Behind the Bastards - Part Five: The Hidden Civil War

Episode Date: August 21, 2019

Robert is joined by Katy Stoll and Cody Johnston for a reading of Chapter Five of Robert's. 'The War on Everyone. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse look like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science?

And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest? I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's thwartin' my Sophie's? I'm Robert Evans, host of Behind the Bastards, and during the break we took between this chapter and the last one, I stole back the case of Perrier, and I'm going to throw it at some point. Sophie's standing next to me right now trying to get it back, but she's not. She's not gonna. Everybody's nervous. No, but I need a drink.

If I open the Perrier can to get a drink to wet my throat, then when I throw it, it's just gonna do more damage. Wait, so you're gonna take one out, and you're gonna throw that one? Well, now I'm not. There's something about trees happening. What are visual things going on right now? What I love about visual things is that they're the ideal thing to do on a podcast, famed visual medium. We're doing great. Chapter 5, A Hidden Civil War.

One of the issues with discussing the history of secret organizations formed to overthrow the government is that, for obvious reasons, an awful lot is left in shadow. We do not know the precise day, or the hour, that the order was founded. We do not know its exact composition, or to what precise extent men like Lewis Beam and William Pierce were involved in it. Officially, the order was formed. Probably not, certainly not a lot. Officially, the order was founded in September of 1983 by Robert Matthews during a convention he attended for Pierce's National Alliance in Arlington. While Beam and Pierce tended to approach the issue of sparking a fascist revolution rather differently, Matthews had deep ties to both men. He was profoundly influenced by Beam's ideas and writings, and was also an obsessive fan of the Turner Diaries.

He essentially acted as a bridge between the two sides of the vanguardist movement, tying Beam's clansmen and Christian identity nuts together with Pierce's neo-Nazis. William Pierce called the order the Aryan resistance movement. Robert Miles called it the Brutus Schweigen, or silent brotherhood. But to Bob Matthews, and most of the members, it was known simply as the order. In direct imitation of the group responsible for organizing the fictional white nationalist insurgency in the Turner Diaries. There were originally nine men, three from the National Alliance, four from the Aryan nations, and one from our clansmen. So that's cool. Now Matthews devised a six-step strategy for his new terror organization.

He would start by recruiting a base of soldiers around the nation and train them at sundry fascist compounds around the country. Once Matthews had to train a corps of soldiers, they would begin committing robberies and counterfeiting money. This would fund the purchase of an arsenal, which would allow them to commit more ambitious robberies and raise millions of dollars, which they would then dispense to different fascist groups around the nation. In essence, Bob Matthews had looked out at all the white supremacist compounds around the country, places like Elohim City, the Aryan nations, Nehemiah Township, and various Possecomatatus communities. He decided these groups had potential if they were connected and funded more effectively. The order was a way to do that. When carrying out this plan, Matthews was both working to fulfill Pierce's dream of a big-tent fascist organization and actively funding Beam's plan to connect these different groups via the early internet. Okay.

Cool? Just a bunch of cool buds hanging out. A bunch of cool dudes having cool friends. The order's end goal was a white ethno-state in the Pacific Northwest. Here, too, Matthews was following in the footsteps of other fascist thinkers. The Northwest Imperative, as it is now known, first propped up in the 1970s and was initially cheered on by Christian identity pastor and Aryan nations leader Richard Butler. In creating the order, Matthews had synthesized decades of far-right thinking with his love of the Turner Diaries into a serious plan for revolution. On paper, it looked kind of silly. It was even based off of the speculative science fiction.

But Matthews quickly turned his plans into action. On October 28th, 1983, Bob and several of his men held up an adult bookstore in Spokane, Washington, netting $300. It was an… seems silly, right? Seems silly. Seems not worth it. Seems not worth it. But this small-scale crime was just the start of many. Matthews and his crew kept on robbing. Two months later, they stole $25,000 from a Seattle bank. Okay.

