It Could Happen Here - Black Hammer with WF Thomas

Episode Date: July 27, 2022

James and robert interview journalist WF Thomas about the Black Hammer cult and the recent fatality at one of their “Hammer Houses”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons?

Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast,

Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app

or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by

an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking musica, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us, and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight-up comedia,

and that's a song that only Nuestra Gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It Could Happen Here is the podcast that this is, where we talk about things that are happening here. Generally, things falling apart, sometimes things getting put back together. Today, we have a story that I wasn't sure if we were ever going to cover. In brief, we're going to be talking about a group called Black Hammer that is on its surface, a leftist, anti-colonial political organization, and in reality is more or less a cult um the reason

we're talking about them is that someone is now dead connected with them the story is interesting and messy and says a lot about the way social media works today and the way that the united states is essentially like 40 different cults in a trench coat. So today I'm here with James Stout and we are talking with journalist W.F. Thomas. Thomas, what do you what do you what do you how are you doing today? Today is the day. Yeah. This story is. Stuff is still coming out yeah um about an hour ago charges were finally posted um for the cult leader um but that's further along yeah the story. If you hear chirping in the background, those are four

live chickens. So my apologies. Aw, little babies. I just got rabbits that I have now living in my chicken facility and they seem to be thriving. It's nice. I like having little animals around. Alright, so who are Black

Hammer and how did they get to the present position? So I think we should probably start with like, I don't know, 2019, right? It's kind of when these these folks sort of start to come on the the scene. Yeah. You know, you could take this story back a lot further. OK, let's do that. could take this story back a lot further okay let's do that um so sometime in the late 80s um augustus romaine jr is born um this is the person we're commonly known as gazi codzo um they use they them pronouns who would go on to be the leader of this group um

you know kazo grew up in stone mountain outside of atlanta um and in the early 2010s had kind of a lifestyle blogger youtube thing going on um was a self-professed Cosmos biggest fan and generally seemed like they were trying to get famous. Yeah, like influencer style famous, right? This was not at all political at this period. Yeah. Yeah. And that's going to be kind of the red thread through this story is

Kodzo, I'm going to refer to them as Kodzo, Augustus Romaine Jr. Wanting to be famous is kind of unfortunately the main thing that drives most of what has happened at some point in the mid 2010s

Kazo took this turn and started making more incendiary videos I don't have them directly in front of me, so I don't want to misquote them. But kind of like going out, pushing this concept like white people are evil,

going for this very specific type of leftism. And Ghazi Kadzo gets taken under the wing of of and i'm going to mispronounce this name uh omali yeshutela um and this is a person who is leading a group in saint petersburg florida called the african people's socialist party um an african people socialist party was part of this larger thing called the uhuru Solidarity Movement. I don't know if they're still around, but, you know, their their ideology was third world communism, African internationalism, that type of thing. And what is let's talk a little bit about the word Uhuru, because that's something if you if you've ever been in and around Proud Boys. First off, I'm sorry, it's not a fun experience generally,

but they like to shout a guru. And I understand that that's kind of related one way or the other to this. Yeah. So I don't have it directly in front of me what a guru means, but the reason Proud Boys say that is because of gauzy codzo yeah there were times several times when codzo spoke made appearances with gavin mckinnis uh founder of the proud boys and codzo generally became and still is treated as a lolcow um kind of this target for derision to poke at to see what is this person doing which is still happening right now unfortunately yeah um yeah you know kazo

rose through the ranks of this group um and then eventually found out that this is basically a cult. The African People's Socialist Party had a specific focus on membership from colonized people, people of color. But it turns out this was being steered entirely by a group of white people. So it's out of the ashes of this experience this abusive experience um this colite group kazo along with some other people leave this group and they go on to form black hammer in february of 2019 which the original name is the black hammer organization um and there's some really good write-ups um especially Red Voice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Definitely recommend that. I think you broke out for a second.

