't actually care about Jewish people.
They care about having, you know, Israel.
Yeah, and that way they can get Armageddon, which I'm glad you brought that up because to a lot of people this right now looks like the end times.
Right?
And I want to get in the mindset of that because people need to understand this too.
So if America starts going up in flames and there's two sides...
Right?
It starts to look like the dichotomy of the end times.
You're either on God's side or you're on Satan's side.
So then there are going to be people who join in on that side.
And then all of these, not all of these groups, but big parts of these groups are part of that Christian movement, that apocalyptic movement.
They have a lot of ideas for this.
And yeah, it's just a big messed up knot of a problem.
Yeah.
You know, and then you have a guy like Trump in the White House who represents whatever you want him to represent.
Right.
At this point, he could be the devil.
He could be the angel.
He could be God.
He could be whatever.
And and either way, it's bad.
It's bad for our the world.
You know, I don't know.
So it's concerning.
We have to keep our eyes on this hope that we have enough reasonable people in the right positions.
Now, that said, if you're if you're 10 years old right now, if you're 12 years old and you're, you know, about to embark on a high school and then you start like my daughter is a sophomore.
She kind of needs to start thinking about what she might want to be when she grows up.
Right.
We did a podcast about the consumer states of America.
What kind of consumer will she be?
But one thing that probably isn't coming up on a lot of people's minds are, geez, I want to be a politician.
Right.
We are now I mean, and this has been this way for a long time.
But I do feel like if there was ever a moment where we need more people to who really believe in America and who are, you know, have morals and have ethical standards and really want to do good.
You know, they're not going to do this.
They're not going to get involved in politics.
And that's maybe the other point that the other side wants.
They want to make it such a horrible situation that only the most unscrupulous people would ever want to do it.
God, I have a person I love very much as a couple of girls and to think about having to exist in this, you know, I mean, to watch all this, to be at home right now and be afraid of a pandemic and also watching this stuff unfold.
It's so bad.
You're exactly right.
I mean, to be at home right now and be scared to go jogging on a street.
Yeah.
For a lot of people, right?
And that's still, like, you would have thought, oh, in 1996, would there still be black people who would be really scared to do that?
Probably.
I'm sure it was still happening.
Maybe it's not been reported.
The internet was still, you know, very young.
But, like, in 2020, it's a thing.
It's a real thing across the board.
And I think the key with the social media is that you now get to hear personal accounts from all around, no matter where you are in the country, of how black people have had to live in this country, even now.
And it's just amazing that we can still be in a situation like that and it hasn't changed and we haven't had any appreciable progress.
If we've had, we've gone completely the other way.
Well, we talked on the last podcast about the more toxic, disastrous elements of social media, right?
You know, capitalizing off catastrophe.
One of the best parts about it, and one of the most worthy parts about social media, is that it has allowed white supremacy and racial prejudice to be dragged out into the sunlight.
Right it has meant and on top of that like, you know sexual discrimination harassment assault all of that It has made very clear what is actually happening in this country and has been happening in this country since it was founded The problem is I've said this before make America great again is a philosophy It's turning this stuff off and telling yourself it doesn't exist.
And I noticed this and we'll wrap up here in a second because we need to get this out there to the people.
You know, Trump announced, you know, Trump in one of his bullshit tweets, he was like, tonight is MAGA night at the White House.
Well, every night is MAGA night at the White House.
It's the rejection of reality.
And that's part of the problem is fascists live in their own reality and they will kill you to make sure their reality isn't punctured.
Right?
They will literally kill you if it means keeping their reality intact.
And that's what MAGA is about.
It's a fascistic movement.
And the only worry we have here is that to add to this pie, Trump is clearly suffering from mental diminishment.
And so as this pressure increases, he will get more erratic.
And people have been talking about that for years, since he started.
But it's, and it's like, if you want to go back and you can trace the amplification of his behavior, it really is, it's clear.
And you can see evidence of him not being able to stand straight up.
He can't, doesn't walk properly.
There are all sorts of signs like that, that you would point to either Alzheimer's or other things like that, that cause complete irrational behavior.
And I do shudder to think what's going to happen.
over the next couple of months as this pressure, as he realizes the polls are going to close in on him, as the closer it comes to, like, you know, God, like, here's the thing.
If Biden were to come out and say, I'm going to, if I win, we're going to prosecute him for obstruction of justice without question.
Like, if he said that before the election, I would, that would be, I would worry if he would actually, and I think it would be a rallying call, but I think it would really, it would, it would end up, he would start a war or something crazy.
Well, I mean, he, he went out yesterday and more or less hinted at the possibility of starting a war with China.
I mean that happened yesterday I've said this before in the podcast.
But again, this is informational and right now is a moment for information I've written about it what I call the the authoritarian cycle and and unfortunately it's Proven true because it's true.
This is how stuff works.
So just just to get it out there I want to say it again for people to understand Authoritarians are inherently insecure and incompetent, okay?
That means that they will cause problems, alright?
When they cause problems, they will inevitably make the problems worse.
They will always make crises worse.
Instead of taking responsibility for their part in making crises worse, they will scapegoat vulnerable populations and conspiracies, usually traitors of the political party, right?
They will say that the only reason the crisis has gotten worse is because they need more power to fight the crisis.
Right?
So they will push for more power while also scapegoating populations and conspiracy theories.
And the cycle continues over and over and over again.
It just happens.
And that's where we are.
People need to understand it real fast.
And listen, I understand this has been a rough podcast, but it was needed.
People need to hear this.
We care about our listeners.
And I just want to say to them, just be careful, please.
You know, just watch out for this stuff.
Combat misinformation and disinformation as much as you possibly can.
Watch for the signs of this stuff.
You know, take precautions.
Be safe with you and the people you love.
Maybe stock up on some stuff because it could be a bumpy ride.
If nothing happens, you have some stuff and canned goods to eat or whatever and water to drink.
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