And that was $3,600 from a Spokane bank. They robbed a courier after picking up the daily cash receipts from a Shoney's restaurant and made out with $8,000. The order professionalized quickly, and within a matter of months, they'd also started counterfeiting $50 bills. Okay, they… yeah. Well, they don't need to do that. They're still on the money. They really didn't need to do that. It would turn out to have been a bad idea. Yeah. Yeah. But the idea was that, like, by counterfeiting money, they could both damage the state by, like,

circulating looms, yeah. Circulating looms, yeah. By spring 1984, Robert Matthews had proved himself to be a competent and dangerous guerrilla leader, and his order was quickly becoming the biggest new thing in American fascism. Dozens of young militants flocked to join and do their part to further the cause. They flooded in from other far-right groups with names like the Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord. Sundry, Posse, Comitatus crews. All of them are so bad. In assorted KKK chapters. Yeah, they're all… they're fucking nerds.

It just doesn't… it always grosses me out. Yeah, the Proud Boys are just one variation on a theme of terrible names for right-wing terrorist groups. Yeah. In order to build camaraderie and loyalty, Matthews developed rituals for his warrior elite. I'm going to quote now from Bring the War Home. They took their induction oath on Matthews Farm. They stood in a circle around a white female infant who symbolized the race they sought to protect. They raised their arms in a Hitler salute.

I, as a free Aryan man, they recited, hereby swear an unrelenting oath upon the green graves of our sires, upon the children and the wombs of our wives. They swore that they had no fear of death or foe, but had a sacred duty to do whatever is necessary to deliver our people from the Jew and bring total victory to the Aryan race. They pledged secrecy about all activities to follow. They swore to rescue any of their number-taken prisoner. Should an enemy agent hurt you, they promised their silent brothers, I will chase him to the ends of the earth and remove his head from his body. Their oath recognized them as racial warriors, but also transformed them into weapons. My brothers, let us be God's battle acts and weapons of war. Let us go forth by ones and twos, by scores and legions as true Aryan men, they vowed.

We are in a state of war and will not lay down our weapons until we have driven the enemy into the sea and reclaimed the land which was promised to our fathers of old, and through our blood and his will becomes the land of our children to be. I cannot believe these nerds. You look so disgusted to that entire thing. I was just like, oh, I hate it so much. Some sexist, racist, awful, white supremacist bullshit. But it's also so, they're so embarrassing. It's also what it is. It's like they're so evil and they're so lame.

This is kind of why I think that like making stuff like Dungeons & Dragons and LARPing more socially acceptable might reduce the number of young men who do this. A healthier outlet. Yeah, just give them an excuse to talk about axes. Yeah, and believe in magical things instead of hating people. Except gamers, you know. Yeah, that really kind of proves me incorrect on that because they just did both. They just do both. They just do both, yeah.

In March 1984, the Order carried out their first robbery of an armored car. They netted $43,000. They robbed the same armored car again in April and got their biggest score yet, $230,000. Later that month, Order members also bombed a synagogue in Boise, Idaho. Okay. As the summer of 1984 rolled along, Matthews and other members of his inner circle began to worry that one of their men, Walter West, might talk. Two of Bob's men shot and buried him in the woods on June 1st. A little more than two weeks later, on June 17th, Matthews and three of his men shot and killed Alan Berg, a Jewish radio host and anti-fascist who regularly attacked neo-Nazis on the air.

The Berg murder officially raced the Order's profile and guaranteed major law enforcement attention. The group's danger was reinforced a month later when they heisted a Brinks truck in Ukiah, California and made off with a staggering $3.6 million. Wow. Jeez, so. Yep, wonder where all that money went. Let's read the next paragraph. Now flushed with enough cash to wage a revolution, Matthews and his order began buying up guns like they were going out of style. That's where it went.

They also purchased a 300-acre plot of land in Missouri and 110 acres in Idaho. Each participant in the robbery got $40,000, but the bulk of the money went to other fascists around the country. Different organizations received grants and $100,000 increments. Matthews also tithed... Here's your Nazi grant. Here's your Nazi grant. God. Do Nazi research.

Yeah, good luck with your Nazi stuff. Matthews also tithed 10% of his stolen money to the Aryan nations. So that's good. Yeah, you know, just giving out, giving back. They're really hurting for cash. Yeah. You know who else is hurting for cash? Oof, that's a bad ad transition, Sophie.

Yeah, I'm talking about Nazi welfare. You know who else wants your cash? And is better than Nazis? Yeah. The advertisers for this show. The advertisers for this show. Yeah. That's good.