So the title of that article is The Devil Wears a Dashiki. It's like six, seven parts, but it's really good comprehensive. Yeah. And that gets into a lot of what I get a lot of this information from. And there were additionally, what would happen to some of these people who founded this group black hammer organization who are also parts of the african people's socialist party um would disavow gazi kaza would disavow black hammer and have kind of their own statement about here's what happened you know in which they say

hey we never recovered from this experience in this traumatic group in this cult-like group and instead went on to found this new one and we're very you know it was kind of failed from the start to become this other cult-like group so just to clarify on the uhuru thing that it comes from the african people socialist party right and then he's they have taken it and run with it in the uh uh black hammer organization so the african people socialist party was part of this umbrella group called the uhuru solidarity movement okay and this group is still around if you look at like the um channel five with andrew callahan has a video where they go to this march for reparations and that group is the uhuru solidarity movement got it okay if you're familiar with that yeah yeah so we get this

organization founded and kind of from what my perusal of because i've also you can go to their website black hammer has like a new site um they are kind of billions huh oh yeah yeah they're kind of have they cut for now yeah they they kind of bill themselves as like an anti-colonial organization that is specifically like um like one of the things they do is they have like a white people's auxiliary that like is for the purpose of people paying reparations. They have, you know, they carried out a couple of actual direct actions during 2020, including like handing out masks and whatnot.

But for the most part, they seem to exist primarily to drive attention to themselves and thus donations via social media fuckery. And yeah, that's, I think if you've, if you've personally interacted with Black Hammer propaganda at all, it is probably because you've seen someone on the internet talking about how

Anne Frank is a Karen or something like that. Let's get into it. Yeah, let's talk about that. Yeah. Great. Yeah, so I want to touch on something real quick that you mentioned. In these comments from the people who founded the organization and left the organization,

these are still true believers who believe in this cause of decolonialization of African internationalism and who do want to build a better world and do good things. You know, in talking with people who have survived the cold, it sounds like Kazo probably never was a true believer, but there were true believers around Kazo who believed in this cause. And because of that, we're able to be abused, to be profoundly abused by codzo and the people working directly under

codzo at codzo's behest um so april 30th 2020 uh in a tweet i believe uh codzo calls anne frank a becky follows it up by how she's a karen which one is a ridiculous statement two is entirely meant to cause this kind of uproar around that you know um back at this time there was acceptance of the black hammer organization in leftist circles in that kind of online communist community um and there were people who came out kind of like oh no let's hear what they're saying about this you know talking about how victims you know the term genocide was invented to describe the holocaust but that term wasn't used to describe slavery that kind of thing yeah Which to be clear is not the conversation that Kodzo was trying to have. That was not.

No. And that is a worthwhile conversation to have is like, why, you know, like, why is that not? Why is the, the enslavement and like mass murder of a huge number of African people not

seen as an act of genocide? Certainly a valid conversation to have, but also should not at all intersect with anne frank or how we think about the holocaust yeah and uh because we're living in hell yeah this fake you know kind of propped up not a real discussion it's meant to just piss people off is back again oh good what a great time yeah based on documents that have come out that are purported to be from internal Blackhammer documents, this was part of their Operation Storm of White Tears. Jesus Christ. don't know for sure if these documents are from them,

but these documents that are purported to be from Black Hammer, lay out this strategy to cause division, to kind of bring other groups down to elevate Black Hammer's own status by putting themselves as the center of attention in all of this that is happening in this online fiasco. Because again, the ideology is not the point. The attention is the point. The control is the point.

Along this way, there are a lot of allegations out there. There are, for example, allegations that false allegations of pedophilia and sexual assault were used against people who left the group, people who spoke out against the group that they were recruiting people on Tinder. Oh, cool. Yeah. So along the way, some more chapters form.

There's one, I believe near Aurora, Coloradoado or at least in colorado there's a new york city one and kind of the group continues to rise as uh almost you know you know your typical revolutionary communist cell that we have quite a few of in the united states going on right now yeah um they structure they purport to structure themselves around the tenets of democratic centralism as some of these other groups do um which to dump things down a lot and there's probably going to be left is screaming at me right now um was this idea from lenin where a group takes a vote and then if that vote passes they all agree to go along with that platform yeah with usually about 50 percent um so that there's not kind of the splitting off of factions so it can lead to this

very centralized and hierarchical control structure that's certainly what happened in black hammer um there are other democratic centralist groups that have been in the news lately who use a similar strategy um but you know what this meant is it allowed god cod it allowed kazo to run this group with an iron fist. You know, on paper, there were, there was a group of people leading the group. Someone else was in control of the money, but in fact, it was Kodzo controlling all of this. They also had, you know,

shared living spaces where members of different chapters of Black Hammer lived, hammer houses. And that's always going to end well. Yeah. Generally, it's a good rule not to go live with the revolutionary cell you just joined. Yeah, if you are joining a political party, and they want everyone to live in the same space that is controlled by that political organization, you may in fact be joining a cult. Yeah. And, you know, there's there continues to be kind of trying to get more attention. At one point, you know, Kodzo starts beef with a local anti-fascist crew in Colorado. You know, Kodzo starts beef with a local anti-fascist crew in Colorado. You know, another thing to mention about this group is it's a lot of queer people in the group.

