Premium Episode 212: American Gulag Chronicles feat Mike Prysner (Sample)
Letters, poems and drawings by imprisoned J6ers. We explore "American Gulag Chronicles", a publication raising money for and awareness of the self-perceived political prisoners, punished for participated in the January 6th capitol riot. Our guest is Mike Prysner of the Empire Files and Eyes Left Podcast.
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Mike Prysner: https://twitter.com/MikePrysner
Empire Files: https://youtube.com/empirefiles
Eyes Left: https://linktr.ee/eyesleft
Music by Pontus Berghe. Editing by Corey Klotz.
http://qanonanonymous.com
Welcome, listener, to Premium Chapter 212 of the QAnon Anonymous Podcast, the American Gulag Chronicles Letters from Prison episode.
As always, we are your hosts, Jake Rogatansky.
Julian Fields.
Mike Preissner.
And Travis View.
This week, we're going to be exploring a book called American Gulag Chronicles Letters from Prison.
It was put together by retired IT engineer Tim Rivers, who also goes by Furious Tim, which I assume is his online persona.
The glossy, magazine-sized paperback was being sold at the recent Reckoning Fest event we attended, with part of the proceeds supposedly going to the incarcerated J6ers.
It's a collection of letters and drawings sent by the prisoners in reply to a network of pen pals assembled by various pro-J6 organizations.
To connect these drawings, missives and poems, Rivers writes narrative bits at the top of each chapter describing the ongoing plight of the J6ers as a whole as they, quote, rot in a horrific gulag of a jail.
Can you not call him Rivers?
Because that makes me think of Rivers Cuomo, the lead singer of my favorite band.
And I don't want to hear about him putting together the J6 Liberty book.
So if you could just refer to him as Tim from now on, that would be really special for me.
Furious Rivers Cuomo.
No, no, no, no.
Furious Jake.
Our guest is Mike Preissner of Empire Files and the Eyes Left podcast, and you may also remember him for writing our two-part deep dive into Tulsi Gabbard.
Mike, you also happen to be a veteran, and so I thought it'd be cool to get your perspective on some of the many veterans who ended up being J6ers.
So how's it going, buddy?
Wonderful.
Happy to be here.
I know.
It's great to have somebody back in the studio.
It's great to be back.
Hey, I'm back in the studio.
Yeah, I mean...
*laughter* What am I, a fucking ghost to you?
*laughter* Jake Chopliver-Rokotansky is here with me.
A quick caveat before we get into things.
Here at the QA Podcast, we are not fans of the carceral state, and we are not trying to obfuscate the very real problems with the prison industry and the justice system, nor Or are we trying to downplay the abuses suffered by prisoners at the hands of prison administrators and staff?
I do think it's interesting, however, that many of the J6ers in this book seem to think that, as conservatives and Trump supporters, they've been turned into political prisoners by a totalitarian, communist regime targeting them for their beliefs and not just say their actions during the Capitol riot. And
that, to me, seems like a bit of an exaggeration to say the least. And that's kind of
throughout this you'll see, let's just say, words that most people wouldn't use to describe these
situations, but they have no shame.
As there are quite a few letters in the book, we've selected some interesting ones and we'll
be diving a bit into the details of some of the detainees who wrote them. Think of the episode
as an exploration of the publication instead of a comprehensive overview of the hundreds of people
arrested for their participation in the J6 riots.
So, with that said, let's jump right in.
The book's opening statement sets the stage with gravitas.
I ask the reader these questions.
Is the American Empire in her final throes of greatness?
Does she now feed upon her own children and citizens, draining them of freedoms, rights, resources, and property?
Had this once land of the free and home of the brave become a tyrannical police state, one which demands unbending obedience to the authority of a few despotic elites, one who now rules its citizens instead of serving them?
Does the concept of justice lay broken and dying upon the rocks of power?
Bending its sacred purpose to the foul misuse of enslaving and oppressing rather than protecting and nurturing a healthy, just, and fair society.
This is so awesome because he just opens with like, is the American Empire now bad?
And it's like, excuse me?
Come again, buddy?
In the first segment titled Early Days, January to October 2021, Rivers basically does the equivalent of the Star Wars scrolling text to set the scene.
2021 saw a tumultuous spring in America.
In the wake of the January 6 events and the seeding of the new administration, the DOJ was given a new mission to hunt down any and all who were suspected of crimes against the new sitting government on that January day.
But it was to be a very special mission.
Given to a newly militarized FBI armed with the potency of a January 6th multi-authority task force, they descended on Americans' homes in a Hollywood display of overwhelming force, shock, and awe.
Only this light-and-might show was not visited on suspected terrorists intent on death and destruction, but on ordinary American citizens and their families.
The arrests began almost immediately in the early pre-dawn hours after January 6th.
As the weeks passed, the takedowns on individuals' homes became more and more violent and brutal.
Those arrested were often hauled away from their families to the District of Columbia, where they were held without bond hearings or due process while they awaited trial.
