# White-Right America

An episode of [TheThinkingAtheist](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/412308695), 24 Feb 2026, 55 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/mgln.ai/e/711/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/70177653/podcast861_whiterightamerica.mp3

It's impossible to ignore the parallels between 1930s Germany and today's United States. In this podcast, we look at white supremacy as a Trumpian political platform. Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/thethinkingatheist--3270347/support.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: We understand.
[0:05] Speaker 2: The thinking atheist. It's not a person, it's a symbol,
[0:09] Speaker 2: an idea.
[0:10] Speaker 3: The population of atheists this country is going through the.
[0:13] Speaker 2: Rule, rejecting faith, pursuing knowledge, challenging the sacred. If I
[0:19] Speaker 2: tell the truth, it's because I tell the truth, not because.
[0:22] Speaker 4: I put my hand on a book and made a wish.
[0:25] Speaker 2: And working together for a more rational world.
[0:29] Speaker 5: Take the risk of thinking. Feel so much more happiness.
[0:32] Speaker 5: Truth Usian wisdom will come to you that way.
[0:35] Speaker 2: Assume nothing, question everything, and start thinking. This is the
[0:43] Speaker 2: Thinking Atheist podcast hosted by Seth Andrews.
[0:56] Speaker 5: I hear the word Nazi throwing around a lot as
[0:59] Speaker 5: we watch the rise of autocracy in this country, and
[1:03] Speaker 5: I used to resist it more than I do. There
[1:06] Speaker 5: is a rising tide of Naziism parallels to Nazi Germany,
[1:12] Speaker 5: and I thought, well, there are some there's some overlap.
[1:15] Speaker 5: But I mean, is that hyperbole these days? I mean,
[1:21] Speaker 5: I just I was so naive like neo Nazis. I
[1:26] Speaker 5: used to think that mostly today's white supremacy groups, I
[1:30] Speaker 5: don't know. They were a bunch of fringe organizations, bunch
[1:34] Speaker 5: of cranky, young white guys who were sitting around making
[1:37] Speaker 5: a lot of noise because they were terrified at their
[1:40] Speaker 5: impending irrelevance. Right, they were always going to be on
[1:44] Speaker 5: the outside. But it wasn't the fifties and the sixties.
[1:49] Speaker 5: They weren't walking around in white hoods and burning crosses
[1:53] Speaker 5: and waving the Nazi flags. And then oh wait a minute,
[1:56] Speaker 5: look there are marches, and what are they carrying. They've
[2:00] Speaker 5: got Nazi flax. It's just crazy. They make me do it.
[2:08] Speaker 5: They make me say there is a rising tide. Or
[2:12] Speaker 5: maybe they've always been there, but now they just feel
[2:15] Speaker 5: empowered to step out of the shadows the American Nazi.
[2:21] Speaker 5: Did you know that way back in nineteen thirty nine,
[2:25] Speaker 5: a Nazi rally, I mean a Hitler Nazi rally, actually
[2:29] Speaker 5: took place in this country at Madison Square Garden and
[2:35] Speaker 5: more than twenty thousand people attended. No kidding, This was
[2:40] Speaker 5: some history that I didn't know until just a few
[2:44] Speaker 5: years ago February twenty. At nineteen thirty nine, there was
[2:49] Speaker 5: a group called the German American bund Bund. They were
[2:54] Speaker 5: aligned with another organization called Friends of New Germany. And
[2:58] Speaker 5: of course this was during the rise of Hitler and
[3:02] Speaker 5: an American Nazi organization was formed, and they organized and
[3:06] Speaker 5: held this massive rally at Madison Square Garden. Obviously hugely controversial.
