Behind the Bastards - The Story Behind All Those Nazi / Clown Memes

Episode Date: October 17, 2019

In Episode 90, Robert is joined by Katy Stoll and Cody Johnston to discuss the war on clowns. FOOTNOTES: Apu Apustaja Clown faces fine for protesting neo-Nazi march Virginia Man Using Accordion-Playing Clowns To Get Revenge On White Supremacist Swedish neo-Nazis met by clown activists Clowns Attack KKK Rally in Charlotte, NC with Humor Clowns Kicked KKK Asses Producers, The (1967) -- (Movie Clip) Springtime For Hitler The best way to fight neo-Nazis is to … laugh? Why Nazis Are So Afraid of These Clowns Patriot Prayer’s Joey Gibson has a sad day in Albany Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

And now for today's Roblox Winter Weather Alert, iHeartland on Roblox has been walloped by a winter snowstorm. It is a winter wonderland. You can now ice skate at State Farm Park. In State Farm Neighborhood, you can compete in snowball fights, grab a hot cocoa and cookies, and more. There's also special events from your favorite artists and podcasters all month, along with scavenger hunts,

exclusive content, and unique items. So enjoy the festive winter weather at iHeartland on Roblox. Head to iHeartRadio.com slash iHeartland today. I'm Mo Raca, and I'm back with season three of my podcast, Mobituaries. I've dug up even more stories about the people and things that fascinate me. From the fruit that once scandalized.

The shape of the banana made it taboo. To the band that played second banana to the Beatles. They were lucky to come in second, and the truth is they only came in second for about two months. Listen to Mobituaries on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Back in 1999, a young woman from South Carolina vanished. Seven years passed.

She was presumed dead. Then a tip came in. He said, I think I found your girl, and she's alive. She's in New York. And I said, really? The detective on the case, he didn't buy it. He came to believe that he was dealing with an imposter. Who was this woman, really?

Listen to deep cover on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's violating my OSHA guidelines? I'm Robert Evans, the host of Behind the Bastards. The podcast will retell you everything you don't know, but the very worst people in all of history. And today my guests, Cody Johnston, Katie Stoll. Hey. Hi.

How are you guys doing? I'm doing great. Oh yeah, we're here, we're alive. We just recorded Worst Year Ever, and now we're recording this. We did, and yeah, I made a little very subtle reference to violating OSHA guidelines. Now, you wanna tell us a little bit about the objects that I've assembled on the table here?

Well, we got, okay, we got some English muffins wrapped in twine. We've got a bag of mini bagels. We've got a machete. That's the Billy Wayne Davis podcast in machete. We've got a large knife. Yeah, a kitchen knife. And Sophie's got a switch blade.

I gave Sophie my walking around knife. His everyday knife. Your standard knife. And that's not to mention all the various snacks and beverages that are also on this table, but I think these are the items you were referring to. So this twine wrapped around this entire box of Thomas brand English muffins

with the original Nooks and Crannies. Nooks and Crannies, thank you. This is a sling, a shepherd's sling. It's a weapon from the ancient world that a fan of ours, a fan of mine, made very generously, specifically to throw bagels, but we're out of bagels. I threw quite a few of them and did some damage

to the other recording room when Sophia was in here and we talked about the Falwell family. One of the things I've learned, one thing I haven't learned about how to use this is how to make anything I throw go in the direction I want it to. Oh, you don't know how to aim? That's unimportant.

It appears to be impossible, but I have not, I have refused to read the very helpful guidelines that the creator of this object left me and instead have just been recklessly tossing things and other things. Yeah, I think step one fling. Step one thing, fling and no other steps. Step two, watch.

Didn't they advise that you never use it indoors? Yes, now, so when I started experimenting with this and I realized that I couldn't control the direction of it, I also realized that the best thing to do would be to play a little game where I fling packages of bread-based food products at y'all and you all have large knives to try to knock them out of the air,

much like a pinata, but flinging into the air. However, since I can't direct the objects to go where I want them to go, I figured the safest thing to do would be to arm everyone in the room with a different kind of bladed object and then have them stand in different areas. Why do I have the smallest blade?

Well, it's also the best steel. That counts for a lot, so does quality steel. There's not a lot, I did not bring enough machetes because I had to fly here. Not all steel can defend you from a bread product. And I'm sorry about that. It's not the size that matters, it's how much steel is there.

The size does matter, give me the machete. Wow. I mean, I have not decided who gets what. You guys, I feel like whoever gets the machete first gets the machete. Give me the machete. Sophie wants the machete. No, you owe me. I want to be double armed, give me the machete.

That's not going to work well. This is not a democracy. Are you saying this is not a democracy, give me the knives? Whoa, Sophie. If it's a knifeocracy. In between the recording of where she'll ever and behind the bastards, producer Sophie becomes a republic.

Things have changed. She's been radicalized. Wow. So we're not going to fling objects around the room with dangerous weapons and everyone is saying quite yet. Quite yet. Just yet, okay.

Quite yet. That's what we call, I don't know what we call that. I'm not aware of other podcasts that do this. Well, you're the only podcast. I am. Worth a toss. What are we talking about today? What are we talking about today?

Have you guys noticed some clowns all around the internet? Oh no. And people's posts and like Twitter profiles of people and like online, people dressing up like clowns at protests. Yeah, I see some clowns around. Yeah.

You guys noticed the president of the United States shared a video themed after take on me that at one point has one of the people he's talking to in a clown regalia for some strange reason. Oh, I did not. Yeah, that happened too. Today's about why are the clowns all over the place these days?

Which kind of clowns? What Friday clowns? Scariest clowns? Couple kinds of clowns actually. Couple kinds of clowns. So in our modern era of shiny new fascist movements tromping through the streets in various guises, the kind of folks who don't like fascism

have found themselves in a bit of a crossroads. At one end are the black bloc and the Antifa who have become the boogie men and women of breathless TV anchors. These people say fascists need to be outnumbered, overwhelmed and sometimes even confronted with physical violence in order to force them off the streets. And on the other end of things,

you have folks who believe the best action is no action. If we ignore the fascists, they'll go away and confronting them in the street only earns them sympathy. Most in the activist community tend to land in the middle advocating a diversity of tactics. And for years, one of the most prominent tactics was clown-based mockery.