To hold the new influx of detainees, the D.C.
Department of Corrections reopened an abandoned jail pod, which was once used to house psychiatric inmates.
It was abandoned due to deteriorating infrastructure and antiquated equipment and facilities.
It was here that the DOJ placed those they most wished to intimidate and prosecute from the turmoil on January 6th.
It really is like a scrolling Star Wars.
It's like the Empire closed in.
Yeah, absolutely.
A ragtag band of rebels assembled in a psych ward.
Newly found Jedi.
Travis View traveled to Coruscant to free them.
Many of the letters from detainees from this period are from military veterans who ended up participating in the events of January 6th, and that includes basically, like, all of the opening letters in the book.
So, Mike, you know, we got you here to kind of take a look at these people, their records, and what they had to say in their letters, and give us some feedback.
Yeah, you know, and there's definitely a lot more veterans and even active duty guys that were involved in J6 that aren't included in the book.
The ones who are included are pretty significant for reasons that we'll get to also.
I think maybe some historical context will be cool to go into because there really always has been a big connection between the organized right wing and the military, besides, of course, the U.S.
military itself being a reactionary institution.
You know, the KKK, of course, was founded by combat veterans of the Civil War, and since then, far-right groups have always recruited heavily among veterans.
In the modern era, you have a lot of vets and active-duty soldiers joining white power militias in the 1970s, bringing their experiences in the Vietnam War to train others.
There are even several incidents of soldiers stealing weapons for far-right militias.
In the 1970s, one KKK chapter at Marine Base Camp Pendleton had over 100 active-duty Marines who were pretty active in it.
Through the 80s, you have a lot of activity within the military by white nationalists like the Turner Diary types, many of whom joined the military specifically to get training for the coming race war so they could go back out and train others in their group.
There was a scandal in the late 80s with soldiers at two major army bases active in the White
Patriot Party.
Some of the most influential figures on the far right boasted their veteran credentials,
like Louis Beam, who wrote essays of a Klansman, and several other leaders of significant right-wing
organizations were veterans and really used that to get credibility and, of course, recruit
other veterans.
Neo-Nazi and far-right activity in the military kept increasing through the early 90s until
things peaked in 1995.
First, there was the lynching of a black couple by soldiers in a fairly large neo-Nazi organization on Fort Bragg.
And then, of course, the Oklahoma City bombing, which, you know, they say, according to the official story, was masterminded by a Gulf War combat veteran with a bronze star.
A DoD study the following year found far-right groups were sending members into the military to gain access to weapons and training.
These incidents led to a mostly inadequate effort to crack down on right-wing extremists in the ranks.
Like, you know, when I joined you'd be screened for tattoos and not able to enlist if you had any ones that looked like white nationalist ones.
This is right before 9-11.
But then we have 9-11, and they completely stopped caring about that, especially when recruitment numbers tanked.
In 2005, the Pentagon instituted a, quote, moral waiver policy, which really relaxed standards, opening the door to people who were just straight up in right-wing gangs and had, you know, criminal records and felonies for activity in those gangs.
This led to far-right publications really urging their followers and readers to join the military.
The Southern Poverty Law Center found in 2006 that quote recruiters are knowingly allowing neo-Nazis and white supremacists to join the armed forces and commanders don't remove them from the military even after we positively identify them as extremists or gang members end quote.
Right-wing extremists going in, but also veterans being recruited to the same groups after they get out.
Then we get to the alt-right era.
An Iraq war veteran founded Identity Europa.
The Atomwaffen Division, which was busted planning some domestic terrorist attacks, was founded by a guy in the Army National Guard with lots of members in the military.
You have the Patriot Front, which we've been seeing a lot of lately being quite active publicly.
According to leaked documents last year, about one in four applicants to Patriot Front are young veterans.
And then the Oath Keepers, which in my experience, you know, in the early 2000s, like up until 2010 or so, you know, I'm not an expert on the Oath Keepers at all, but just anecdotally, like I'd always kind of seen them and encountered them in like California, Arizona, and Florida from like, you know, 2005, you know, onward.
They always seemed like kind of like a sad group of guys.
Most of them had never deployed, like, you know, they'd have been in the Air Force as a finance guy for four years and never left North Carolina, but you know, it's their whole identity being a veteran.
And so they went from that to being really battle-hardened and experienced cadres from the Combat Arms Special Operations.
People had been to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Back in, actually, 2009, when I was in this organization, Iraq Veterans Against the War, the Oath Keepers was, like, really trying to recruit from our organization to train them and go help them do, like, patrolling on the border.
Like, to go join, like, Sheriff Joe Arpaio's, you know, deputized militia and shit.
So they were really actively trying to recruit from among Iraq war veterans, and they really succeeded with that.
That's what we saw on January 6th.
Involvement by a lot of current and former military who had been recruited to far-right organizations online and were putting their skills to the test in this DC plot.
Or as they say it, a small business owner.
Entrepreneur!
Real estate tycoon.
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