You know, Ghazi identifies as non-binary. There are, you know, several, many members who love people of the same sex. And, you know, one of the things that happens as Ghazi is beefing with the local anti-fascist crew is something that people are probably thinking of when they hear the name Ghazi Kodzo is this bizarre video of Kodzo running around in Joker makeup. Oh, geez. Talking about white anarchists and anti-fascists, which the background is actually even more fucked up than you would think having just heard that um as outline red voice goes into this specifically um there were members of the group who were you know practitioners of Yoruba um an African religion um and one of them was a trained um I don't know the correct term so i'm just gonna say practitioner of this religion i had gone through an education process in that that took some time um and this video of gazi running around in joker makeup was gazi's idea to

channel the deity eshum and my apologies i'm mispronounce now which is a Yoruba deity you know um and before this happened apparently Ghazi had brought this up to the person and the person said that is extremely disrespectful of my religion don't do that and Ghazi did it anyway um and this is you know another one of the things where this gets sent around all the time as, you know, treating Black Hammer as a lolcow. But, you know, even as this was going on, there was this abuse that was going on as well. And people being preyed upon by this group. In 2020, Black Hammer announces that they are planning to build Hammer City, which is supposed to be this utopian settlement in the Rockies. You look like you have something you want to say.

Well, I mean, look, it's a perfectly normal dream to want to build a utopian settlement in the Rockies. There's some downsides to that. One of them is that the Rockies is actually a terrible place for a large number of people to live. And this is why repeatedly, I don't know, there's been a lot of utopian settlements out in that part of the world. And they don't tend to last very long or they turn into normal towns. But it's always interesting when folks try, when folks want to do a commune type situation and then they immediately go for a place like that because like the mountains is the hardest place to do it if you want to

have a self-sufficient commune like fucking kansas you know uh arkansas like somewhere where the soil is good for growing stuff and you can get like a flat track track of land that can grow food as opposed to high alpine elevations where very little is going anyway whatever this is compound talk um so yeah um there's there's if there's one thing you take away from uh this episode don't build your compound in the rockies don't build a compound in the rockies look okay that's all I got yeah that's a message of this podcast unless you're the tenacious unicorn ranch

in which case go right ahead well but yeah and then you gotta think you know what they're doing which is raising alpaca as opposed to relying on like growing crops which makes a lot of sense yeah I don't actually see any advanced I was just looking at their Hammer City website they just say sustainable farming i can't see advanced plans

for uh perhaps there weren't any they did raise 112 000 so far uh yeah according to their website they raised 112 000 so far yes okay yeahate us more on this project. Yeah. Real interested to know how much money they actually raised. Maybe it was that much. The point is we don't really know because there's no, there was no kind of open record keeping within this group. And it was Kazo. It was in control of the money. It was Cazzo who was in control of the money.

Welcome, I'm Danny Trejo. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters

to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, fam. I'm Simone Boyce.

I'm Danielle Robay. And we're the hosts of The Bright Side, the daily podcast from Hello Sunshine that is guaranteed to light up your day. Every weekday, we bring you conversations with the culture makers who inspire us. Like our episode with actor, former Beverly Hills 90210 star and host of the podcast, I Choose Me, Jenny Garth. There have been so many times when I've been really lost. I say that because I'm on the other side of it. And the only way to get to the other side of something

is to go through it, not around it. Allow your body to feel the pain. And then you have to dig in sometimes and look within to learn from it because that's what all these obstacles are for, I guess. Ultimately, what other choice do you have? Listen to The Bright Side from Hello Sunshine on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming. New episodes every Thursday. doing all that talking, it's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. So the group found Land2Buy and they actually began the process of a land deal in early May 2021. And this is some information now coming from a fantastic Colorado Sun article about the whole Hammer City thing that I also recommend if someone wants to read more in depth about this.