And we're going on a little bit of a journey for this one. So I hope you're all excited. Honk honk. I'm buckled in. The history of clowns as organized parts of activism goes back at least as far as 2003. When a small group in the UK formed the clandestine insurgent rebel clown army, or circa,

they trained cadres of clowns who would show up at the front lines of protests and confront riot police with seltzer water honking red noses and that one weird scarf trick clowns do, I presume. Now, their purpose was mostly to boost the spirits of activists dealing with police violence, washing mace out of their eyes and cringing away from trenches and such. At their height, circa had around 150 professional clowns

in Edinburgh, Scotland alone. And cadres were formed in other cities in Europe in the United States. So that's cool. Cool. Sounds nice. Still hate clowns. Still hate clowns.

More or less OK with those clowns. You might say that a guy like Vermin Supreme today is kind of like the modern incarnation of that attitude towards clowning at protests where it exists to kind of de-stress everybody, de-esolate things, distract people. Yeah. Yeah, there's a sense of de-escalating and sort of like being like, this is a silly time.

This is a silly time. We can have some fun with it. But also, the thing fascist hate the most is being mocked and not taken seriously. They hate it. We're going to get to that. Thank goodness. Yeah, yeah, I think it's a complicated issue to discuss.

We'll touch on that. Yeah. Now, in 2005, the National Socialist Movement decided to hold a parade on the capital steps of Olympia, Washington. It was to be your standard Nazi affair. A dozen-ish guys in uniforms waving flags trying to trigger people.

The ostensible goal of the march was recruitment, which the group could sorely use. A year or so later, the National Socialist Movement would barely be able to scrape together 80 people from across the entire United States. So according to the Seattle Times, instead of shouting or worse, attacking, protesters dressed up as Nazi clowns to mimic the rally.

Ever see a Nazi clown goose-stepping? It was like springtime for Hitler. David Neuert, a journalist covering fascism since forever, says after a time, onlookers seemed to forget about the deflated white nationalist entirely. That was the most striking defeat I've ever seen dealt to neo-Nazis. And Neuert still kind of holds to this line.

That's the most effective way that you can confront these people in the streets. That's pretty good. In 2007, a group of fascists calling themselves Vinlanders decided to hold a march in Knoxville, Tennessee. They were confronted by a clown block made up of members of the group Anti-Racist Action, or ARA. Again, the clowns pantomime Nazi salutes and goose-stepping,

basically holding their own clown-themed version of the rally. When the Nazis chanted white power, the clown shouted back, white flower, and then threw fistfuls of flower in the air. That's fun. That is fun. Yeah, that's nice.

I bet they were so mad. I bet they were. All this pissed off Alex Linder, the rally organizer, so much that he charged at the clowns and attempted to assault them. He was arrested by Knoxville police immediately. Again, the clowns dealt a startling blow to roughly a dozen Nazis.

That's good. That's pretty good. I'm coming around on these clowns. Yeah, you can make them look silly, make them angry, trigger them. Trigger them. And then they do the violence and then they get, yeah. Speaking of triggered,

I can see that Sophie and Katie are passing notes and I don't know what's happening. Katie, just give me a really cool sticker. I gave her a sticker. Sorry. I feel like somebody's trying to take my throwing sling away. No, no, no, no, no, no.

She gave me an even more new sticker, which you can also buy on to public. She asked for one, so I brought it and I didn't want to give it to her before I forgot. I was listening. Okay. He's cradling his nooks and crannies right now. He's cradling the sling.

Wrapped in the sling, yeah. I didn't mean to offend you. Robert, nobody's taking your sling today. You couldn't use it as much as you want, buddy. All right, well, when the police come later, I'm gonna tell them you said I could use it as much as I want. Yeah, I'll vouch for you.

It's fine. Thank you. Do crime save lives. Beautiful. In 2012, the National Socialist Movement again held a rally this time in Charlotte, North Carolina. They drew about 50 supporters, making it one of the more sizable gatherings

in the group's history. Several hundred clowns showed up to counter-protest, outnumbering the Nazis five to one by some accounts. Again, they tossed white flour in response to Nazi chance of white power. This counter-protest was organized by the Latin American Coalition. Their youth coordinator, Lacey Williams,

said this to WCNC. The message from us is, you look silly. We're dressed like clowns and you're the ones that look funny. Yeah. Okay, yeah. Not inaccurate. Not inaccurate.

In January, 2017, more than 500 Swedish Nazis from the Nordic Resistance Movement held a rally in the city of Falun on International Labor Day. They were confronted by the activist group We Are Dalarna, many of whom showed up yet again dressed as clowns. Ivan Midzic, a representative of the counter-protesters, showed Radio Sweden that he had come to believe humor

was the most potent weapon against fascist extremists. Angry people, they know how to meet anger. They know how to meet hate and violence, but they don't know how to meet humor. We could see they were very troubled by having us there. Now, Midzic said that his clown rally was directly inspired by the ongoing activism of clown cadres in Finland who had shown up in clown block

to counter the anti-immigrant group Soldiers of Odin for years. By 2017, the idea of confronting fascists with clowns was rather popular with activists all over the globe. From an optic standpoint, this sort of activism was certainly successful. Mainstream news sources were markedly more positive towards activists who dressed as clowns rather than in black,

even when the activists dressed in black didn't do anything. Now, Justin Bates is from Charlottesville, Virginia. In the wake of the 2017 rally that killed Heather Hire, or in which Heather Hire was murdered by a Nazi, he started to get racist robocalls from Scott Rhodes of Idaho. You guys remember Scott Rhodes, Road to Power?

Yeah. We talked about him during the midterms. Yeah, I do. Fun guy. I love when these colorful characters pop up again. It's like in Frasier when somebody from Cheers would come in once a season. Love that.

It's comforting. It's comforting. The American fascist cinematic universe. Yeah. Yeah. Just popping in. Everybody's Woody Harrelson. I'd watch that.