[3:13] Speaker 5: There were real concerns about violence on that day. They
[3:16] Speaker 5: had over seventeen hundred uniformed police officers, six hundred undercovered
[3:23] Speaker 5: detectives and cops not in uniforms scattered throughout and all
[3:27] Speaker 5: around the facility. They had firefighters there in case there
[3:31] Speaker 5: were riots and people started burning shit down. They had
[3:34] Speaker 5: bomb squads on location. I mean, it's just crazy that
[3:38] Speaker 5: it happened in this country, but it did. Over one
[3:42] Speaker 5: hundred thousand people stood outside as the rally took place.
[3:45] Speaker 5: They were protesting the whole thing, and good for them.
[3:48] Speaker 5: It gives you hope. Right one hundred thousand people in
[3:51] Speaker 5: the streets outside Madison Square Garden. There's a feature on
[3:55] Speaker 5: the whole thing that was produced by PBS. It's called
[3:59] Speaker 5: a Night at the Garden and you can find it
[4:02] Speaker 5: on YouTube if you're curious, and it will chill the blood.
[4:05] Speaker 5: So here we are nineteen thirty nine to two thy
[4:09] Speaker 5: twenty six, some thinking of last year when the Labor
[4:13] Speaker 5: Department started to post a lot of these images and
[4:17] Speaker 5: slogans that were eerily reminiscent of nineteen thirty's Germany with
[4:22] Speaker 5: these really nationalistic headlines one Homeland, one People, one heritage,
[4:28] Speaker 5: Remember who you are, Americ And one of the slogans
[4:34] Speaker 5: of Nazi Germany all those decades ago was one People,
[4:38] Speaker 5: one Country, One leader. Hitler used it to rally the
[4:43] Speaker 5: Nazi Party, and you can see this slogan posted or
[4:46] Speaker 5: listed at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The two
[4:51] Speaker 5: messages not word for word, but Jesus, they sure are similar.
[4:56] Speaker 5: Donald Trump rams up his desire to take over for Greenland,
[5:01] Speaker 5: of all places. And so what happens next? The White
[5:04] Speaker 5: House shares this cartoon that shows two dog sleds at
[5:08] Speaker 5: a crossroads. One path is leading toward the United States,
[5:12] Speaker 5: the other is leading to Russia and China. And the
[5:16] Speaker 5: caption of this cartoon was which way Greenland Man? Now,
[5:22] Speaker 5: this was posted on the actual White House x accounts.
[5:26] Speaker 5: So let's jump back to a book which was published
[5:29] Speaker 5: in nineteen seventy eight, a book by William Gaily Simpson,
[5:34] Speaker 5: who was a neo Nazi, defending Adolf Hitler. His book
[5:40] Speaker 5: was titled which Way Western Man? Don't tell me that's
[5:44] Speaker 5: a coincidence. The official Department of Homeland Security online accounts
[5:49] Speaker 5: recruiting for Ice. They use the slogan We'll have our
[5:54] Speaker 5: home again. This sounds awfully similar to a neo Natzi
[6:00] Speaker 5: song called by God, We'll have our home Again. The
[6:06] Speaker 5: Department of Labor, the Department of Homeland Security on the
[6:09] Speaker 5: White House continue to post these very imposing, hardcore nationalistic
[6:15] Speaker 5: images and this is all messaging. Many of these things
[6:18] Speaker 5: have Donald Trump looking stern. He's lit in very contrasty
[6:23] Speaker 5: light and shadow, never smiling, never smiling. He's always hunched
[6:27] Speaker 5: over and sticking his jaw out and squinting and trying
[6:31] Speaker 5: to look like a badass. And it's very hitler esque.
[6:35] Speaker 5: This is not an exaggeration. This is some hitler esque
[6:38] Speaker 5: shit and it's all I do know. It's so nationalistic
[6:42] Speaker 5: and warlike and overtly white. Slogans like never surrender, embrace Americanism,
[6:51] Speaker 5: patriots in control, Americanism will prevail. This reminds me of
[6:57] Speaker 5: that line from V four Vendee with Adam Suttler as
[7:02] Speaker 5: the fascist leader, and the slogan for fascist England was
[7:06] Speaker 5: England prevails. Trust the plan, Globalism has failed, recapture the dream,
[7:15] Speaker 5: dominate the sea. One American heritage. I could go on
[7:21] Speaker 5: and on and on and Peppered in with all of
[7:24] Speaker 5: these images are these Norman rockwell Ish depictions of a
[7:29] Speaker 5: bunch of freaking white people. There is one, it's easily
[7:35] Speaker 5: findable online, and it's in front of a little country church.