So as the land deal was in the process of going through, a portion of the group moved out there. So, about two dozen people. It was remote, but it wasn't on top of a mountain. This was in a subdivision that had parcels for sale, which leads to some problems. This is a subdivision with a homeowners association and strict limits on land use as well. Yeah. So they didn't have water rights for one thing. Yeah, exactly. They didn't have water rights to land, which I have not started a compound, but I imagine water rights is something you want to have figured out. If you just want to live on a plot of land in the middle of nowhere, it can be fine. If you want to grow crops,

then yeah, having the ability to irrigate said crops is kind of important. Yeah. So another thing at this time is Blackhammer tends to be a pretty heavily armed group. You know, the group moved out to this land. They were camping out. They're basically squatting on the land that they did not own heavily armed group you know the group moved out to this land they were camping out there basically

squatting on the land that they did not own uh and brought their you know armed security along with them um and we're also like blocking road access for residents of the subdivision um so they they had neighbors you know and um at point, this leads to an altercation with a neighbor with three armed Black Hammer members and a neighbor driving his car who, you know, according to this Colorado Sun article, gets out with an unloaded shotgun and there's a standoff. This could have been one of those things that went really bad. It went about as good as you can hope a situation like that can go where nobody got killed. responsible for the land deal forgot to sign or didn't sign the paperwork on time. And after information comes out about the standoff, the land deal completely falls through. There is no Hammer City that is going to be built. And Kodzo is maintaining, and Black Hammer as a whole, is maintaining a super active social media presence at this time as well.

So, you know, one of the other things that gets brought out is like this video of them talking about, oh, we built this bridge on our land, which is kind of a bunch of two by fours across a ditch. Yeah. Are they planning to buy it as an organization or is Cardzo planning to buy it themselves as an individual? Do we know? This is actually something I did some research on. They did this fun thing. They created a front group, a front organization to buy the land. Nice.

Which they called Hammerstone Industries Incorporated. Yeah. Stealthy. One of the member, one of the prominent members was responsible for that. So the power of Google. Yeah. I also found their Bitcoin wallet while we were talking and it has never had

any donations and remains empty. Oh my God. Yeah. That one hasn't gone well uh so after this land deal falls through hammer city is not being built a lot of people get really fucking pissed they also it sounds like they shot through the real estate sign on their way out of the subdivision so So on the 17th of May 2021 is when the group leaves Hammer City. So going back to what Robert mentioned earlier, the group took a very, I'll say, interesting approach when COVID-19 started, which is the belief that COVID-19 is real, that people should

wear masks and be protected, but that they should not take the vaccine and that Fauci was a liar, which comes out a bit later. So, so they were doing, for example, there's a, there's a news article and with a video of them doing, you know, mutual aid distribution of masks and food in Colorado. So lots of people are real fucking pissed when Hammer City falls through. There's also been, you know, these allegations that have been coming up again and again. And at this point, several chapters break apart from Black Hammer, break away from Kodzo and kind of go off and do their own thing. And Kodzo is left with this core group of members, kind of true believers, and says,

fuck it, we're moving to Atlanta. So the group does a marathon drive from Colorado to the southern suburbs of Atlanta and outside of Atlanta is where Kodza grew up on the east side um around the northeast um and they they keep going they rent a house where everyone lives together um another one of their hammer houses I believe at this time there is another active chapter that is still connected with codzo and the carolinas as well um but you know this is a when prophecy fails moment for codzo um and the people that are left behind are these true believers um and codzo doesn't take this well doesn't take the failure of this deal well becomes even more

paranoid than they already were more controlling and more abusive than they already were so there's the red voice gets into some of the really wild allegations that come out at this time allegedly Kazo has members sign over control of the bank accounts to them at gunpoint as people reveal personal information at gunpoint. Again, these are allegations. I'm not saying Kodzo did this. Some of these classic cult techniques coming out, forcing people to sit and listen to Kodzo kind of preach, having people constantly working, not getting enough to eat. Having, you know, love bombing where Kodzo makes, you know, deep eye contact with a person, talks about how important they are, how much they love them and the consumption of psychedelics as well cool that's good great yeah yeah you love to hear that um yeah just a bunch of heavily armed people uh being cops for each other and drugging each other in support of a i don't know charismatic seems like a weird word for Ghazi, but it must be right. Like clearly it works on some people.

Yeah. I think they, I think they are charismatic, right? Like, I don't think it's necessarily good to be charismatic, but no, to have attracted these followers.