I'd watch that. Now, yeah, so he starts getting these very racist, very anti-Semitic robocalls from Scott Rhodes of Idaho. Now, Bates decided to counter this by organizing an event where people would dress as clowns and play accordions outside Rhodes' home. Quote, he targeted my home town. So I said, OK, if he wants to use his First Amendment rights

to spread his ridiculousness, then I'll use my First Amendment rights to spread my own ridiculousness. And you know what? Why not do it in front of his house for as long as possible? Because if he's going to torment my friends and neighbors and their homes and businesses with his stupid shit, if he wants to get into a stupid shit competition,

I'll win that every day. That's a choice quote. It's a good quote. It just says stupid, expletive, but I think it's pretty honest who's saying stupid shit. Yeah. That's real good. Now, that does sound like a fun idea.

And unfortunately, I've actually found no evidence that Scott ever made this happen. Somebody does find it. I would love to be corrected on that. But what's interesting to me is that all the coverage at the time focused on the idea in a video he made of a clown. Bates announced in 2018 that he'd

planned to do this next spring. But as far as I'm aware, nothing happened this spring. Nonetheless, it's interesting to me how much media attention he received for this idea that didn't actually happen versus how much media attention is received by a lot of rallies from activists I've seen who've gotten hundreds or even thousands of people to show up and how nobody cares about it.

Here's a short list of the sites that covered Bates's not a clown stunt stunt. It didn't happen. FloridaPolitics.com, UKNews.yahoo, spokesman.com, Blavity, Huffington Post, Bonner County Daily Bee, Newsweek, and KHQ. All of those people covered it with man's response to a neo-Nazi robo-caller.

Sin Clowns, that's Newsweek. A Virginia Mound found a hilarious way to troll a racist robo-caller. It got a lot of coverage. Nothing ever happened. Weird to me. It is weird. Maybe a sign, though, that it actually

is a good tactic if there's more follow through, because the media seems interested in covering it. Yeah, it's a story that they can latch onto. And they're not going to fall into the trap that they always do with the false equivalence and things like that. It's just like, no, here's just what's going on. They're not making a judgment, really.

About whether or not someone should protest outside somebody's house. Yeah, or whether or not one side is just as dangerous as the other. Exactly, yeah. They're just very straightforward, supportive of the silly thing, as opposed to framing it like it's a serious issue.

And if it's a serious thing, then you have to be like, well, what are they both saying? Are they both the same? Is one violent one? It's all nonsense. Yeah, interesting lessons there. Now, it's hard for me to judge the actual efficacy of the tactic of confronting Nazis with clowns,

because for one thing, it does not seem to actually dissuade Nazis from continuing to march. In May of 2018, the Nordic resistance movement marched again in Ludvika, Sweden, again with around 500 people. Clowns against racism rallied against them, and they drew more activists than ever to show up in clown block, which proved to be a problem.

Because for the first time, the clowns drew in enough numbers that they had to have a permit to march. And since they hadn't gotten a permit, the police reported the organizer for contravening the law on public order. Ah, there it is. But again, these guys kept marching after being confronted by clowns.

If you're trying to make the case out of stop them, you've kind of got a long road to go there, even though there's some evidence that it can be very effective and can trigger them to make a bad optics decision has happened in Olympia. Right, it seems to be effective in certain ways. But not in the main way. It's not a silver bullet.

They aren't scared of clowns like I am. Yeah, they're not Katie. They aren't me, yeah. And if they were Katie, they wouldn't be Nazis. They wouldn't, exactly. There wouldn't be a problem. Quite a catch. Yeah, something to that.

Just like they know how to deal with anger, because that's where so much of them comes from. And they know like, oh, if I'm triggering you, then I'm going to stay calm. And I'm going to be like, well, what? Everyone's racist, you know? Just because I say this. And they know how to handle that.

But they really, it doesn't stop them. But they don't handle it very well. Yeah. Now, dire, or then all of that, is the fact that in recent months, Nazis themselves seem to have found a way to adopt aspects of this tactic for themselves. Oh, good.

And this brings me, rather unfortunately, to the Honkler meme. Honkler? Honkler, yeah. Honk, honk. Yeah, yeah, that's literally, yeah. That's what he says, that's what it is. If you spend a lot of time on Twitter, or Reddit,

or any of the other foul corners of the internet. Log off, and just burn your computer. Walk outside, pet a cat. But if you spend time on those places, you've probably run across strange images of a green frog dressed as a clown, as a pepe. This is Honkler. He's essentially a pepe meme in clown face.

I'm going to quote now from an article by Jared Holt from Right Wing Watch. Online personalities in far right and white nationalist online circles are attempting to attribute racism and anti-Semitism to an image of a cartoon character pepe the frog depicted poorly drawn and as a clown. And that effort has gained notable traction in recent months. Far right proponents want the broader internet

to believe the character directly represents their worldview, but the situation in the whole represents an attitude shift in far right circles online, and a slow inching forward even towards more radical elements of the movement. Now, that might sound a little bit weird, but the more radical view is a sort of hardcore nihilism that's currently sweeping the ranks of very online fascists.

See, they were pretty optimistic for the first couple of years of Donald Trump's election, thinking that he was going to do all of the Nazi shit they'd wanted him to do, but he only did some of it. Yeah, not enough. Not nearly enough. Not being explicit about it either. He's still, yeah.

And their lives still suck, which is a problem for them. So a lot of these guys have begun to lose hope of ever instituting the murderous ethno-state they so desire. And so all of these clown references are a reference to the fact that they believe modern society is a clown world where races intermix and genetically superior specimens like themselves go tragically unfucked.

And then that means the world is clowny. Yeah, it's a clown show. And if we keep the clown world going, it'll, what is it, Piss Earth is another term they use. Yeah, Piss Earth, yeah. There's a whole bunch of them. You know what's not Piss Earth? What?