[7:40] Speaker 5: It's very nineteen fifties. There is a family of white
[7:43] Speaker 5: people of every generation. They're at an outdoor picnic table.
[7:47] Speaker 5: There's turkey and drinks and desserts on the table. And
[7:51] Speaker 5: oh look, right next to a picnic basket is a
[7:54] Speaker 5: little white boy in a blue shirt. He is playing
[7:57] Speaker 5: with his dog. There's a lovely young white couple in
[8:00] Speaker 5: their twenties sticking their toes in the water. Behind them,
[8:04] Speaker 5: more church going people enjoying a sunshine fellowship. Not one
[8:10] Speaker 5: person of color anywhere. This is not an accident. There's
[8:17] Speaker 5: another one, a very white family sitting in a church
[8:20] Speaker 5: pew a lah nineteen fifties with a caption a dream
[8:25] Speaker 5: worth fighting for a pristine Caucasian face in front of
[8:30] Speaker 5: even more churches, restoring the American dream. There's a guy
[8:34] Speaker 5: standing in front of the Bay Bridge of San Francisco,
[8:38] Speaker 5: Americans First, etc. Etc. Etc. National Security Advisor Stephen Miller,
[8:47] Speaker 5: who I think is a vampire. He's just a ghoul.
[8:51] Speaker 6: This guy is.
[8:53] Speaker 5: I'm what redeeming quality does he have As you go
[8:56] Speaker 5: back through the decades of his life, all he has
[9:00] Speaker 5: is racism, bile, hate, venom, and general awfulness. Well, a
[9:04] Speaker 5: few years ago there was a series of leaked emails
[9:09] Speaker 5: that he had sent to the conservative website bright Barts
[9:13] Speaker 5: and an email after email he was sharing white supremacist
[9:18] Speaker 5: literature links to white supremacist websites. At one point he
[9:23] Speaker 5: recommended a book called The Camp of the Saints, which
[9:27] Speaker 5: told a fictitious story about white replacement theory. This whole
[9:31] Speaker 5: idea that immigrants are coming in and the deep state
[9:34] Speaker 5: and the woke libs want to wipe out white people.
[9:37] Speaker 5: It's a big conspiracy. The antagonist in that story, The
[9:42] Speaker 5: Camp of the Saints, was an Indian born man referred
[9:46] Speaker 5: to as the turd Eater because he literally ate human feces.
[9:53] Speaker 5: This was the bad guy in the story. Stephen Miller
[9:58] Speaker 5: often shared in these emails. Thanks to something called American Renaissance,
[10:02] Speaker 5: this is a white supremacist publication. After white nationalist Dylan
[10:07] Speaker 5: Rufe murdered nine black churchgoers in Charleston in twenty fifteen.