Some people seem to be responding to their, I don't know the way they present themselves. It's so, I guess that's always the way with cults, right? That like to the outside the cult leader is always an obvious cult leader but everybody's got different things they're vulnerable to and and for some people that's well and i also i think a lot of it is they have like presented

themselves differently in different periods and i'm i think what i've been reading it sounds like a decent chunk of the folks who were kind of most deeply wrapped up in it have been with it for a while. So they've kind of followed along with Ghazi as they've, you know. Yeah. And this is a group that, you know, preyed upon young people, preyed upon queer people, preyed upon unhoused people, preyed upon people of color who are at the intersections, you of oppression in our society um and this group like most cults it offered them a cause a purpose something to fight for something to do friends a roof over their head even you know um yep which is a huge part of it right because if you if this if this place is not just your social circle but also your safety net and like how you keep a roof over your head and how you stay fed and you

don't have close ties to family or maybe your family aren't people that you can trust like i mean again it's not a different story than you get in a bunch of other cults but like this is yeah that's it's it's a very frightening situation for those people to wind up in. And of course, one of the things that is unfortunate is that so much of the stuff that the Black Ham organization said and did is so absurd that it leads to this kind of mockery

of anybody who gets wrapped up in it and the people who are very much victims of it, which I think is also one of the things that makes it harder to leave, right? Is that siege mentality for those inside. That's where the term cognitive dissonance comes from. Yeah. Specifically people.

Right. You know, when things don't go according to plan, stick with this group and, you know, have already given away so much of their time, so much of their life, so many of their connections that they just roll with it. Yep. Yeah. time so much of their life so many of their connections that they just roll with it yep yeah and then there's uh i'm just thinking back to a story i wrote years ago where i was fortunate enough to interview someone who's like an expert on these small cults um and they had actually been a survivor of a i think it was a trotskyist cult so they were very familiar and they'd like this group exhibits all those patterns right like the charismatic leader that you mentioned the use of their own language the control of their relationships and their contacts inside and outside the group yeah and then they mirror this like very positive it seemed like just look at their aesthetics after you mentioned it they're definitely sort of seeking to mirror

that uh like black panther party aesthetic right uh which is obviously something that has for good reasons very positive associations for a lot of people so i can see yeah they've constructed this very appealing package but yeah and now there's a body right now a person has died uh yeah let's get to this so yeah let's talk about this so in atlanta is where things get really wacky. Yeah. Basically. As is often the case with Atlanta. As is often the case with this beautiful, beautiful city owned by Coca-Cola and Home Depot. With,

with, I have to admit it as a Texan, the best barbecue in the South. That's true. Excellent. Ethiopian food as well. I was there this weekend. Yeah.

Yeah. Fucking amazing. Fucking amazing Ethiopian, Ethiopian food. well i was there this weekend yeah yeah oh fucking amazing fucking amazing ethiopian ethiopian food um yeah yeah big refugee population that's besides the point yeah um yep so you know kazo has found themselves in this city without a ton of money um and so needs to get more attention needs to appeal to more people. So this is when Kazo announces that Black Hammer is forming a coalition with the Proud Boys, which is one of those things that comes out in really sensationalized headlines, but doesn't actually happen. What happens is Kazo goes on a podcast with Gavin McInnes, and they talk about, we have so much in common. And there's a little toast evidence of actual organizing or work together between the two groups but with this group like this no especially because Gavin doesn't do organizing anymore on paper not involved with

problems anymore yeah what was the podcast they went on instead of interest Dan will cut that and add in the entire audio from Bee Movie condensed into a two-second blast like we talked about. You know, the group gets more attention to that. They start talking about how great Trump is, how much they love Trump, how Fauci is evil. Because again, ideology is not the point. The attention is, and this is how you continue to get attention by acting ridiculous, by asking Trump voters to donate money to you. And at this time,

they also began an extremely aggressive fundraising campaign in the city of Atlanta. So there's a park in downtown Atlanta called Woodruff Park that has a huge unhoused population because our city is bad at being a city and it's just bad. But Black Hammer, there are other groups, other leftist groups that do mutual aid that help people out in the park. Black Hammer says, we're going to do this too. So they'll go there and have park. Black Hammer says, we're going to do this too. So they'll go there and have these sessions where they're screaming into a megaphone about whatever and handing out clothes and some food

to unhoused people. And they also start sending the members of their group pretty much every day of the week to go out into the city of Atlanta and ask people for money on the streets in their matching branded Black Hammer t-shirts and masks. A sight to see. And yeah, so this is what they call their Robin Hood campaign. so they this is what they call their robin hood campaign um they specifically target college campuses uh georgia state university and georgia tech especially um with the idea that college kids have a lot of money to give away not a great idea um but they do this aggressive fundraising where they you know follow people and if they don't take no for answer to say oh you don't care about homeless people you don't care about unhoused

people um you know you just have so much white privilege and really attacking people um which is great when you're coming home you're riding your bike home and then you keep passing black hammer members outside of uh you know on your commute home not fun yeah and they appear you know on the belt line which is this kind of public green space and and shared walking space in Atlanta. They do this outside of concert venues. I went to see the Dead Kennedys, and as I was walking in the venue, a black camera guy asked me for money. I have to explain to the guy in front of me,