Oh, I bet I do, I bet. Oh, uh, uh, uh, fuck, it's on the tip of my tongue. I can't think of what it is. Product. No. And services. Sophie's getting ready with the knife. And I think that has just prompted me to,

when we come back, finally toss these crannies and nooks before we get on with the story. Look, the machete is up and for grabs. People just grab the weapons they are. 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 gotta 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 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 happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. In the summer of 1999, a young woman in South Carolina disappeared in the middle of the night. Her name was Brooke Henson. Seven years passed.

She was presumed dead. And then a tip came in that would turn the entire investigation on its head. He said, I think I found your girl. She's alive, she's in New York. And I said, really? According to this tip, Brooke was now a student at Columbia University.

But the small town detective on the case in South Carolina, he didn't believe it. So he kept poking around. I said, I'm calling about a girl you might know named Brooke Henson. And he said, I wondered when you were gonna call. When my son brought her home, I knew she was troubled. The detective ultimately became convinced

that she was a master of deception, a spy. But who was this woman really? Listen to deep cover on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Standing at eight feet, two inches tall, Charles Byrne was the tallest man in the world. In fact, it earned him the nickname the Irish Giant. And when Charles arrived in London in 1782,

he caused quite a stir. But by May the following year, death came calling for Charles in the form of tuberculosis. And while most people were ready to mourn his passing, one man was plotting with gleeful excitement for a chance to dissect the Irish Giant's remains. This January, Grim and Mild Presents will shift focus from the great wide world around us

to the universe inside us all. In a journey that will span thousands of years and countless borders, we plan to unpack the dark and twisted history of healing medicine. So wash your hands, set out your tools, and prep for surgery. Grim and Mild Presents Bedside Manors is available now.

Find Grim and Mild Presents wherever you listen to podcasts. Learn more at GrimandMild.com slash presents. And we're back, we're back and there's an arms race going on at the table. I couldn't stand up. Everybody gotta arm themselves, get something to hit these nooks and crannies, Thomas is out of the air.

I don't know what direction they're going to go in. One weapon is for me, one is for Anderson. She has no thumbs, so I'm holding it for her. Katie? I got this stapler. Okay. Got a cheeto. Cody, grab the knife, blade first.

Okay. Okay. Okay, Cody, grab the knife, blade first. Oh, what? You're good. Just keep that away from me. All right. I'm just going to wind up and sling it.

Oh, I'm going to hurt myself. I'm like very sad that this is happening. Please. It went backwards. Went literally behind him. It went, it went. It needs to be behind me. As he was winding up.

It went the most opposite direction it possibly could. I need to be the safe way to do this. Oh, you're not done? Is there needs to be someone behind me. I need to be surrounded in a forest of knives so that I can throw this safely. All right. No, Cody.

Don't be the sacrificial lamb. I mean, you can't do it a second time, right? Cody, we need you for your effort. There's no way to know how this is going to go. It'll be okay. I'm going to throw it. All right. Now, I think the way to do this is to swing it above my head.

Yeah! Oh, it went sideways very violently. Getting there. We're getting closer. Are we not done? Let's try this again with the next ad break. Somebody has to hit it with a blade. All volunteers should be.

While it's mid-air. Well, this is very embarrassing. I thought it was lovely. I kind of wish, Daniel, did you get that on video? Video? Yeah. I was protecting myself. Sophie, this is a podcast.

Thank you, Robert. Yeah, it's audio. Is it your first day? Thank you, Cody. Thank you, Katie, for not being a trash boy. Man-splating podcasting. You're saying it's audio-related. It's no visual element, okay?

I got five stars. Five stars. No notes. So. Like all good memes, the Honkler and Clown World memes evolved in a decentralized fashion. The website Know Your Meme has tracked its entire evolution, and I'm going to quote from them now. In February 2019, racist and anti-Semitic variations of the character named Honkler began appearing on 4chan's poll image board.

Additionally, the character is associated with the term Honk Pill, which is often described as an absurdist alternative to black pill nihilism. Allowing a person to appreciate the humor in an absurd universe, interpreting existence as a cosmic joke. Okay. Take the Honk Pill. Everything's a pill these days. Yeah, it's all pills.

Yeah. I'm just, I don't want to take any more pills. Yeah. Take some soma. Just like two medicaid. Isn't that a pill? It is a great pill. Yeah.

We should, someone should go back in time to the Wachowski sisters and be like, don't make it a pill. Don't do it. Don't make it a pill. I know this is a fine from a narrative standpoint in 1999, but we're all going to regret it. Yeah. Be like, instead of a pill, like an enema. Yeah.

An enema. Take the red enema. Take the enema or the blue enema. Yeah, that's interesting. Ah, you've been honk enema. God, I am. You just be honked. You've been honked.

I am so ready for when deepfakes allow us to replace that scene in the matrix with Keanu Reeves getting an enema. The actual honkler image was first posted on 4chan that January with the message, what emotion does this image evoke from you? Almost immediately users hit upon the idea of using the meme as yet another dog whistle to signal national socialist beliefs. So this is the, you can see, this is honkler. Oh, there he is.

I'm sure you've seen this guy floating around Twitter. Yeah. So the guy says that. And then one of the first responses is someone saying, honk honk equals HH, Heil Hitler. If you honk, you're a honky taking back the rainbow mocking the, the parentheses that mean something is Jewish clown world, clown world and say the clown world is created by the Jews. And then somebody quoted that and said, why Hong Kong is the next okay sign?

And then someone else said, taking back the rainbow brother doesn't belong to faggotomites and transfreaks. Honk honkler. And they have a picture of, of honkler with the, the rainbow wig on in front of a gas chamber. Classic. Yeah. So that happened very quickly.

Yeah. Yeah. I really jumped on that. Yeah. They really were like, yeah, let's turn this into another Nazi dog whistle. I know how to do that. This is literally the only thing we do anymore on the internet. Yeah.

Yeah. Is make things Nazi that didn't need to be. I do not have to clear my schedule. Let's do this. I have nothing else going on. On February 11th, users on 4chan's poll board launched Operation Honk with the goal of spreading the honkler meme across the internet. Their goal was to get it into general circulation and hopefully convince normies to start spreading

it around without any idea as to its origin from one of their posts. They will adopt our child and post honkler on social media under mainstream memes already in circulation. There will come a time when we must take him back. Whether of the honk or not, we must perpetuate this meme to show the world our ideas. So stupid. So dumb. Huge dorks.

Whether of the honk or not. All these mass shootings. Um, yeah. Very frustrated that we have to care about this. Yeah. I would love to ignore these people. Really? That would be great if they weren't a concern.

If a detectable fraction of them didn't shoot up random walmarts, it would be nice to ignore them. And like talk to each other. And talk to each other and try to get each other to shoot up walmarts. Yeah. Yeah. Cool stuff. A honk Facebook page was quickly created and the meme rapidly spread outside the confines

of the chants and into the wide world of other incredibly shitty people. One of those people was noted actor James Woods celebrated actor James Woods. On April 8th, he posted this little gym to his Facebook page. Now what is that? What is that? What does that look like to y'all? Wait, which? The bottom one.

I mean, it looks like the honkler. It is honkler. What was in front of an African-American lady. That's not quite all of the subtext. Do you recognize what that image is based off of Katie? No, I don't. It's a picture of honkler in a car mugging towards the camera. And it's basically just traced over a drawing of the Christchurch shooter in his car.

That's what it is. It's the Christchurch shooter. It's Brenton Tarrant as honkler in front of a YouTube personality that they did not get that wrong. Jesus. Yeah. Yeah. And that's James Woods sharing a honkler meme of the Christchurch mass shooter.

Do you think he knew that it was Christchurch shooter? Hard to say. Cause like you guys didn't. It wasn't an instant. Once he said it, I was like, oh yeah, it's the car. It's that image that we know. It's strange to think of sharing something. But yeah, I guess.

I have no idea if Woods knew. He knew what the clown world, cause the clown world's taken on two meanings. Both of them are that the world's fundamentally absurd because of all this multiculturalism bullshit. But the two different ways of taking that is the not explicitly nasty way is that like, well, these SJWs and these liberals are just so absurd with what they think the world should be. The clown world because of that.

And then on the explicitly Nazi side, it's the Jews are the ones making it be that way. And that's why it's. Well, right. It's always that like that little leap you need to make. Yeah. And I mean, I've seen even like, don't want to talk about Tim Poole, like he's done videos where he's like, people say the honkler thing is like about Nazis and stuff, but it's actually not.

It's just because the world is so nuts. And it's like, yeah, you're helping there, buddy. It's very frustrating. It's very frustrating. And I don't believe that James Woods is as four channels would say, Jew pilled, right? Which I don't think he understands entirely what he's saying. He's old. He's old and not smart.

And it's like internet stuff, like it's internet stuff, like to parse that kind of thing. Someone probably told him it's a conservative thing. And he was like, well, okay. And what specifically why he posted, he was declaring war with hashtag clown lady and the clown lady in the picture, the woman who the, the Tarrant clown is looking at is a YouTuber named Lil lunchbox. And she provoked the ire of the right wing when she complained about the honkler meme and particularly complained about the appropriation of rainbow imagery by the right.

She said, I'm ready to go to motherfucking CL war, clown war over this, you're not going to take a symbol of happiness and acceptance and multiculturalism and turn it into something racist and antiseptic and homophobic. I think she meant anti-Semitic and transphobic. So that's like, that's the reaction they wanted, that's the reaction they wanted. And James Woods is declaring war on her in this, but then his responses got really weird because like Woods spent the rest of the day like watching more of, and more of her footage and like, it seems like he actually seriously did start to enjoy her stuff.

And then he started posting positive things about her. She's my new favorite person on Twitter. I mean, she's certainly committed to her position about things. She's willing to go to war. I like her. I'm not kidding. I mean, there's the clown stuff and the nuts of liberal stuff, but she's likable. I don't know why I'm still smiling.

I started out making fun of her video, but no, I'm really curious about her. So I mean, that's charming to me. He also might just have been backtracking, but someone was like, oh, you, you spread terrorist propaganda. He's like, ah, fuck. I like her. I mean, you could just delete it. It's the lips, but like, yeah, yeah.

Now I was lurking on 8chan the same day this happened. And so I was able to watch them react to this because they had created the original image that then got chopped up of, of Tarrant as Honkley. Like that started on a chance poll board. So they were very excited to see someone as relatively mainstream as James Woods. You share it. And they immediately then started taking pictures of little lunchboxes face and photoshopping her with green skin and a rainbow clown wig and turning her into a Honkler, which is just

sort of the way the internet works when it does stuff like that. But I will say, I don't think James Woods quite knew what he was doing. No. I mean, it's, it's what happened. It's like their goal. Like you're not, he's not looking at this and going, oh yeah, the terrorists and Hitler stuff. It's like, he's going, oh yeah, these clowns, it is clowns.

Right. When Donald Trump retweeted that eight-chan meme of Hillary Clinton with a star of David on it. It's like, he didn't think that was a star of David, he just said, oh, someone else hates Hillary. Fuck yeah. Right. Well, he didn't take that much time to know about it.

It's the, the fact that you are so connected to these communities that's a concern. It's that like, how did you see this racist thing and why did you connect to it and, and retweet it? Like James Woods has some access to, uh, and relationship with people who were sharing these Nazi things. He's just not going, oh yeah, they're Nazis, I guess their goal is, uh, it's, it's, it's a, it's upsetting. It's a, it's, it's not great.

It's not, uh, the way I would prefer things work in national politics. But here we are. You mean secret Nazis tricking, uh, famous people into sharing their, yeah, that would be, that would be good if that didn't happen. And famous people reacting to it by generally saying, well, I guess I'll defend Nazis now rather than admit that I got tricked. Oh, humans. It's great.

I really love 2019. Yeah. Pretending that it's not a problem and that there's nothing, nothing going on and there isn't a community of people that actively do this on purpose. It makes me think 2020 might just be a pretty good year. Comparatively. Ever. The least best year of all of them.

That seems negative. Ever. Ever. Ever. Welcome to the, not the best of it. Yep. Yep. You know how it goes.

Everything so smart, smart, smart. Yeah. Now I don't know what was going on with James Woods and I won't pretend to, but I do know that the shit posters on 8chan took to honk their memes like a duck takes to racism. When I started writing this episode, I looked through my giant document, Saved 8chan posts and the first honkler meme I found on there was from April 8th, which was, yeah, again, the same day that James Woods made that post, although I think it happened earlier than that and I just didn't choose to save those images.

But here's an example of one of the more baffling versions of this meme that I really don't even know what's trying to be conveyed there. It's clearly based off the shining. You've got, yeah, an axe coming through a bathroom where a woman is half dressed and then the honkler's little face peering through the wall. Oh, she's, she's dressed all sexy. Yeah. There might be some insol shit there.

It's really hard to say. Yeah. Yeah. I honestly have no idea what the message of that is even supposed to be. I guess peeping Tom kind of thing. I don't know. Is there something going on there? No, I doubt it.

There's dildos on the shelf though, so I bet they'd call her a Stacey or something. Right. Like there's, there's some mixed messaging there. It seems, yeah. It's unclear. Or maybe they're just saying we're going to kill women who like dildos. Yeah. Or just women.

Yeah. Women. It's just sexist. We resent the women. You know what doesn't kill the women? What? The products that support this podcast. Oh, yeah.

I hope. Yep. They don't. They don't. Good. We've had all of our products. Daniel's saying this is a good idea. Well, I feel safe.

Thank you. I'm going to buy them now. I thought they were going to harm women, but. Selfie's picking up her knife. Yeah. Everybody should get their knives ready. As soon as we come back from the break, it's going down. Oh gosh.

All right. Time to get my stapler out. Products. I'm going to fix this. 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 get 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. But 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. In the summer of 1999, a young woman in South Carolina disappeared in the middle of the night.

Her name was Brooke Henson. Seven years passed. She was presumed dead. And then a tip came in that would turn the entire investigation on its head. He said, I think I found your girl. She's alive. She's in New York. And I said, really?

According to this tip, Brooke was now a student at Columbia University. With a small town detective on the case in South Carolina, he didn't believe it. So he kept poking around. I said, I'm calling about a girl you might know named Brooke Henson. And he said, I wondered when you were going to call. When my son brought her home, I knew she was troubled. The detective ultimately became convinced that she was a master of deception, a spy. But who was this woman really?

Find a deep cover on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. Standing at 8 feet 2 inches tall, Charles Byrne was the tallest man in the world. In fact, it earned him the nickname the Irish Giant. And when Charles arrived in London in 1782, he caused quite a stir. But by May the following year, death came calling for Charles in the form of tuberculosis. And while most people were ready to mourn his passing, one man was plotting with gleeful excitement for a chance to dissect the Irish Giant's remains. This January, Grim and Mild Presents will shift focus from the great wide world around

us to the universe inside us all. In a journey that will span thousands of years and countless borders, we plan to unpack the dark and twisted history of healing medicine. So wash your hands, set out your tools, and prep for surgery. Grim and Mild Presents Bedside Manners is available now. And Grim and Mild Presents, wherever you listen to podcasts, learn more at grimandmild.com slash presents. Well we're back and because we're coming back from a break, I'm going to attempt to properly

fling the thing with the sling in enough of a direction that somebody with a weapon is able to hit them out of the air and make these now rather crumbled English muffles burst like a piñata filled with gluten. A gluten yada. Alright, alright, I'm going to call my shots first. Cut! But at least it stayed in the sling. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, you're getting better. It went to where it was the second time. Is it supposed to stay in the sling? Not eventually. But initially. Sure. Long enough to build up. Yes!

Whoa! If you did not duck, that might have got you square in the face. There's truly no way that I could have defended myself from that. I mean ducking, that counts as defense. Well right, if I had ducked. Ducking is a matter of defense. Robert, say sorry to Katie for almost killing her. Katie, I'm sorry for almost killing you.

I was trying to hit Sylvie. Honestly, Katie. I don't have any choice but to accept your apology. Here's the machete. Thank you. I think you need it more than I do now. See, if the machete had been there, you could have hit the bagels. Will you toss those back to me, Daniel?

Or I would have hurt myself with the machete when I ducked. No, you would have saved it. You would have cut them in half. We were like, oh, it's amazing. I should have got the machete. How many women got damaged? Not enough. They're mushed up.

Daniel, Daniel said not enough. No, that's not what I said. Robert, you're still employed. Good job. Well, we'll have to change that. Oh, God. Tossing papers doesn't have quite the oomph. I love tossing.

I'm just a toss fan. Mm-hmm. I'm a tosser. For fuck's sake, Robert. I don't know what that means, but British people say. Yeah, I think it has something to do with oral sex. Go swivel, you tosser. Oh.

And then you do, like, a reverse peace sign. Oh, what does tosser mean? Oh, like, because that's the British one. Yeah. Yeah, for the butt. You tosser. Mm-hmm. Oh, I thought it was something else.

I mean, it might be about Anilingus. Is that what you're referring to? No. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. It's a tendency to show off or brag in an excessive and embarrassing way. Well, there you go.

Oh, because I bragged about my tossing. Yeah. And it worked. Wow, you're a tosser about your tossing. Oh, boy. I hope nobody relies on these English muffins for breakfast. You're fine. Oh, good.

Are you going to put them back? Well, yeah. I'm not going to waste food. That's good. Thank you. Thank you for praising me. You're good. I love being praised.

The Honkler meme quickly generalized into the clown world meme, which we talked about a little bit earlier, but it started with the Honkler and then turned into the broader cloud world thing. Memes are confusing. The clown world obviously involves references to clowns aimed at making the point that our modern world is social justice and treating women like people is fundamentally absurd. This actually has its origins back before the Honkler meme. So this is one of the things that's confusing about this.

Wait, that women... No, no, no. There's the clown world to refer to that. Oh, OK. Yeah. There are references on archived discord conversations between fascists as early as 2017, which is well before the start of the Honkler meme, although it seems to have just been a term they were using rather than sort of a meme in and of itself.

