It Could Happen Here - The Tenacious Unicorn Ranch: How to Build a Haven, Part 2: The Sentinel

Episode Date: December 14, 2022

James and Gare look into the causes of the siege and the solidarity and support that people around the world showed to the ranch.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. It was a couple of days after Aldo had his run-in with the locals when I arrived. Everyone was on edge. And everywhere we went, it was with guns. So I remember there was a point when I was here, which was like a week or so after Aldo ran those guys off, that we were going out somewhere and some folks were like,

well, can someone who is comfortable using a gun stay behind? Right, right. Yeah, that's what it was at. Yeah. Yeah, it was... Because not yeah yeah it was yeah it's not all of us like want to or can like i i can't i'm too scared of guns like i i recognize that they're very important i'm glad i i'm surrounded by people who can like defend me but um and i think that's important to like allow space for that too yeah yeah yeah what kind of saying there is really

important not just for this story but for folks listening to this and thinking, oh fuck, I need to get guns. If you want to get guns, go ahead and get some. If you can, safely and legally. But what you need is community. Everyone at the ranch works hard every day to keep their project going. Sometimes that's with a gun.

Most of the time, it's with a sack of crunchy alpaca food or sometimes with a keyboard. Most of the time, it's with a sack of crunchy alpaca food or sometimes with a keyboard. The community that sustains the ranch is much bigger than the people on the ground. And it's a great illustration of the power of solidarity to sustain a project which, in times like today's, the world really needs. Today, hundreds of queer people visit the ranch every year for hundreds of different reasons. Kat takes care of the ranch's visitors and manages social media. Jen helps administer a Patreon account for the ranch, complete with daily alpaca photos and updates on events. When I arrived at the ranch in 2021, it became pretty clear that I wasn't the only one who'd seen the tweet.

Paul and Aldo both have backgrounds in combat arms. Both of them fought in wars they now don't think were a great idea, and both of them were willing to use the skills the state gave them to protect people who the state wouldn't. Paul, like Aldo and I, came because of a tweet. I saw Aldo tweet like a stop sign or something, and it said, you know, a few years ago, I never would have imagined being on like a stop sign or something and it said you know a few years ago i never would have imagined being on like a transgender anarchist alpaca farm but here i am and i think i dm'd him or something i was like what the fuck are you talking about yeah and uh we ended up signal chatting, and he explained what was happening and what had happened the day he was there, or one of the days he was there.

And I was like, oh, wow, that sounds super fucked up. Hey, I'm going to book a flight. Before Aldo left, they picked up another tale. We went into Westcliff, the closest town for something, I think just to the gas station and when we when we came back down at the query down by the airport which is like three or four miles down the road towards the the town two to three vehicles pulled out and started following us and one of them pulled down the road the ranch is on and we we just drove straight and then they followed us and we turned around two or three roads down and then the third vehicle that had been waiting now was waiting for

us to come back and pull in so like they they were trying very hard to tail anyone and get like identifying identifiers yeah when i arrived paul and i slept in the guard trailer well i slept very hard to tail anyone and get like identifying. When I arrived, Paul and I slept in the guard trailer. Well, I slept, Paul stayed up all night, walking patrols and keeping an eye on the fence line. If you're familiar with Hey Duke and Edward Abbey's eco anarchist novel,

the monkey wrench gang, that's a pretty good way to envision Paul, albeit without the misogyny and racism that makes it pretty hard to have any respect for that book or his author. Throughout the night, I'd check in on Paul. It wasn't a large trailer. And when I did, I'd look through his night vision at the strange movement in the fields around the ranch. People seemed to huddle behind a pickup, and they used the headlights to try and blind us.

Night vision doesn't really work that way anymore, but they moved around throughout the night thinking that we couldn't see them staging in different areas on the ridge above us with the commanding field of view and presumably a field of fire as well we assumed they were trying to watch us as we sat there watching them it was actually pretty fascinating um so a house that happens to be visible from the or another property that's visible from, from the hilltop that the ranch is on here, like every evening it would start to get dark out and then like 15 or 20 cars

would show up. Oh yeah. It was like 15 to 20 cars. Which has never happened since. Yeah. Well, so like 15 to 20 cars would show up and I can't remember what precipitated it. But the second night I was here, oh, I know what it was.