We hope, yeah. Yeah. I am not doing great today. I do have Chekhov's case of carry. No, not yet. I just, I feel like I have to really build it up because... My heart stopped. It's definitely going to be the last thing I get to throw in this room.

You're locked in now. Sophie's just giving me a look. Anyway, products! During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson, and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI, sometimes you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy.

Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy-voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark. And not in the good and bad ass way. He's a nasty shark. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to heaven.

Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991, and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left offending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space, 313 days that changed the world.

Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus? It's all made up.

Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. How you doing Sophie? Yeah, you should make sure the dog's on the other side of the room. Because who knows when I'll throw this parier. Just look for the dog. I will. Members of the order developed codenames and acquired fake IDs. Matthews even had silver medallions crafted to act as proof of membership. Cool. Oh, it's about to get cooler, Katie, because they had nicknames.

What? Yep. Nicknames like Lone Wolf, Field Marshall, Yosemite Sam. Did you say veal Marshall? Field Marshall. Oh, these are bad. Yosemite Sam. Yeah. One member was nicknamed Mr. Closet for his love of assaulting gay men. Oh my god. No. It makes it sound like he's in the closet, but he probably was. He probably was. Louis Beam was codenamed Jolly and Lone Star. Pierce was codenamed Brigham after Mormon leader Brigham Young.

Both men had medallions. The only good nickname there is Jolly. Man, they are showing themselves. First of all, it's super lame to pick your own nickname and you know they all picked their own nicknames. Except for maybe Mr. Closet. I feel like somebody gave him that nickname. Yeah, but they're so bad. They're so lame. They're so lame. Okay. And bad. They're silly. And you get it all. It's like Lone Wolf. All right. No, you're not. You're like a bunch of Nazis.

You got your law enforcement. Field officer? No, Field Marshall. Field Marshall. It's not like there's some cops that are Nazis. Well, no, that's not a Field Marshall. That's not a cop thing. I like law enforcement. No, no. Field Marshall is like a general level rank. But it was like the Germans had a lot of field. Not only Germans.

But it's a military guy. Yeah, it's a military. Yeah, but the same like idea. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you got Yosemite Sam, which is silly. Yep. Yosemite Sam. You got all the things that they are.

Yeah, it's silly. I know exactly who they are. Yeah. In nine months, Bob Matthews had turned his dreams and the theories of men like Beaman Pierce into a real revolutionary movement. He'd made the Turner Diaries real. New recruits to the order were reportedly handed copies of the book. And for a while, law enforcement seemed powerless to do anything to stop them. According to Bring the War Home, quote,

even if federal agents and a few journalists were aware of the white power movement, the mainstream public continued to see most white power violence as the work of errant madmen. The phrase Lone Wolf previously used to describe criminals acting alone was employed increasingly in the 1980s and 90s to describe white power activists. This played into the movement's aim to prevent anyone from putting together a cohesive account of the group's actions. Yep. That all checks out, doesn't it? And they're also silly. So why take them seriously?

The history of how we don't call white terrorists. But you know who we should call terrorists? Antifa. The group that didn't kill anybody. Wait, zero people? Yes. Are you suggesting that they're not? I'm just saying, like, of the groups, I'm willing to consider terrorists.

Al Qaeda, the death toll thousands, right? Yeah. Antifa, death toll zero. KKK, death toll thousands, but they're not actually a terrorist group in the US. That's white nationalist terrorism. It doesn't seem to be treated as seriously. That's because they're a bunch of lone wolves in a pack together. Yeah, you can't fight lone wolves.

Because they are a pack, but they're alone. Yeah, they're a lone pack. They're a pack of lone wolves, which you can't defend against. And not be moron is what it is. Okay. Good times. So the orders undoing came from a member of the group and a former national alliance goon named Tom Martinez.

Matthews had brought Martinez in to help pass counterfeit bills around his home in Philadelphia. He was caught by the FBI, and he turned informant to avoid prison. The FBI used this information to track Matthews to Portland, Oregon, where they engaged him in a short gun battle. Bob was wounded, but managed to flee to Whidbey Island in Washington with several of his most loyal soldiers. The FBI surrounded the house, and eventually all of Matthews' men surrendered. But Robert Matthews refused to give up. Alone, he fought the FBI off for an astonishing 40 hours. The bureau eventually burned the cabin down around Matthews, killing him on December 8th, 1984.