Right. So I'm going to read a little conversation from the Vibrant Diversity chat room, which was frequented by many of the people who marched and organized the bloody 2017 Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville. A lot of those people do terrorism. Sure. Sure. Weird that a lot of those people are doing terrorism.

A lot of them. Like a statistically significant number of them have done a terrorism or two. Like every couple of months you see a terrorism done or like a suspected terrorism done and you're like, that person looks familiar. Oh, here they are marching literally next to this other terrorist. Here they are marching right next to this terrorist. Cool. Yeah, quite something.

So these posts came after a long discussion about whether or not transgender people should be able to serve in the military. Of course it did. Very woke takes. Yeah, I bet. They take a lot of things into consideration. Horatio Carey. Honestly putting trannies on the front line is cruel.

Camp and Carl. To the enemy? Horatio Carey. LOL. Vanguard. Seriously, they should be put in front line service. Horatio Carey. Cannon fodder.

Camp and Carl. I hate it. Just don't waste any armor or weapons on them. Horatio Carey. Tranny Corps. Northern underscore Confederate. LOL such clown world. Thankfully our president, all caps and ARE, has a simple solution.

Tranny has a simple solution to trannies. No. So that's good. That's good. That was unpleasant to listen to. It really was. That's the first reference I can find a clown world in one of those really clear discussions that maybe earlier was.

That's cool. I hate it. Thank you for hating it. It is. Good job, Robert. Yay. As is usually the case, the clown world and Honkler memes quickly traveled from the most extreme corners of the internet to more mainstream Nazis.

Whoa. Really? Get out of town. Get out of town. Get out of town. Get out of town. Get out of town. Get out of town.

Get out of town. Get out of town. Go on. Get out of town. But then if somebody gets hit when you're telling Nazis to get out of town, you'll be declared domestic terrorist. That is true. It's the same.

I love our system. I think it's helpful. It's good. It has no flaws. I'm going to read from right wing watch again. Great. Honkler and clown world memes were recently incorporated into GoiTalk, a new but growing web-based white nationalist podcast.

The show's hosts advocate white nationalism in an attached way and embody the same increasingly nihilistic attitude among the white nationalist and white supremacist movements in the United States, conveyed in the repetition of the word clown world. GoiTalk hosts express racist and anti-Semitic views as a staple of their programming, with guests that include David Duke, Christopher Cantwell, and Patrick Little. Nevertheless, they are ultimately nihilistic about the state of the world and their ability to change it without mass-organized action reminiscent of the violent writings of James Mason in his book, Siege.

Whoa. Yeah. Yeah. Who's feel bad? I know a lovely Chris Cantwell, who's a wonderful director, whenever I hear these things. That's an unfortunate name to have at this point. Yeah. Halton Catch Fire.

Halton Catch Fire. A lot of great sketch comedy back in the day, too. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. It's unfortunate. It's ironic that the good Chris Cantwell directed Halton Catch Fire because the bad Chris Cantwell, I would not have a problem if he were to Halton Catch Fire.

There it is. Nailed it. Beautiful. So, guys like Christopher Cantwell and David Duke are fundamentally different parts of the fascist media ecosystem from, say, the guys on 4chan. And the fact that folks associated with them had latched onto the Honkler meme is evidence that it had essentially spread to the uncool sections of the Nazi right by this point, by kind of like the middle of this year, early quarter, first quarter of this year, the end

of that quarter. So my guess is that the channers behind Honkler probably reacted to this into the same way we all did when our parents first got onto Facebook and started spreading minions memes. Like, this is kind of that for Nazis. Right. And they're like, oh, David Duke's in on it now, we gotta find a new thing to be Nazis about. The crying Nazis doing it now.

Yeah. The crying Nazis doing it now. Fuck. Yeah. Here's a note. Yeah. You're all fucking dorks. You're not cool.

Stop it. You're as cool as David Duke. That's your note for the Nazis? That's my note for the Nazis. Well, I'll let the Nazis know. Thank you. We were really directing that directly at them. The Nazis.

Yeah. Made direct eye contact with Robert. I will let the Nazis know. Please let them know. Yeah. It is now filtered, it being the Honkler meme, has now filtered thoroughly out of the weird right wing internet and into the streets. I'm not precisely sure when the first fascist demonstrators started marching in clown gear.

The first time I saw it was in May of 2019 when Joey Gibson of Patriot Prayer held a rally in Albany, New York with a tiny gaggle of proud boys. Now, this wasn't a way game for Joey, who usually marches in Portland in Seattle, and it was a huge flop. Nobody even showed up to counter-protest him. Only one journalist showed up to write about it, and the whole event was forgotten basically as soon as it happened. The only noteworthy part of this rally was the fact that several proud boys showed up

in clown face. And guys, I will include some of these pictures on the site. Oh, good. You do owe it to yourself. There's been some sad clowns in the past. I feel like that's a thing that is regularly done. But this guy here is the saddest clown. Oh, you're a sad clown.

Your pity is warring with your disgust, isn't it? Oh, yeah. It's like taking an ant acid after drinking a bunch of acid. Is this the one I think it is? I don't know. Is it? No, it's the other one. Isn't that one good?

He just looks so dejected. It's like the Snoopy music is playing. Oh, yeah. Or Charlie Brown. Yeah. He pulled a fucking football out from them to that kid's clown shoe. Oh, yeah. I was expecting one.

I got another one. It's a delicious treat. There's some great ones. There's some really great ones. Now, a month or so later, the clown world meme reached what I have to suspect will be its saddest form, perhaps its hypothesis. Alex Jones featured it on Infowars. Now, Jones has a long history of pulling content from 4chan and 8chan, mainly in the form of

conspiracy theories and the very dumbest of memes. This time, he appropriated the term clown world, which again was first coined by literal Nazis to describe the nihilistic rage that they felt with their inability to stop people from race mixing or accepting LGBT people. Jones, however, used it for his special coverage of the democratic debates. Infowars.com presents Clown World, the greatest comedy show on earth. The promotional graphic features all the democratic candidates in crudely photoshopped clown face. Elizabeth Warren also wears a Native American headdress.

Bernie Sanders is a mime. Joe Biden is, for some reason, done up as Jack Nicholson's version of the Joker. What? I really don't understand. They're all different types of clowns. Oh, this is bizarre. Like Elizabeth Warren. Okay, obviously, that's the one thing every lazy right-wing pundit hits her for.

Cory Booker is the most terrifying. I get Sanders for mime because he's the oldest of them. Yeah, you haven't been the old timey as clown. Why is Joe Biden Jack Nicholson's Joker? It's so weird. Because he carries an absurdly long handgun that he uses to shoot the bat plane out of the air? Yeah, that's so weird. Does he?

Did he? It probably is. You know what? Points to Alex Jones. That's fair. Well, he also fell in that vat of acid. And Joe Biden's eye exploded that one time. This is before that, right?

This is before that. This is before Biden's eye exploded. The night before? Oh, no. That was later. Very cool. Very cool. Check out the podcast Knowledge Fight if you want some coverage of Jones' clown world show.

But obviously, it wasn't good because it's bad. I guess it's not Jones' corny. Yeah, and he's not even fun anymore because so many people are threatening to actively suing him that he can't even be that fun. Yeah, he's really trying to tone it down because he realizes, oh, I guess I can get sued for all the important things. Yeah. Yeah. Now, about a month before I wrote this, at the end of September 2019, a straight pride parade was held in Boston. It was organized by a coalition of fascists, outright neo-Nazis, and Miloni-Ianopolis.

During a powerfully sad press conference for the event, one of the organizers was asked, what do you say to taxpayers who want to know why you're wasting the city's resources because you three guys can't get laid? The organizer responded, the world is clown world. The world's gone crazy because there's nothing wrong with being straight. What? Great. Okay, man. Okay, man.

You know what? At least it's very lucid. Light on. And like a clearer thought. Yeah. Like really an answer. Really a solid answer. Several attendees at the parade were photographed dressed as clowns.

Two men wore honkler costumes, complete with green face paint. Oddly enough, the counter-protest of this event also included clowns. Well, activists on the ground. That's confusing. Yeah, it really is. Well, activists on the ground battled with the Boston police, who went a little bit nutfuck on the demonstrators. Online anti-fascists started flooding Twitter and other social media apps with pictures and footage of large groups of clowns, tagging the footage as part of the Straight Pride Parade.

It wasn't, of course. This was just unrelated clown footage. But that's where things sit now. We've gone from activists dressing as clowns to keep each other's spirits up, to marching in clown costumes to counter serious, uniformed neo-Nazis, to fascist demonstrators willingly dressing themselves as clowns while online anti-fascists flood the internet with fake clown footage in order to distract from their real event. Seems... You guys excited about where we are?

That's fun. What a fun little episode. What a fun, fun thing. I'm more excited about where we're heading. What a rollercoaster I went on regarding clowns. Hating clowns, starting to like them, back to hating them, even more than I hated them originally. I do hope that what we see 2020, if this evolution continues, is two large groups of functionally indistinguishable clowns beating each other in the street while the police just go,

who do we tear gas? I guess everybody! I think that's what we call a civil war. Yes. It's that false equivalence that you're helping a little bit, where it's like the Sneeches. Sneeches on beaches. You keep switching back and forth, and then you're like, who's the clown? What are you protesting for or against?

Oh, you're a fascist, but I'm not. But to you, I am. I guess we're both clowns now. It's great. That's not. I disagree. Sorry. Well, I hope this was helpful.

Very. I now know I have a new enemy. Yes. Clowns still? Clowns still. Clowns still. Speaking of clowning. I know he's going to do one more.

I'm going to try it. I'm going to try it. I don't think I want. You're going to do it. Don't try. Do it. Thank you, Cody. Thank you for believing in me.

Absolutely. Always. I'm just going to start off by going down. Not a bad decision. Cody, I gave you the machete. I can't. I'm specifically not violent. Cody, get the machete.

The machete scares me. Dantle has the machete. I got it. I got it. Dantle has the machete. Dantle, you be careful with that machete. Protect the Anderson. So if you make sure the OSHA guy doesn't come in.

All right. I'm going to close my. I'm going to do this like Luke Skywalker. Yeah. Oh my God. Well, that wasn't great. Well, guys, it's another episode done. Another miserable failure.

In the bag. In the bag. We did it. You did it, Robert. You guys have some plug-ups to plug? Yeah. Dantle's still holding that machete. Check out our new show, Worst Year Ever.

Yeah, Worst Year Ever here on our radio. Also, our podcast, even more news. That's the one that Cody and I do. Yeah. Yeah. And Cody. This is a YouTube show called Some More News. That's right.

You can check out video versions of the news. You can help support that by going to patreon.com. So much to check out. So much to check out. And if you want to endanger the people around you by throwing breakfast food, recklessly, Thomas, breakfast like no other, the original Nooks and Crannies English muffin. Those are so good. He threw Nooks and Crannies.

That's because I love you. You can find this podcast at BehindTheBastards.com. You can find T-shirts on T-Public. You can find me at At Bastards Pot. And you can listen to The Worst Year Ever, the podcast. That's about a year. That's not going to be very good. Do it.

Do it. Do it. Do it. You're going to love it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it.

Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it.

Do it. Do it. can't see you, only I can see you. What you're doing is larger than yourself, almost like a religion. Like, he was a god. Listen to the turning room of mirrors on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Moraka and I'm back with season three of my podcast, Mobituaries. I've dug up even more stories about the people and things that fascinate me, from the fruit that once scandalized the shape of the banana made it taboo to the band that played second banana to the Beatles. They were lucky to come in second and

the truth is they only came in second for about two months. Listen to Mobituaries on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Back in 1999, a young woman from South Carolina vanished. Seven years passed. She was presumed dead. Then a tip came in. He said, I think I found your girl and she's alive. She's in New York. And I said, really? The detective on the case, he didn't buy it. He came to believe that he was dealing with an imposter. Who was this woman really? Listen to deep cover on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.