handing them $5, this is an anti-Semitic cult. You don't want to do that. And they're also taking in unhoused people. You know, there's this video of one of the lieutenants saying, you know, we want to get you, the unhoused people, to come fundraise for us. You know, if you come fundraise for us, you can keep half of it 50-50 split, and whoever fundraises the most in this week gets to come live with us at the hammer house so it's pretty up you know um there's a case where a professor at georgia state university because these people the the black camera members are out there every day

all day um this is what they do this is their job this is how the group makes money you know calls them out and says hey stop asking for money here i know you're a cult and a member follows the professor and films her you know and specifically films her license plate and says we got you for example members are arrested for having a megaphone in woodruff park and get some of their guns taken away when the rest because they're in the park with a bunch of guns cool you can just have guns out yeah yeah it's georgia which sometimes is cool when the proud boys show up and anti-fascists have guns but it's not not great when uh welcome i'm danny thrill won't you join me at the fire and dare enter nocturnal tales from the shadows presented by iheart and son, an anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America.

From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey fam, I'm Simone Boyce. I'm Danielle Robay. And we're the hosts of The Bright Side,

the daily podcast from Hello Sunshine that is guaranteed to light up your day. Every weekday we bring you conversations with the culture makers who inspire us. Like our episode with actor, former Beverly Hills 90210 star and host of the podcast, I Choose Me, Jenny Garth. There have been so many times when I've been really lost. I say that because I'm on the other side of it.

And the only way to get to the other side of something is to go through it, not around it. Allow your body to feel the pain. And then you have to dig in sometimes and look within to learn from it because that's what all these obstacles are for, I guess. Ultimately, what other choice do you have? Listen to The Bright Side from Hello Sunshine on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

New episodes every Thursday. Hola, mi gente. It's Honey German, and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture. your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with cheese man laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything, from music and pop culture, to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries.

Don't miss out on the fun, El Te Caliente and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. definitely tracking following people who criticize you and taking pictures of their license plate to try to dox them online is not at all cult behavior that's yeah and they it's like low-rent Scientology stuff. They attack ex-members they leak the addresses of the family of ex-members and their social security numbers as well because they had them give them all this information at gunpoint yeah they seem to get very close to

encouraging people to shoot cops in a couple of pieces on their website as well um yep they talk about killing white people a lot eventually in yeah in 20 early 2022 they have this rally outside of the cnn center in solidarity with the january 6th political prisoners um along the way in 2022 gauzy claims to find have found jesus and uh black hammer becomes a religious group you know they turn their mutual aid distribution into what they're calling the Revolutionary Church which of course is filmed

and live streamed they have several live streams that they do regularly throughout the week that are mandatory for members to attend you know there is corporal punishment going on within the group of people living at the house. And the people that they're picking up off the street, it's not just adults, it's kids as well.

Kazo claims to have this 16-year-old that they have adopted. And, you know, K I post these videos of them giving the 16 year old guns and money and clothes to wear. Um, the kid gets taken into state custody, um, before the current thing that we're talking about. Um, and this is going to be important later on in the story um yeah so there are also these stories from members who have escaped who have to do these elaborate escape attempts to get out because they're not allowed to leave who have to kind of run away in

the middle of the night with none of their stuff through a thunderstorm to get out. So this is what we're dealing with. All right, everyone, it's James here. And I just wanted to correct a couple of things from the episode or add to them. One of them was the date of that shooting, be it murder or death by suicide. That was the 19th of July, not the 19th of February. And so it happened about a week ago at the time that you will hear this if you hear this on the day that we put it out. Secondly, I also just wanted to give some context to the word Uhuru. It's a Swahili word, means freedom or independence.