Somebody walked their dog and I happened to kind of meet them down by the gate because they were walking up the road. It was like two o'clock in the morning during a blizzard. And I was like, this is very unusual. So I met them down there and I I happened to have night vision gear. And it was obviously from them, because from that point on, they would actually point vehicles at the ranch with their headlights on the entire night from some properties that are closer to the highway, which is semi-effective it makes

this bloom for 15 feet around that vehicle but then everything else you can just see so it didn't matter inside the house it got harder and harder to move over the course of the next few days a support came flooding in there were thousands of rounds of ammunition plate carriers plates the kind that stop bullets, and boxes of first aid supplies. One day, Paul and I sat around staging first aid kits, unwrapping and preparing the products to make them easier to use. People messaged every day volunteering to help,

and we looked them up using some background check websites they often use for work to check that they weren't charged trying to infiltrate the ranch. The amount of support that we've seen is largely absurd. They often use for work to check that they weren't charged trying to infiltrate the ranch It must be nice to know that like everybody fucking wants you to succeed right? Like you can't troll me yeah no there are no haters that can get to us because of how much support that we know is out there not only um locally but internationally like for fuck's sake like internationally like we have people from

all over the world that have like taken a moment to be like what can i do like what do you need right now? And that is just like, you can't troll that out of me. Like, there is nothing you can say that I can't be like, yeah, but also I've got 12 people who would kill you for me. So I don't know, like, fuck you. The ranch became something of a core celebre on the arm left. The outpouring of support was incredible.

In March of 2021, we all probably felt a little bit helpless. A summer of uprising and revolt had yielded a new geriatric white dude in charge. COVID was still raging, and the cops had shown less anger at thousands of church-storming congress than they did at kids holding Black Lives Matter placards in the street. In a time when it was difficult to feel powerful, the ranch openly defying attempt to scare the men of the valley gave people a sense of success. And they were more than willing to show up and help. So, yeah, I want to talk about that because you guys attempted to basically stock up on firearms

at a time in American history when that may have been hardest and most expensive. And what sort of got you through was a lot of people from all over the internet showing solidarity. From all over the world. Like it was literally all over the world. A lot of anti-fascist organizations.

Yeah. We got sent plate carriers. People did runs for ammo. Like people would like buy ammo, like organize something and get ammo and food and things and then just drive up drop it and leave because you know not everybody's ready to be in like an active zone where you could get shot right but they would do runs up to drop stuff off for us like it was crazy crazy but that solidarity wasn't just on the internet. It was in the valley as well.

Even before the attacks on the ranch began, the unicorns knew they were coming. They knew because people told them. And people told them because they cared about them and wanted them to be safe. They cared about them because, from the outset, the unicorns had made themselves an important part of their community. When the county stopped recycling waste that could be recycled, the unicorns stepped up and volunteered to do it themselves. On my first trip, I joined Penny and Jay for the long drive into Canyon City with a rickety horse trailer full of old beer cans and a truck with a struggling transmission. The money they get paid to recycle the cans is less than the gas they spend getting

there. But it's an important thing to do, so they do it. Hey, Garrison here. Now that we have talked about how the siege happened, we need to explain why. At the start of this series, we said that this was a story that was about the internet. And it is. It's a story about how the internet has allowed a section of the American right that's always existed to develop links and gained both power and coherence in the last two decades, thanks largely to online organizing. The story of how these groups got where they are

is a long one. It starts with talk radio, with Rush Limbaugh, then with Glenn Beck, and the gradual drift to Fox News, from bad journalism to outright barking for genocide seven nights a week at prime time. It's a story that we can't tell here, not in its entirety, but we can show you a little of what it looks like when that rhetoric leaves the forums and Facebook comments and lands on the ground in a small town in Colorado. There are two versions of the truth in Westcliff. There's the one that most of you are going to hear, and then there's the one that you can find George Gremlich purveying in his local newspaper, the Sangre de Cristo Sentinel. The Sentinel is probably best summarized as a print version of

the Facebook comments from some of your older relatives that you've hopefully long since muted. from some of your older relatives that you've hopefully long since muted. It's the guy who doesn't know when to stop booming on about Obama at the Thanksgiving table, but in a stream of consciousness, unedited print format. We're going to let George lay out what the Sentinel is about in his own words. We didn't get much joy out of trying to speak with him, and not for lack of trying. I approached his office numerous times, knocking on the door and trying to have a good old chat with George. But luckily, he did go on the record for the Texas TL in Exile podcast. This kind of spectacular programming, two white dudes shooting the breeze, is certainly a tried and true recipe for success in the

podcasting space. But you could be forgiven for not having heard of this particular podcast before. Because even though we knew about it, it took us forever to even find it on the hit podcasting app, Rumble.