Okay. Yeah. And that's a bit of a hero to these guys to this day. Yeah, it really is. Yeah. With their leader dead, the order eventually crumbled, proving, by the way, that Louis-Beam had been right to emphasize leaderless resistance. After five months of arrests around the country, more than 50 members of the order had been arrested.

The FBI recovered a great deal of cash, but millions remained unaccounted for. They found what some of that money had bought, though, when they raided the heavily armed Ozarks compound of the Covenant the Sword and the Arm of the Lord. Law anti-tank rockets and machine guns were found hidden on the property. The CSA were not the only group who had bought rocket launchers with the orders they'll gotten gains, however. And not all of those weapons were recovered. This is part of why it became illegal for U.S. servicemen to be members of extremist

groups, because all of these fucking weapons kept getting it in their hands. And that's the only reason. Yeah, that's the only reason you did that. You used to be really easy to get military-grade weapons. They did some reforms that have made that harder, apparently. Well, good bully for them. Kudos to the military. I mean, they're actually of all the government organizations.

They're the only one with any kind of effective long-term response to any of this. Okay. Yeah, that's true. Now, the first trial associated with the order took place in Seattle and included several members of the CSA. They pled guilty on weapons charges and were convicted of racketeering. Next, the U.S. attorney brought a 93-page indictment against 23 members of the order. Robert Miles, Louis Beam, and William Pierce were not indicted.

In the months leading up to the trial, members of the order rolled over on their comrades with unusual regularity. By the time the trial rolled around in September 1985, only 10 of them actually faced trial. This hardened core of loyal racists included David Lane, the man who would years later coin the 14 words that neo-nazis still use today as a calling card. Right on. Yep. During the case, prosecutors specifically noted that the Turner Diaries had acted as a blueprint

for Bob Matthews. According to Blood & Politics, quote, In an opening statement, a defense attorney acknowledged that his client was a clan member and an avowed white separatist. Now I say white separatist, he continued, because there is a significant difference in an individual who professes to be a white supremacist as opposed to a white separatist. Sure.

What was that difference? The white separatist is nothing different than a black nationalist who advocates a separation of races, wants to live only with those members of his race. He advocates the fact that when races are mixed together, they cannot survive because of their division in their cultural backgrounds, their upbringing, and their history. The Seattle jury did not buy this distinction between white supremacy and white separatists in 1985, any more than the Supreme Court was willing to endorse separate but equal doctrine in 1954.

Neither did the jury believe defense efforts to impugn the credibility of Aryans who became prosecution witnesses, nor did jurors accept contentions that the defendant's beliefs were unrelated to the enumerated crimes. After four months at trial, all were found guilty. Okay. So that's good. That's good. Yeah.

In death, Bob Matthews and his order became a symbol for fascists around the country. In Raleigh, North Carolina, hundreds of Nazis rallied under banners that said, we love the order. In Idaho, a group called Order 2 set off several bombs in Coeur d'Alene. The date of Matthews death, December 8th, became martyr's day to many neo-Nazis. Some of them started carrying out memorial camping trips near where he had been killed on Whidbey Island. But still, the order had failed in its goals.

And that failure had come at a substantial cost. William Beam and Lewis Pierce had not been indicted or charged as a result of Matthews activities, but they now found themselves at the center of much more FBI attention. In an operation named Clean Sweep, the bureau began seating white supremacist organizations around the country with undercover operatives. Later in 1985, they stopped an Aryan Nation's plot to kill a government informant. Another terrorist associated with the group was stopped after a bombing a federal building. Several businesses, an erectory in Coeur d'Alene.

In 1986, the feds busted William Potter Gale, founder of the Posse Comitatus in Nevada. Gale and several allies were convicted of planning to bomb the IRS. Kind of sounds like an insurgency. Yeah, it kind of does sound like an insurgency. A lot of plans. Yeah. Near the end of 1986, the FBI busted eight members of a new group, the Arizona Patriots, before they could carry out their goal of following in Bob Matthews' footsteps.