It was used as part of a backronym, which is when a group has a name and then they create an acronym that fits to that name and the word uhuru was part of a back name for a group called the mao mao a revolutionary anti-colonial group who existed in kenya and the word uhuru was used a decent amount in anti-colonial struggles in kenya and in the backronym the back backronym is Mzungo enda yulaya muafrika alpati uhuru, let the foreigner go home. Africa should be independent, will be independent, I suppose. I just wanted to give that context. And obviously, it's been appropriated now by the Proud Boys, but that is part of the etymology of the word and then we get to um what happened on february 19th 2022 um you know this is an ongoing story so the facts what we know might be changing but

early in the morning someone calls 9-1-1 and talks about being held hostage by an organization, by a group. They don't give the address, but the police are the authorities are able to track the number to this house in Fayetteville suburbs, south of Atlanta, um, and show up and, um, they see someone is outside walking a dog who, runs away that person gets arrested um that's a member of black hammer they see someone kind of waving from the garage seemingly in distress um and the police are able to get that person out they ask that the rest of the people in the house come out as well um about 10 people come out and uh one person remains inside now by about 2 p.m

um with the use of an explosives ordinance with the use of an eod yeah a bomb robot um the police enter the building um the SWAT team goes in and they find one person dead of a gunshot wound to the head, which we at this current time, we don't know the full details on that. We might not ever. Hopefully something comes out. being held you know the group is kind of like sitting around outside not in handcuffs but being held by the group um and uh kazo does what kazo does and starts to live stream so uh here's a clip from this 30 minute live stream facebook live that kazo does look there's a lot of media out here, girl, so this is just going to build me up at the end of the day.

So thank you for that. So if you think that I am concerned or anything like that, you're out of your mind. At the end of the day, there's still breath in my body. I still run an amazing revolutionary party. Our community is effing with us.

And now all these news channels are going to want to interview us. And we're going to get to communicate about all the great work that we are doing here. So this is great at the end of the day so my chickens coming home to roost is more more media more followers more

you know advancement of work more movement more greatness and so be it, sweetheart. Things like this have not stopped. Movements are readers before, so. Not even overcome. This is a great moment. Right, comrade?

This is a great moment. A moment where, you know no our voices will be amplified and our mission and cause will be informed well that's cool i like that he clearly understands the gravity of the loss of a human life so i will say this is probably before depending on what actually happened it became clear that someone was dead but the point is that this is exactly what kaza wanted was this attention yeah they seem pumped they seem pumped and also like deranged yeah yeah yeah that wasn't how i'd envisioned them speaking at all it's sort of very almost like calming and they seem very very calm in their tone of voice yeah i mean calm but like i don't know i see an edge to

them but maybe that's me reading yeah um so do we know more detail about like what happened with that person who died so i don't want to mention the name of the person um this place yeah let's this is a minor too right this is so 18 the person who was killed who's dead now was not yeah was not the 16 year old the 16 year old was already in state custody okay good a few weeks ago i believe um this is an eight according to the what the group has said and other survivors I've spoken with, this is an 18-year-old who the group took in off of the street. This is a kid who wanted to be a rapper, who had dreams.

According to Black Hammer's own media, they made this person their minister of defense. That's a good job for an 18-year-old. He was dead now because of this group yeah potentially from a self-inflicted gunshot wound which that is the case came about because of kazo putting that 18 year old in this situation yeah so dirty south right watch broke the news they have a really good thread that i also recommend about they do have a good thread this happening it seems like the local news they started covering the story uh in the am when it was happening but didn't quite make the connection yeah there's there's one

article that's out there from a local news site that just interviews gauzy codazo homeowner of the house oh no yeah so that happens one of the members of the group is immediately charged and booked uh it's a really fucked up situation you know there yeah there's like an unhoused individual who that who who other good activists were in touch with who are at the house when this happened because this person had no other choice but it was live outside or go with black hammer oh god went through all of this happening um and then it was still on how it was still on house after all this happened kazo was arrested and booked um the charges didn't come out until about an hour before we started recording. The charges are two accounts of participation in streaking activity, two accounts of aggravated assault, two accounts of kidnapping, two accounts of false imprisonment,

two accounts of conspiracy to commit a crime, and I'm going to talk about this one one account of sodomy which in georgia the sodomy law refers to non-consensual oral or anal sex or oral and anal sex performed with the minor got you so one way or the other they are being accused of sexual assault. Yes. Yeah. The other person arrested was charged with the same crimes, except not sodomy officer obstruction instead, presumably because they fled. And that's where we're at. That's where we're at right now. Cool. Well,

that's rough. Yeah. It's, it's a pretty bleak story but i don't know at this point we will probably be hearing more as this case blows up and there's always the chance that you know the right's going to wind up adopting it to try to you know make it into a uh left-wing bad kind of deal so one there you have yeah yeah mean, we'll see what kind of legs it gets, but it's important to understand both what's happening here because a person is dead and a lot of people have been hurt. And also kind of broadly the trends that are at play here,

the way like cult dynamics can intersect with radical politics, I think is important for people to be aware of because this kind of thing isn't going to get less common as shit continues to unravel. Yeah. And if there's some takeaways, if someone can leave this with, you know, a few points that the people who were in this group,