We moved to Custer County from the Adirondack Mountains in northern New York about 12 years ago. And the wife and I were basically political and Second Amendment refugees. We had a couple of friends who had moved to southern Colorado, and they said that the most conservative county, maybe in the state, but certainly in southern Colorado, is Custer County. It's about an hour and a half south of Colorado Springs,

high in the Rocky Mountains, population 4,500, a ranching community, stunning views, just simply beautiful, two small towns right in the middle of the county, each with about 500-600 people in it, and hardcore conservatives. I'd say 65% of the counties registered Republicans. But even in his conservative paradise, George found that most folks couldn't live up to his high standards for political engagement. After Obama got elected his first term, slowly over that four-year period, interest in the Tea Party started diminishing as Obama was destroying the country. After he got elected the second time, we had our first meeting since his election in January.

And normally at that point, after four years, we're against 40 to 60 people showing up. At that meeting, only 12 people showed up up and it was doom and gloom you know obama's destroying the country there's nothing we can do blah blah blah we started talking local you know we got to keep custer county uh red and uh and uh and the facts came up which has has been a problem in the county forever, was that the local newspaper and the only newspaper in the county was extremely liberal paper. And we had done research over the years, and we found out that across rural America, this phenomenon was common. That rural counties tended to have liberal papers.

And it's just because the lids vegetate to that media, and they know they could have an influence on the population via that. So the meeting was over. We went home. And on the way home, I turned to Yvonne and said, we're going to

start a paper. So next day, I spent a whole day building a business plan on how to start a Christian conservative newspaper in the rural community. Now, we couldn't find the research that George is talking about, and that's probably because it's not true. What we can find is that 1,300 largely small newspapers closed in the past 15 years. To learn more about the newspaper business in Southern Colorado, we spoke to George's arch rival, the publisher of the only other publication in the West, or at least the only other one in the Valley.

Jordan Hedberg. You are the editor of the... Owner and publisher. I could barely spell my own name. So the publisher of the White Mountain Tribune newspaper. Jordan and George aren't exactly best pals, largely thanks to George's attacks on Jordan and his publication. We asked Jordan to give us a sense of the competition in the local media market

and for his overall thoughts on the Sentinel. I think it's just lies. I mean, that's the problem with the Sentinel. I don't see the media space as a zero sum game. If somebody wants to have a openly conservative newspaper in this town, I think there's plenty of readers. It doesn't really compete with me because we do just community news,

and we always have since 1883. So we've been here for a little while. But I don't see it as a zero-sum game until you start lying about things because you're in what you perceive to be a power struggle. So that's the problem with the Sentinel. There's no problem with the Sentinel overall, other than that they like to tell lies to kind of justify their existence. Yeah. Jordan's take on the founding of the Sentinel, whose logo prominently features a bald eagle on

the cover, if you hadn't quite picked up on the vibe yet, was a little different. You know, they got started in their minds during the Tea Party movement to combat hyper-liberal newspaper, but they only labeled the Tribune that because they needed an enemy. You know, they were very whipped up about Obama getting elected, and at the time there had been that Aurora shooting, and so the real reason they really got started was when Colorado put an assault weapons magazine ban into place. So you couldn't have anything that could fire more than 15 rounds after the Aurora theater shooting, which was, I guess, 10 years ago this week.

So that was one of the big things that really got them started was what they felt like an attack on weapons. But they did it in a community that's very, you know, pro-Second Amendment. I mean, at the time, it was probably 60% Republican. These days it's 50%, but still a majority. Even the moderates and most Democrats probably have guns and are okay with the idea of that, but they had a much more militant style saying, hey, we should be allowed to arm ourselves with whatever.

But again, they still had to create a bunch of lies locally saying that at you know, at the time it was the former owner that the Tribune was hyper liberal, communist, you know, against guns, which wasn't the truth. 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 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. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez.

Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami.

Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Piece, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners,

for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. wherever you get your podcasts. Gun rights and the threat of gun confiscation have been a constant source of profitable panic

for agitators on the right for decades now. In Westcliff, there doesn't really seem to be much controversy about guns. People who want them have them, and people who don't, don't. On my drive from the airport to the ranch, I stopped at a couple of gun stores, and I'd seen people lining up to buy magazines, guns, and other things that they'd worried about the government banning, which seems a very odd reaction to a mass murder in your state. But once I got to rural Colorado and

past Manteek's gun room, there wasn't really any of that. It was just some old dudes impining about the relative value of different big bore revolvers and an SKS which had been entirely violated by someone's attempt to make it more modern. George, apparently, had seen an earlier mass shooting in Aurora as an opportunity for the liberals and rhinos he so loathed to take away his guns and an opportunity for him to take a stand against him he decided to take a stand at a place where no one really disagreed with him and against a thing that wasn't really happening but nonetheless he decided to rally the troops and hold well we'll let him describe what he held about i don't know six or seven years ago, T.L., the Lips in Colorado and Denver passed the gun laws, and one of them was the magazine limitation law.

And before, there was no limitation, and they passed laws that you can't buy any new magazines with more than 15 rounds in it, but they all went to grandfathered. with more than 15 rounds in it, but they all went to grandfathered. Now, during the legislative session, as you remember, the whole state was up in arms about this. I mean, there was demonstrations in Denver. I mean, we were pissed off, and the SOBs passed it. So Westcliff had a July 4th parade that we actually took over, the Central took over after a couple of years. And there's usually maybe 25, 30 floats in it, or entries, you know, things from goats

to horses to who knows. Hold on, George, let's dwell on that for a minute. When I mentioned that I came down there and you had like five or six hundred people in this parade, I think it might have got glossed over. How big are these towns to start with? Because it's basically a combination of Silver Cliff and West Cliff, right? Yeah, each town has about 500 people. Out of 500 people, out of a total of 1,000 people, I mean, you can describe it, but describe that

to the listeners for a little bit about what that parade looks like versus how many people are on the sidewalk. Yeah, yeah. So normally, in the tea party had an entry and we usually had maybe 15, 20 people march down with you know, gas and flags and stuff. But that, those gun laws, the mag ban, I mean, just energized the Sentinel tremendously. So we decided a couple of months before July 4th that we were going to turn the Tea Party parade entrance into a Second Amendment protest entry.

of the flyers and we inundated southern Colorado, every gunshot, pawn shop, everything with thousands of flyers come to the Westwood July 4th thing and tell them what part to go to, which place

to go to and protest these BS laws and stuff like that. And so that morning, the parade starts at 10 o'clock. We set up the shop in front of the...

We told the parade organizers that we might have some more people coming, so we found a field where we could set up. We set up there, and we had a couple extra... We had three or four extra guys there to check guns. We said, you know, you could bring

long rifles, no magazines, they gotta be clear, shoulder carried only, holstered pistols, you know. And we had a whole bunch of people to check for safety and stuff like that. And so we had no idea how many people were going to show up.

And normally there's 25 entries and maybe 150 people in the parade, maybe 200 total. And all of a sudden, on Main Street where our field was, around 830, there was a traffic jam that went down like a mile both ways. And people were turning into our parking lot field there and going nowhere else and they kept coming and coming and coming and coming this went on for an hour and a half the sheriffs were freaking out. We had over 500 heavily armed citizens there that morning with about 25 military trucks, a deuce and a half jeeps. We had a Korean War half-track there with a 50 cow on top.

Jordan, the Tribune publisher, saw things a little bit differently. So right before the Sentinel got started, they were like, hey, we're going to advertise. And they did it all across the state. They said, bring your big black evil guns to Custer County. And the problem is, you know, that was the issue. This is a family event. And so ever since then, so what happened was in response, the Republican town council and the Republican Chamber of Commerce all said, we're not going to have a parade. We can't have a bunch of randos showing up right after the Aurora theater shootings carrying massive amounts of firepower.

Even if you claim it's unloaded or whatever, we just can't have that for a family event. And so the thing is, is they took out a permit and did the parade themselves. So that's really how things. So 4th of July for them is sort of their anniversary every year. You know, they're very, they really consider that whole thing to be that way, but that's really what happened. And it's a conservative area. There's no bravery marching assault rifles through Custer County.

Now, if they'd done it in downtown Denver where guns are banned, or at least those types of guns, at least you could say they had a backbone and stood for what they believed in. Yeah, you're taking a stand, but it's not MLK going to Selma, is it? So the problem with the Sentinel is the lies. You know, if they're just a conservative paper, fine. They're allowed to have their opinion. But they tend to tell lies constantly.

Yeah. George Had had miraculously managed to turn a mass murder into a sort of pseudo victory parade for a culture war that he was fighting every day with his newspaper soon enough and largely thanks to this parade the culture war would be opening a whole new front on the tenacious unicorn ranch Tenacious Unicorn Ranch. Welcome, I'm Danny Trejo. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, 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. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh.

And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian, Elian. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba.

Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me in a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry,

we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Black Lit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Black Lit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Of course, the Sentinel has opinions about the ranch,

and trans folk in general. When we arrived in Westcliff, Gareth and I grabbed a coffee at Peregrine Coffee Roasters. Long-term friends of the ranch, and supporters of me staying up all night with Paul and then up all day with Penny and Jay. We also grabbed a copy of The Sentinel from a dispenser, pulled up a chair and started a live reading. Even after a year of me being aware of their rhetoric, it did not disappoint. So I just searched the word gender on the Sentinel's website. We got an article on social emotional learning,

which is basically the right trying to rebrand their critical race theory shit, but make it even broader. And we do have an article from January of last year called Meet the Gun-Toting Tenacious Unicorns in Happy Valley. Let's click on that and see what the Sentinel has to say. What is this guy's name? Eric Siegel? Yes.

High Country New? Oh, what they've done there is just plagiarize a piece from High Country News. Oh, so they just stole this from somewhere else. It's worth stopping here to point out that the Sentinel does this a lot. It's not clear if they have permission or not, but they seem to dedicate at least half their print pages to aggregating content that is mostly from the far-right of the internet. Notable examples include a really spectacularly racist piece on anti-material rifles,

which we will not read, and numerous far-right commentary sites, which turn shreds of news into a thousand words of panic-wrangling opinion. Anyway, let's see what they have to say about the pretty good article that Eric Siegel wrote about the Unicorn Ranch for High Country News. Magnificent stuff. So, I guess the article is kind of a... It's a relatively positive article. Yeah, so they do have an edit at the bottom that the Sentinel wrote based on the article.

an edit at the bottom that the Sentinel wrote based on the article. Well, folks, the veil has been lifted. For those of you who haven't seen or experienced left-wing fascism, here it is. From Biden to Polis, and all the way down to this hypocritical bunch of hate-filled xenophobes, they're all the same. Filled with hate, paranoia, self-righteousness, intolerance, and the desire to rule and control, and obsessed with violence. Their radical, narrow-minded view of the world and our rural community is the only allowable viewpoint. All of a sudden, the citizens of Custer County are fascists and Nazis. This fascist rhetoric that George,

himself a transplant from outside the valley who has tried to transform local politics, is referring to, is what sparked off the confrontation that brought me, Aldo, paul to the ranch last year yeah so that one wasn't even a parade what it was was it was a protest on the fourth of july because during covid they weren't doing any parade things yeah so they just did this as a protest right and so the sheriff and everybody i mean you couldn't distinguish it from a

fourth of july parade except there wasn't I don't think the fire department and stuff took, you know, the sheriff's office and the fire department didn't take part. And it was just, it was really a bunch of people with on horses, marching guns, stuff like that. But the flags were a little more disturbing. You know, most of the American flags were replaced with 3% flags or the thin blue line flags. There was a couple of Confederate flags.

Always fun. I still can't figure out the Confederate flag. Yeah, on the run. I still can't figure out the Confederate flag. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Long way south here. Yeah, you know, but there is that lost cause myth that does take place here. Yes, I'm sure.

And, you know, they'll say it's not a racist flag, but it absolutely is. This was the parade the unicorns called out. And this was what put them at the center of Gramlich's conspiracy-riddled hate machine. Jordan gave us a little more insight into exactly who those fascist groups were. The people that the Sentinel brought to town for their little protest parade. George Gramlich is a member of Oath Keepers. We've been able to confirm that through

not only himself, but Thompson Reuters had an investigative reporter that confirmed that for us. So Oath Keepers is a big one. 3% you'll see some of those shirts around. The two of them are kind of synonymous. None of it's super organized. It's kind of like saying

that Antifa's super organized. It's very decentralized. The problem is that they do write extreme things, and I think people like myself and then definitely the Unicorn Ranch suffers because they can't really spread their message without an enemy. And you were asking earlier how much influence do they have. Not a lot. They have about 800 subscriptions

from what i can tell okay um some receipts accidentally got put in my box versus theirs because we're the wet mound publishing company yeah um and they're the mountain publishing yes i saw that yeah post office at all their glory occasionally give me a win but uh you know they're 800 to maybe a thousand by their own own numbers. The Sentinel's stance on vaccines will definitely not shock you considering everything else we've said about George and the Sentinel thus far. So this comes from marketticker.org.

Effectiveness of primary infection against severe, critical, or fatal COVID-19. Reinfection was 97.3%. Irrespective of the variant of primary infection or reinfection was 97.3 percent irrespective of the variant of primary infection or reinfection and with similar and with no evidence for waning similar results we found in subgroup analyses for those less than 50 years of age got it no let me explain it if you got COVID-19 lived you are more than 97 percent certain with a very narrow confidence band protected against a severe or fatal ed in hospital

dead second infection even though coronaviruses always mutate and i'm just going to check really quickly if that's what they're saying uh and normally yeah they've quoted this sort of out of context uh and there is no evidence of protection ever goes away. That is not what the quote says. If you look at the jab... I think you get the picture. It's pseudoscience babble, transphobia, and general boomer anti-wokeism. Oh, there's a piece here.

It's about the US Army is really struggling to recruit right now. Imagine you're an 18-year-old white Christian male in Georgia with a family history of military service. As you through your teen years you watch confederate statues being torn down a military base is being renamed endless media and elitist demonization of your culture is racist and deplorable and backwards and military and civilian leadership that thinks diversity and inclusion i.e fewer white men is the best thing since sliced bread. Would you volunteer? Identity politics works both ways. Trash my tribe and I won't associate with you,

let alone risk my life. Shouldn't be a shock then that those expressing a great deal of trust and confidence in the military dropped from 70% in 2018 to 45% today. So that's why no one wants to do the military because we are not doing enough uh confederacy wow there's a whole piece on how to protect your wealth by oh well no there's a whole section of this called the second amendment corner okay interesting so there's a picture here of a

bunch of atf agents obviously armed and in plate carriers and a pride flag and this is a joke this is a funny uh and it says corporate wants you to find the difference between this picture and this picture. And then it says they're the same picture. So I guess the ATF are out This particular ATF visit got hyped up all over the right-wing media as a raid, a gun grab, etc, etc. In fact, what happened was a dude purchased a lot of guns and the ATF came by to check if he had sold any of them. It's not routine, but it's not super uncommon either. Anyway, on one side was a photo of the ATF agents in plate carriers with rifles, and on the other was a pride flag. Because apparently in Custer County, the existence of queer people is a similar oppression to the people who did Waco coming to your door. Jordan has also noted this turn in the rhetoric of the Sentinel. For two years, their sole purpose was to rail against COVID restrictions.

Now, with many of those gone, along with 22 people from the county where the average age is 60, they've pivoted to culture war topics when election fraud and COVID don't seem to have stuck. Now it's just we're against. It was all, you know, the big lie, the election was stolen, critical race theory, even though it's a bunch of crap. And unfortunately, the Unicorn Ranch, in the past it was more against anybody that was gay, but there's not many of those in the community anymore because they kind of got run out.

From the Sentinel, you were saying, it just conserves in general, really hostile. Yeah. I mean, it's been definitely a shift from people to trans people, but now it's, you know, totally on the trans. Um, and again, it kind of fights back against the conservative upbringing that I had, which was as long as you're not interfering with me, then there's really no conflict. bringing that I had, which was, as long as you're not interfering with me, then there's really no conflict. We've talked about queer exterminationist rhetoric before, and it's very evident that what we are seeing here is a version of that. Fortunately, George doesn't seem to have stuck

the landing, but it doesn't mean that this stuff isn't dangerous. It goes without saying that the unicorns weren't trying to trans anyone's gender from their ranch. They were just trying to be left alone. It's not their actions that people disagreed with. It's their mere existence. And sadly, while the attack on the ranch might have failed, other attacks on queer folks haven't. And that makes havens like the Tenacious Unicorn Ranch even more important today. Next episode, we're going to talk about what brought people to the ranch and how to make a queer home in rural America. If you want to listen to more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcastils, and step into the flames of right. 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 Tex 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 iheart radio app apple podcasts wherever else you get your podcasts from