The group had planned to rob banks to finance a domestic insurgency. All around the US, white supremacists continued to plot and launch attacks. One of these men was Glenn Miller, formerly the leader of a group called the White Patriot Party. He'd received at least $75,000 in order money from Bob Matthews. As the FBI busted more and more of these guys, they found more and more evidence of the order's influence and money. And gradually, they pieced together the story of what had really happened, and came to realize that Matthews' group had sought nothing less than the complete overthrow of the federal government. In mid-1986, Louis Beam, Richard Butler, Robert Miles, and several other ideological leaders of the fascist movement were finally indicted for their role in the order.

So that's cool. Wow. Yeah. And we're going to hear about what happened next after... Oh no. ... ads. I'm just incapable of doing a good ad transition. That was great.

Thank you. But it's a lie. You know, it's not a lie. Oh god. Wait a minute. I'm not going to throw it yet. I'm just, I'm building tension. Every time you bring it up.

This is how you, the screenwriting 101, Katie. I know. It's Chekhov's case of Perrier. I just, my heart stops. That's the idea. But I'm cool and laid back. So whatever you're going to do. You know, the reality of the situation is, as soon as I started really getting a sense for the heft of this case,

I started regretting the fact that I've talked this up so much. But now it has to happen. What about taking one out? No. Throwing it. That actually might make it more dangerous. Because then it'll fall out the back like a scatter bomb. If you open it, it's more likely that it'll burst.

What if I covered it? It'll probably still. What if we taped pillows all around it? I don't think we can do that. I think I have to throw it. You could subvert the narrative and not throw it. But the best thing to do with narratives is not to subvert them. Sure.

You could just give it a gentle. We tell stories the way we do. You could redefine what throwing is. Make it like a gentle toss. I'm not going to go 110% because I don't feel like that's necessary given the extremity of what this case of Perrier represents. But I am going to throw it. I mean, those are the cans, correct?

Yeah. Okay, that's something. Yeah, it's several pounds. 10 slim cans as the package states. How are we doing, Sophie? Ads. It's not even 12. Products!

During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson, and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI, sometimes you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver.

At the center of this story is a raspy-voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark. And on the gun badass way. He's a nasty shark. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to heaven. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC.

What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991, and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space. 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus? It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

We're back! We hadn't come back yet. I started talking about Perrier. So, yeah, Robert Miles, Richard Butler, Louis Beam, and several other fascist ideologues had gotten indicted for their role in the order. Getting all of these guys together was quite a task, and at one point Louis Beam's wife shot a federal agent who came for them, but eventually they all wound up under trial. So, the Justice Department charged these men with a number of crimes, including seditious conspiracy, to quote, overthrow, put down, and destroy by force the government of the United States and form a new Aryan nation. Oddly enough, William Pierce was not indicted. Seditious conspiracy was a crime numerous communists and Puerto Rican nationalists had already been successfully convicted of committing,

but no Nazis or white supremacists had ever been convicted of the crime. Despite the order's shocking violence and well-documented goals, this fact did not change. The trial convened in February of 1988, and the fascist defense attorneys managed to exclude any black people from the jury. The trial was almost instantly a shit show, and served more to allow Louis Beam to preach his views to the nation than to guarantee justice. In his opening statement, he told the jury, the only reason I'm here is because I said what I think. If the Constitution is still alive, I'm innocent. Beam admitted that he had set up computer billet and boards for different fascist groups around the country, but denied that these boards were used for any illicit communication.

He told the jury he'd been changing his daughter's diaper when the purported meeting that created the order had occurred, so he dubbed the government's case the baby diaper conspiracy. Wait a minute, for the whole meeting? Yeah, that's what he said. That's an outrageous diaper. Like, take her to the doctor, man. It doesn't hold up. You're doing more to pick this story apart than anyone in the court of law did. Beam ended one speech in his defense with an almost word-for-word recitation of something he'd written in essays of a Klansman. About his anger at protesters he'd supposedly encountered after returning home from Vietnam.

Quote from Beam, As I sat there watching the flag disintegrate, rage and bitterness began to engulf me. The flames consuming the flag changed to flames enveloping an armored personnel carrier in the hobo woods north of Saigon. The cheers of the demonstrators became the screams of a 19-year-old soldier over his radio as he burned to death, trapped inside what was fast becoming his coffin. The clapping of his hands as the flag fell to the ground became the deafening roar of my M-60 machine gun as I literally melted the barrel in an attempt to pin down the enemy long enough for the dying soldier's friends to reach him. Finally, at last came the laughter of those demonstrators as they spit on the ashes at their feet,

blending in my mind with the sobs of grown men as I remembered the armored personnel carrier disappearing in a ball of orange flame. Okay. The prosecution just lets them say this shit. Yeah. Yeah. The judge just lets them say this shit. It's upsetting. After seven weeks of trial, Louis Beam and his fellow defendants were all found not guilty of seditious conspiracy.

They were released, presumably free to return to their lives in the movement. Of doing nothing, though. Of doing nothing. Like they're just gonna go back their lives. Harmless lives of being harmless. The Justice Department had taken it shot at the intellectual center of the white supremacist movement. They had failed. And ultimately, their failure came not from law enforcement's unwillingness to prosecute Nazis,

but from ordinary white Americans and the sympathy they held for men like Beam, who build themselves as warriors against communism and patriots. Beam's racism and his desire to overthrow the government simply weren't seen as that bad by a jury of his peers. Sure. The leaders of the white supremacist movement had gotten off more or less scot-free. But the court battle and the months many of them had spent on the lamb before being arrested had aged them all. Richard Butler's influence would gradually fade after he returned home to Idaho. Louis Beam continued to be an influential mind within the movement,

but he would be more careful and much quieter from now on. The heat brought on by the crackdown forced Beam to retire his beloved inter-clan newsletter and survival alert. The last issue contained an essay by an unknown author, probably Beam. In it, he wrote, The Second American Revolution will be a revolution of individuals, a revolution without exact precedent in recorded history, because individuals can accomplish complex acts of resistance without peril of betrayal or even detection by the most advanced snooping devices.

Missions formally assigned to groups may be undertaken by individuals equipped to fight alone. It would not be long before a young man, named Timothy McVeigh, would prove these words prophetic. Individualistic. Yeah. Communic. It's collective, but they're lone wolves. Yeah, that's the thing. But they are lone wolves.

Just individual crazy people, like the guy who shot up the Gilroy Garlic Festival. Right? Not connected to a larger movement. What was the manifesto or the book that you've been reading? It was by a guy named Ragnar Redbeard, and it's one of a number of books that appears regularly and full. He was writing in the 1890s about white nationalism and kind of eco-fascism. Kind of a really early eco-fascist text.

Yeah, it's what the other fucking guy, the piece of dumb piece of shit, said. And it's one of a number of books that circulates a lot on 8chan, actually. They send around PDFs for this stuff. It's stuff that people wouldn't have been able to get before the internet, which is why LouisBeeam was 100% right to start doing this. Yeah, more absolutely. We'll talk more about that later. I think I'm going to wait until next episode to really launch this Perrier,

but that's what we call foreshadowing. Or stating your intentions, I guess. Yeah, kind of like the Nazis did. And like the Nazis, I expect to not get in trouble no matter what happens. I would say that that's actually foreshadowing that you won't throw the Perrier, like you're talking yourself up about it, you're bringing it up, you're reinforcing it in a really obvious way. And so that might be foreshadowing to us that you're not going to change your mind.

Oh, I've got to throw them. Until I said this. Anywho. But then he said that. We've talked about it too much. Well, you guys want to plug your plugables? Yeah, you know what? We do.

We have a show called Some More News. That's the YouTube show. And a podcast called Even More News. Cody? I agree. And a Patreon. And a Twitter.com. And a T-Public.

And a T-Public. And we're on Twitter. Yeah. You can buy T-shirts from T-Public. You can find us on the internet somewhere. Yeah, you can. All these cans in the next episode. Oh, no.

Yeah. I scoot it all the way away. I know. I love making you flinch. Just listen to the sound. That's foreshadowing. Can I have one? That's ominous.

No. Under no circumstances. All right. Episode over. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. No country to bring him down. With the Soviet Union collapsing around him, he orbited the Earth for 313 days that changed the world.

Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.