they were victims in the situation. They were preyed upon by this abusive person because they were in a vulnerable state. Anyone, this could happen to anyone who falls on hard times, who has a bad enough day and then someone comes in and offers them this, that they say yes. You know, the other thing is to know about groups that are out there before you get involved do your research listen to voices that might be critical of the group um and know what you're getting yourself into there

are other ostensibly leftist groups out there who while not as abusive as black hammer um have cases of abuse coming out of them that gets covered up yeah it might be good for us just to um just to suggest that if folks you know find themselves in a difficult situation on someone they know is in is in one of these situations like maybe we can uh uh link to some resources in the notes or something. Yeah. Problem is there aren't. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah. There's not.

There's not a whole lot of good resources. There's a book that was recommended to me that I've been trying to find. It's probably Stephen Hassan's book, which Hassan is also, he's an expert in the field, but he's also the guy who talked about how tranny hit no mind control porn was yeah he's got he's problematic yeah look i mean part of the reason that this is such a problem is that there's very little in terms of good resources or good writing one of the things that is like there's good writing analyzing cults,

very little of it will give you much that's useful in terms of how to get people out of cults for a couple of reasons, including the fact that as we talked about earlier, what makes people vulnerable, people aren't vulnerable to cults broadly, usually, I know there's there's a certain subset of people, but like, as a general rule, people who get trapped in a cult get trapped in a specific cult, because it is something that they are specifically vulnerable to. And so if you don't like it's more or less a matter of like if you want to get someone out of a cult, are you close with that person? Like, are they someone that, you know, are they someone that you have a deep relationship with? relationship with? Because if so, like that relationship and the care that you have for them is primarily the thing that is most likely to eventually help them get out, which doesn't mean it's a magic bullet, but like there's no reliable way to get people out of cults.

Yeah. I do 12-step recovery stuff for different reasons, but the closest analogy that i can think of is dealing with someone who's abusing drugs and alcohol in your life you can't force anyone to stop you can't make anyone leave when people talk about culty programming what that entails kidnapping someone and then putting them through more abuse so there isn't a magic bullet yeah a lot of extremely problematic shit gets offered to people who understandably are concerned for their friends or family members and just want to help the best time to get someone out of a cult is before they join you know yeah is to raise awareness about abuse in communities um and share that information and take these things seriously i truly believe so much of how

this was able to happen is because people were just laughing at them and didn't take it seriously that this could get someone killed, that this was ruining lives. That's still happening. People are treating this as a joke. I don't know, a parent or somebody who otherwise works with or interfaces with or is raising young people and you're trying to think about how you can make them less vulnerable to this. It is a mix of educating them about cults and not in a way that's like laughing or mocking or talking about how silly it is, but actually discussing the very real reasons why people fall in for this stuff. Because that's the important one of the most important things is the same as covid really one of the most important things for protecting yourself is not thinking that you're immune which is a natural thing most

people who have fallen into cults earlier in their life when they heard about cults said well that's stupid as hell i would never get trapped in something like that and then they did and that's a basically a hundred percent of cult membership you know um because uh yeah if there's if i can recommend some resources for parents of course shannon fully martinez uh who is on twitter is you, was involved in extreme right skinhead stuff, and left it and has committed her life to helping people leave extremist movements. The same things that are going to make someone easily preyed upon by a cult and by an extremist group, those are the same things. And Shannon has some good resources out there. She has a Patreon as well.

The resources are available for free. You don't need to join on her Patreon. Awesome. Yeah. Shannon is awesome. And other than that, you know, don't try to avoid falling for a cult.

Except for, you know, this podcast. Keep listening to this podcast. Make it the center of your life have no friends other than us form parasocial relationships with us uh-huh well we're the only we're the only people you can trust i think that's clear yeah would you like to plug anything before we uh cut you off here, Thomas? Yeah. I'm at Twitter at W underscore F underscore Thomas.

Don't be weird on Twitter. Have empathy for the people around you. I'm also going to plug hash to unhoused people because they know what best can help them. Yeah. Fucking provide people with options for housing so that they're not. Yeah. Having a cult be the best thing they can do. But yeah.

Yep. On that happy note. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Yeah. Check in on your friends. Abandon people when they're in difficult times. It could happen here as a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from

Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly, at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep

your lights on for nocturnal tales from the shadow of Thanks for listening. by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturno on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast. And we're kicking off our second season

digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran

with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming. This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award. Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards.