Weird Little Guys is a weekly show about the worst people you’ve never heard of, taking you beyond the headlines to get to know the race warriors and aspiring terrorists trying to unravel the fabric of our society. Weaving together the origin stories of modern American white supremacist groups and the crimes that land their members in court, independent journalist Molly Conger exposes the monsters for what they really are - some weird guy. Whether they’re conspiring to build bombs or serving swastika shaped cookies at a dinner party, the weird little guys trying to destroy America are a little less scary with their masks off.
When Oath Keeper Darren Huff returned to Madisonville, Tennessee on April 20, 2010, he was planning to take control of the courthouse. It didn't quite work out that way. He didn't even see the inside of a courthouse until his own arrest a week later.
Sources:
https://www.politico.com/story/2010/04/army-birther-under-investigation-035823
https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/army-birther-lakin-released-from-leavenworth/
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/08/roger-stone-kristin-davis-robert-mueller/
https://www.justice.gov/archive/usao/gan/press/2011/11-01-11.html
https://time.com/archive/6597707/the-secret-world-of-extreme-militias/
https://www.thedailybeast.com/anti-vaxxers-charge-followers-to-join-fake-anthony-fauci-grand-jury/
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/4382623/fitzpatrick-v-bivins/
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/5092131/united-states-v-huff-tv1/
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In 2010, conspiracy theorists around the country were convinced that Barack Obama was not the rightful president. Some of them filed lawsuits. Some of them tried to have the President indicted. And when none of that worked, some of them took matters into their own hands and tried to arrest the county court employees they thought were standing in their way. In the first half of this story, Walter Fitzpatrick unsuccessfully storms the courtroom in Madisonville, Tennessee. The outcry over his arrest would motivate Oath Keeper Darren Huff to rally supporters for a second attempt.
Sources:
Jardina A, Traugott M. The Genesis of the Birther Rumor: Partisanship, Racial Attitudes, and Political Knowledge. The Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics. 2019;4(1):60-80. doi:10.1017/rep.2018.25
Josh Pasek, Tobias H. Stark, Jon A. Krosnick, Trevor Tompson, What motivates a conspiracy theory? Birther beliefs, partisanship, liberal-conservative ideology, and anti-Black attitudes, Electoral Studies, Volume 40, 2015
Hughey, M.W. Show Me Your Papers! Obama’s Birth and the Whiteness of Belonging. Qual Sociol 35, 163–181 (2012).
https://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/birther-movement-founder-trump-clinton-228304
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna33388485
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/us/12alabama.html
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/oath-keepers-poll-watching_n_58122566e4b0990edc2f8178
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/01/25/judge-lamberth-jan-6-trump-00137960
https://www.tncourts.gov/rules/rules-criminal-procedure/6
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In 2022, Ethan Melzer pleaded guilty to plotting to help al Qaeda ambush and kill his entire unit while on a sensitive mission in Turkey. But Melzer's co-conspirators turned out to be a Canadian teenager and a government informant, not members of al Qaeda. And the satanic cult that drew him down this nazi rabbit hole turned out to have been run by a man on the FBI payroll.
Sources
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/17286246/united-states-v-melzer
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69307006/united-states-of-america-v-melzer/
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/neo-nazi-1378280
https://www.wired.com/story/the-dangerous-exploits-of-an-extremist-fbi-informant/
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In June of 2020, US Army Private Ethan Melzer was arrested for leaking information about his unit's deployment to Turkey with the intention of causing a mass casualty incident. The plot was hatched in a Telegram chat room for a group calling itself Rapewaffen, an Atomwaffen splinter cell that was committed to the beliefs of a neonazi satanic cult called the Order of Nine Angles. This episode follows the rise of satanism within Atomwaffen and the chaos that influence caused.
Sources:
https://unicornriot.ninja/2020/national-guard-soldier-who-deployed-to-dc-identified-as-neo-nazi/
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/neo-nazi-1378280
https://hopenothate.org.uk/2020/06/23/the-rapewaffen-telegram-channel/
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There's no new weird little guy this week, but I wanted to check in with you about how the show is going so far and squeeze in a few weird little facts that got left on the cutting room floor of past episodes.
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Tyler Bradley Dykes entered a guilty plea last year on the charge of burning an object with the intent to intimidate for his participation in the 2017 Nazi torch march in Charlottesville, Virginia. He was sentenced to just six months and was probably expecting to see his parents waiting for him outside the jail on his scheduled release date... but it was the FBI who picked him up.
Sources:
https://atlantaantifa.org/2023/04/19/inside-southern-sons-active-club-part-i/ https://atlantaantifa.org/2023/04/19/inside-southern-sons-active-club-part-ii/ https://sunlight161.noblogs.org/technology-king-lowcountry-ceo-tyler-dykes-bluffton-sc-marine-nazi/
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67681795/united-states-v-dykes/
https://the-devils-advocates.ghost.io/burning-hate-bond-review/
https://the-devils-advocates.ghost.io/unite-the-right-marcher-pleads-guilty-to-j6-charges/
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/white-nationalist-active-clubs-1234835015/
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In part two of the story of Barry Black, we finally get to the landmark supreme court case that won the klansman the right to burn crosses. Barry's Keystone Knights faded into relative obscurity after the high profile case and Virginia passed a new law aimed to prevent men like Barry from using fire as a tool of intimidation.
Sources:
https://law.duke.edu/voices/virginia https://www.oyez.org/cases/2002/01-1107 https://unprecedented.substack.com/p/transcript-bodily-harm-is-coming https://time.com/archive/6615465/south-carolina-backfire/ https://www.cnn.com/2016/07/05/us/georgia-kkk-adopt-a-highway-lawsuit/index.html https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/former-kkk-headquarters-terrorized-town-years-now-will-become-diversit-rcna20865
Unite the Right audio from videos by photojournalist Zach D Roberts & publicly available video recorded by the marchers themselves
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In 2003, the Supreme Court ruled that the mere act of burning a cross, absent evidence of specific intent to intimidate, is protected by the first amendment. But who was the klansman who got his case all the way to the highest court in the land? This is the first half of the story of Barry Black, a Pennsylvania Ku Klux Klan leader who won two write-in campaigns for constable, waged war on a rural gay bar, and spent decades fighting for his right to intimidate.
Sources:
https://www.salon.com/2009/07/24/liddy/
https://www.fec.gov/resources/legal-resources/litigation/berg_ac_berg_emerg_mot_proh_cert.pdf https://www.wethepeoplefoundation.org/PROJECTS/Obama/Evidence/AFFIDAVIT-Bishop.pdf
https://barthsnotes.com/2009/08/25/meet-ron-mcrae-the-birther-bishop/ https://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/278475/dykudrama/ https://digdc.dclibrary.org/islandora/object/dcplislandora%3A266739/datastream/OCR/view https://archives.rainbowhistory.org/files/original/367cf04d6456e9b3c311296a806863cd.pdf https://youtu.be/o4o0tZPETAc
https://archive.org/details/BarryE.Black/mode/2up
Heibel, Todd (2004). Blame It on the Casa Nova?: “Good Scenery and Sodomy” in Rural Southwestern Pennsylvania. In Spaces of Hate: Geographies of Discrimination and Intolerance in the U.S.A. Routledge.
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In 2019, the FBI arrested a coast guard lieutenant who'd been buying pain pills online, but it wasn't just Tramadol they found in his apartment: he'd spent years stockpiling weapons and studying mass shooter manifestos. The investigation revealed an obsession with sniper rifles, a kill list, and his secret skinhead past.
Sources:
https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2022/02/22/sentence-upheld-for-former-coast-guard-officer-tied-to-terror-plot/ https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2019/02/21/coast-guard-lt-christopher-hasson-wrote-notorious-neo-nazi-harold-covington https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1980/05/14/nazis-showing-in-nc-race-embarrasses-gop/84295cd5-37c3-449c-b8b6-cea599978b14/ https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/base https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/07/25/harold-covington-founder-white-separatist-group-dies-64 https://archives.lib.ku.edu/repositories/3/resources/5422 https://www.wbay.com/2024/08/12/uncle-fester-aka-stephen-preisler-returns-court-new-drug-charge/
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/14581072/united-states-v-hasson/
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A teenager who murdered two people outside of a gay bar in Slovakia, a teenager who stabbed five men at a mosque in Turkey, and a teenager who planned to destroy infrastructure in New Jersey had one thing in common: they'd all been reading terrorism manuals produced by a group of neonazi propagandists. A new indictment alleges two Americans are responsible for inciting acts of white supremacist terror all over the world.
Sources:
https://www.wired.com/story/terrorgram-collective-indictments/
https://www.antihate.ca/uk_first_add_terrorgram_collective_proscribed_groups
https://vsquare.org/bratislava-terrorist-radicalized-on-terrorgram-its-members-take-credit/
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/08/canada-terrorism-far-right.html
https://www.antihate.ca/terrorgram_neo_nazi_collective_heart_international_arrests
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/terrorgram-collective-now-proscribed-as-terrorist-organisation
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A soldier was arrested last month on charges that included lying about his membership in a hate group on his application for a security clearance. But with so many white supremacists in the military, why is it so rare to see this particular charge brought against service members? Molly explores some of the possible reasons the charge isn't used more often and talks about a handful of cases where it's been successful.
Sources:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/08/26/infiltrating-the-far-right
https://www.rawstory.com/kai-liam-nix-arrested-extremism/
https://jweekly.com/2020/10/23/judge-rules-that-nazi-obsessed-east-bay-man-must-face-trial/
https://unicornriot.ninja/2018/leaked-violent-racists-use-facebook-chat-to-plan-unite-the-right-2/
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/20/us/north-carolina-soldier-arrested-guns-trafficking.html
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