[10:12] Speaker 5: What was Stephen Miller upset about. He was mad that
[10:16] Speaker 5: Confederate flags were being removed from public spaces. Stephen like
[10:22] Speaker 5: to refer to President Calvin Coolidge, who signed the Immigration
[10:26] Speaker 5: Act of nineteen twenty four. This legislation was based on eugenics,
[10:31] Speaker 5: its severely limited immigration from certain parts of the world
[10:35] Speaker 5: into the US. Coolidge condemned the mixing of races. Stephen
[10:41] Speaker 5: Miller invoked Coolidge, the same man who said these words,
[10:45] Speaker 5: biological laws tell us that certain divergent people will not
[10:50] Speaker 5: mix or blend quality of mind and bodies. Suggest that
[10:54] Speaker 5: observance of ethnic law is as great a necessity to
[10:58] Speaker 5: a nation as immigration law. How many people did Stephen
[11:03] Speaker 5: Miller stay in contact with who were white supremacists? Richard Spencer, right,
[11:09] Speaker 5: arguably the most notorious racist in this country. You know,
[11:13] Speaker 5: he's the guy remember the video where somebody just sucker
[11:16] Speaker 5: punched him out of the blue and everybody was cheering, oh,
[11:19] Speaker 5: go punch a Nazi kind of thing. Well, he was
[11:21] Speaker 5: associated with Miller anyway, you get it. And then I
[11:25] Speaker 5: have to go back and talk about Donald Trump and
[11:28] Speaker 5: the Trump family. This was back in the nineteen seventies.
[11:31] Speaker 5: Trump and his real estate company, actually his father's real
[11:35] Speaker 5: estate company, were sued by the Department of Justice back
[11:38] Speaker 5: when it actually was a Department of Justice. The accusation
[11:43] Speaker 5: was that they were not leasing properties to African American renters. Now,
[11:50] Speaker 5: the Trump family never admitted any wrongdoing, but that Trump
[11:54] Speaker 5: settled this suit. Still, there were several people who said
[11:58] Speaker 5: that they were qualified, they applied, and yet Donald Trump
[12:02] Speaker 5: Senior said, hell, no, I ain't gonna rent my property
[12:06] Speaker 5: to black people. Donald Trump himself talking about immigrants Mexico
[12:12] Speaker 5: sending criminals. They're bringing drugs and crime. They're rapists, and
[12:17] Speaker 5: I suppose some are good people. The Haitian immigrants, they're
[12:22] Speaker 5: eating the dogs, they're eating the cats. What is this
[12:26] Speaker 5: if not xenophobia and straight up white supremacy. The twenty
[12:32] Speaker 5: seventeen white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, there was a
[12:36] Speaker 5: big blow up there, the marchers and the protesters. Of
[12:40] Speaker 5: the marchers. Donald Trump he saw fit to call both
[12:43] Speaker 5: sides very fine people, and on and on and on,
[12:48] Speaker 5: and then I log on and I see an op
[12:51] Speaker 5: ed published from February sixteenth in USA today. It's by
[12:55] Speaker 5: Rex Hupkey. It's titled Wow Elon Musk zure does like
[13:01] Speaker 5: white people. Well, I had to check that out. Let
[13:04] Speaker 5: me just read the article for you. Elon Musk, the
[13:08] Speaker 5: world's richest man and a guy whose social media platform
[13:11] Speaker 5: most companies still use, is a big fan of white people.
[13:16] Speaker 5: I mean, you could say he thinks white people are
[13:19] Speaker 5: super maybe even supreme. It's almost as if he supports
[13:24] Speaker 5: some kind of white supremacy or something like that. Responding
[13:31] Speaker 5: to an ex user who posted the Irish will become
[13:34] Speaker 5: a minority in Ireland because Irish men are afraid of
[13:38] Speaker 5: being called racist and upsetting people from the Third World,
[13:42] Speaker 5: Musk wrote on February eleventh, such men are pathetic traitors.
[13:48] Speaker 5: How subtle. On January the eighth, Musk reposted material from
[13:53] Speaker 5: an obviously secure and well adjusted ex user who wrote,
[13:57] Speaker 5: if white men become a minority, will be slaughtered. Remember
[14:02] Speaker 5: if non whites openly hate white men while white men
[14:06] Speaker 5: hold a collective majority, then they will be a thousand
[14:09] Speaker 5: times more hostile and cruel when they are a majority
[14:13] Speaker 5: over white's. White solidarity is the only way to survive.
[14:18] Speaker 5: Musk added a one hundred noting complete agreement to his repost.
[14:25] Speaker 5: Is worth noting the x user Musk deemed worthy of
[14:28] Speaker 5: highlighting to his more than two hundred million followers, has
[14:31] Speaker 5: posted racial slurs, anti semitic opinions, and this gem from
[14:36] Speaker 5: February thirteenth quote, the white simp is to blame for
[14:41] Speaker 5: feminists and Jewish supremacy. White men, who are dominated by
[14:46] Speaker 5: white women are the ultimate problem in the world. We
[14:50] Speaker 5: must teach white men to control their women, and they
[14:54] Speaker 5: will control the world. Good to know, the CEO of
[14:58] Speaker 5: Tesla the number D one car for people who enjoy
[15:02] Speaker 5: driving in shame is reading only the purest forms of
[15:06] Speaker 5: racist online commentary. Mosque owns x formerly Twitter, and has
[15:12] Speaker 5: led it morph into the online equivalent of a circa
[15:15] Speaker 5: nineteen forty one Nazi bar. While many have fled the site,
[15:20] Speaker 5: corporations and news organizations, including my own, along with all
[15:24] Speaker 5: manner of politicians and celebrities, continue to use a platform
[15:29] Speaker 5: run by a man who was unapologetically promoting white supremacist
[15:34] Speaker 5: talking points. The Guardian analyzed Musk's ex post from the
[15:38] Speaker 5: first month of twenty twenty six and found the richest
[15:42] Speaker 5: man in the world posted about how the white race
[15:45] Speaker 5: was under threat, made allusions to race science, or promoted
[15:49] Speaker 5: anti immigrant conspiracy content on twenty six out of thirty
[15:54] Speaker 5: one days in January. The newspaper report added the Teslas
[16:00] Speaker 5: CEO's most recent output displays a more consistent and explicit
[16:04] Speaker 5: engagement with white supremacist content and nativist activists than in
[16:09] Speaker 5: the past, however, lending them an impremature of the world's
[16:13] Speaker 5: richest person and spreading their ideas to his audience of
[16:17] Speaker 5: over two hundred million followers. Heidi Byrick, co founder of
[16:22] Speaker 5: the Global Project Against Extremism, told The Guardian, if you
[16:25] Speaker 5: stripped Elon Musk's name off these things and showed them
[16:29] Speaker 5: to me, I would think this was a white supremacist.
[16:33] Speaker 5: My guess is that's because Musk is a white supremacist.
[16:37] Speaker 5: That's my opinion, of course, supported by facts I've already presented.
[16:42] Speaker 5: Musk has consistently denied being racist, or anti Semitic or
[16:46] Speaker 5: any of those white supremacist e things. But if there's
[16:51] Speaker 5: one thing I found about racists in my years on
[16:54] Speaker 5: this planet, it's that they deny being racist despite saying
[16:58] Speaker 5: a lot of racist things. They seem to think the
[17:02] Speaker 5: words that fall out of their mouths make sense, and
[17:04] Speaker 5: it's the fault of others if they take them the
[17:07] Speaker 5: wrong way. The reason all this matters so much is
[17:11] Speaker 5: we're not talking about some random garbage poster spewing hate
[17:15] Speaker 5: from an anonymous social media account. We're talking again about
[17:19] Speaker 5: the richest men in the world, a man who wields
[17:23] Speaker 5: a massive megaphone and the power via money and ax
[17:27] Speaker 5: to influence the ways people think and vote. On February fifteenth,
[17:33] Speaker 5: Musk made a historically ludicrous cry for America to maintain
[17:38] Speaker 5: some form of English Scott's Irish culture, which I assume
[17:43] Speaker 5: is weird o code for white. For a country to survive,
[17:48] Speaker 5: there has to be a common culture. Nobody dies to
[17:51] Speaker 5: defend a multi cultural economic zone. Buddy, there are some
[17:56] Speaker 5: military veterans who like to speak with you about that nonsense.
[18:01] Speaker 5: And Princeton University historian Kevin Cruz responded to Musk's claim,
[18:06] Speaker 5: writing on his Campaign Trails blog. There's an extensive literature
[18:11] Speaker 5: that tracks the ways in which concepts of diversity have
[18:14] Speaker 5: stood at the hearts of the United States of America
[18:17] Speaker 5: from the founding. The founding generation believed in the ideal
[18:21] Speaker 5: so much they put it on the Seal of the
[18:24] Speaker 5: United States e plaribus unum, or out of many one.
[18:31] Speaker 5: After all these years of watching movies with billionaire super villains,
[18:36] Speaker 5: we finally have one in the flesh. But far too
[18:39] Speaker 5: many people continue to act like it's no big deal.
[18:43] Speaker 5: Companies and people and every entity I can think of
[18:46] Speaker 5: should have long ago dropped X like a bad habit
[18:49] Speaker 5: which it was. Promoting your product or your brands on
[18:53] Speaker 5: a site owned by a guy who thinks quote white
[18:57] Speaker 5: solidarity is the only way to survive several steps beyond problematic.
[19:03] Speaker 5: Musk's brand of white genocide conspiracy theory nonsense was once
[19:08] Speaker 5: found only in the darkest corners of the Internet. Now
[19:11] Speaker 5: he has mainstreamed it, and he's pulling people down a
[19:15] Speaker 5: rabbit hole that can lead to horrifically bad places. I
[19:20] Speaker 5: haven't posted on X for some time. My account there
[19:23] Speaker 5: still exists, but only because I got locked out when
[19:26] Speaker 5: I left, and I haven't been able to get back
[19:29] Speaker 5: in to delete the whole thing. Let it rot. I
[19:32] Speaker 5: say it's time to encourage Anny and all who still
[19:35] Speaker 5: use that site to consider who and what they're tacitly supporting.
[19:39] Speaker 5: It's a white guy who really thinks white people are
[19:43] Speaker 5: great like to an increasingly uncomfortable degree, and that is
[19:50] Speaker 5: the article posted just a few days ago in USA
[19:53] Speaker 5: Today titled Wow, Elon Musk sure does like white people
[19:58] Speaker 5: bio Rex hup I still have an ex account. I
[20:02] Speaker 5: go back and forth on it. It's a platform to
[20:06] Speaker 5: get the word out, to post content. But Hupkey's right,
[20:11] Speaker 5: the place is infected. What would you do? Would you
[20:16] Speaker 5: go and dump the platform and move everything? I mean,
[20:19] Speaker 5: I'm on Blue Sky, still on Facebook, but would you
[20:22] Speaker 5: dump X Now that I read that, I feel a
[20:26] Speaker 5: bit cold out. Maybe I should go and delete the
[20:29] Speaker 5: account out right. Maybe I will, Maybe I will when
[20:34] Speaker 5: I come back. I want to get more into the
[20:37] Speaker 5: pulse of white supremacy, whether it's in this country or elsewhere.
[20:41] Speaker 5: In the words of former white supremacists sang On, I
[20:52] Speaker 5: recently ran across a profile. It was kind of a
[20:55] Speaker 5: video essay that was posted on Insider. This was almost
[20:59] Speaker 5: a year ago, featuring a guy named Arnauld Mackaylis. Makaylis
[21:04] Speaker 5: was a hardcore racist, a white nationalist skinhead. He was
[21:09] Speaker 5: lead singer of a neo Nazi metal band called Centurion,
[21:13] Speaker 5: and he was a member of one of the most
[21:15] Speaker 5: violent white supremacist gangs in the United States. It was
[21:19] Speaker 5: called Hammer's skin Nation. This guy was a true believer.
[21:23] Speaker 5: He spread Nazi ideology through his music, through recruitment, and
[21:27] Speaker 5: he was engaged in street violence, but he found his
[21:31] Speaker 5: way out and now he's an anti hate activist. He's
[21:35] Speaker 5: a speaker, he is an author, and he works with
[21:38] Speaker 5: organizations like Parents for Peace trying to deradicalize extremists. If
[21:44] Speaker 5: anybody's interested. The books that he's written are called My
[21:46] Speaker 5: Life After Hate and The Gift of Our Wounds. On
[21:50] Speaker 5: the Insider profile, he explained some of what goes on
[21:54] Speaker 5: under the skin of skin heads, starting with white replacement theory.
[22:00] Speaker 3: The most damaging aspect of the neo Nazi ideology is
[22:03] Speaker 3: definitely the fear anybody does look like you and doesn't
[22:07] Speaker 3: think like you. They're not only an enemy, they're the
[22:10] Speaker 3: highest order of enemy. They're a race trader. So it's
[22:15] Speaker 3: this experience of going through every waking moment of your
[22:18] Speaker 3: day thinking that everyone else in the world is not
[22:22] Speaker 3: only out to kill you personally, but ol to destroy
[22:26] Speaker 3: everyone who looks like you. And it's a miserable way
[22:29] Speaker 3: to live that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.
[22:32] Speaker 5: Throughout high control cultures, we will often see the vulnerable
[22:36] Speaker 5: and the marginalized targeted. We know the churches do this.
[22:40] Speaker 5: It's kind of a different animal, but I mean often
[22:42] Speaker 5: you'll find somebody at a low point in their life,
[22:45] Speaker 5: or they're on the fringes, or they feel ostracized, and
[22:47] Speaker 5: you give them a place to be. Long and Arnold
[22:51] Speaker 5: Michaelis talked about recruitment tactics by white supremacist organizations in
[22:57] Speaker 5: this way.
[22:58] Speaker 3: Recruiting a neo Nazi was two steps. Basically, the first
[23:05] Speaker 3: step was to get this kid to identify as white. Typically,
[23:09] Speaker 3: if I have an archetype called Joe pissed off white kid.
[23:12] Speaker 3: If I'm talking to Joe pissed off white kid, the
[23:15] Speaker 3: first thing I have to do is convince him that
[23:17] Speaker 3: he's a white man and that's how he should identify himself.
[23:21] Speaker 3: In the late eighties, most people racialized as white didn't
[23:26] Speaker 3: identify themselves as white. If I asked Joe who he was,
[23:31] Speaker 3: he would say, I'm American. My family's Catholic. You know,
[23:36] Speaker 3: we're Democrats or Republicans, whatever. There's going to be all
[23:40] Speaker 3: sorts of ways that they identify themselves other than racially.
[23:44] Speaker 3: So I have to stop him in his tracks and
[23:46] Speaker 3: be like, listen, white man, whether you like it or not.
[23:49] Speaker 3: The enemies of our people identify you as white. You
[23:52] Speaker 3: don't have a choice about that. And the white races
[23:55] Speaker 3: under attack. If you don't join us and fight back,
[23:59] Speaker 3: we're all going to be wiped out. I have to
[24:01] Speaker 3: get that across to this kid, and he has to
[24:04] Speaker 3: buy into it before I can proceed the step two,
[24:08] Speaker 3: which is to make him feel persecuted because he's white.
[24:11] Speaker 3: In the late eighties, it was much more difficult to
[24:14] Speaker 3: do that than it is today. In the late eighties,
[24:17] Speaker 3: we didn't have all this talk of white privilege and
[24:22] Speaker 3: white fragility and open talk saying well, everything wrong with
[24:26] Speaker 3: the world is basically white people's fault. Back in the eighties,
[24:29] Speaker 3: it was just much more amorphous for all human beings.
[24:32] Speaker 3: We have all these different ways of identifying ourselves. It
[24:35] Speaker 3: wasn't like codified in the racial groups like it is today.
[24:38] Speaker 3: So I had to like concoct things about how white
[24:42] Speaker 3: people are oppressed, and once I could get him to
[24:44] Speaker 3: buy into that that he is white and he's oppressed
[24:47] Speaker 3: because of it, now he's a white nationalist. Now he's
[24:51] Speaker 3: a neo Nazi. Now he's ready to come up to
[24:53] Speaker 3: our drink and hal get drunk with us and get
[24:55] Speaker 3: beat up. That was the recruitment process that we went
[24:59] Speaker 3: through back in the day. If you're a teenager who
[25:03] Speaker 3: has a history of trauma in your family, if you're
[25:06] Speaker 3: living in poverty, whatever you have going wrong, the more
[25:12] Speaker 3: things wrong you have, the more opening there are for
[25:15] Speaker 3: neo Nazi ideology to take hold. And so that was
[25:19] Speaker 3: how we recruited these kids was we blamed all their
[25:23] Speaker 3: problems on Jews, and then they said, if you join us,
[25:27] Speaker 3: we're going to fight back against that, and we're going
[25:30] Speaker 3: to take our country back and take our lands back
[25:32] Speaker 3: and every and you'll have all sorts of women crawling
[25:34] Speaker 3: all over you. You'll be a white warrior. It'll be great.
[25:37] Speaker 5: Earlier, I read that article about Elon Musk and we
[25:40] Speaker 5: talked about how AX has become kind of a Nazi
[25:44] Speaker 5: bar well. Arnold Michaelis had some thoughts about the online
[25:48] Speaker 5: space and how recruiters are using it. Probably most interestingly,
[25:53] Speaker 5: what are some of the worst places.
[25:55] Speaker 3: There's no social media platform that is proof against hate
[25:59] Speaker 3: happening on it, and obviously neo Nazi groups are well
[26:02] Speaker 3: aware that the screen is an amazing tool for them
[26:05] Speaker 3: to connect and to recruit. It's going to be have
[26:08] Speaker 3: the potential to be extremely harmful and extremely toxic. Of
[26:13] Speaker 3: the existing platforms today, of consequence, there's four chan, eight chan,
[26:19] Speaker 3: There's all sorts of obscure things where people meet and
[26:23] Speaker 3: have these kinds of discussions and these ideologies propagate. But
[26:26] Speaker 3: of the big ones, I think X is obviously first
[26:30] Speaker 3: and foremost. It's a hotbed for people to be openly
[26:35] Speaker 3: racist and openly hateful. I happen to think the most
[26:39] Speaker 3: dangerous ones are the ones that are linked to video
[26:42] Speaker 3: gaming discord, like actual platforms that are meant for gaming
[26:48] Speaker 3: and like getting together, what Call of Duty map, where
[26:51] Speaker 3: we're going to play. These are places where white nationalists,
[26:55] Speaker 3: neo Nazis, and all sorts of other vound extremist ideologies
[27:00] Speaker 3: and propagate and recruit, and it's something that parents need
[27:04] Speaker 3: to be very aware of. I'm a big fan of
[27:08] Speaker 3: a man named Jonathan Hight who is kind of at
[27:11] Speaker 3: the forefront of getting kids to get off of social
[27:15] Speaker 3: media get back to the real world. And I think
[27:18] Speaker 3: that that's really the answer not only to diminish the
[27:22] Speaker 3: power of neo Nazi groups, but to diminish the power
[27:25] Speaker 3: of these screens entirely on the hold they have on
[27:29] Speaker 3: us as human beings.
[27:30] Speaker 5: Now before the video games and the Discord crowd goes crazy,
[27:34] Speaker 5: I think the intent of what he's saying. I'm not
[27:37] Speaker 5: going to put words in his mouth, but I don't
[27:38] Speaker 5: think he was saying the platforms themselves, like gaming platforms, Discord, etc.
[27:43] Speaker 5: Are inherently racist. But I do think he was saying
[27:47] Speaker 5: that these are safer spaces where they can maybe crawl around,
[27:51] Speaker 5: and it's not quite as high profile as X and
[27:54] Speaker 5: Facebook and threads and Bluesky, etc. And because many are
[27:58] Speaker 5: more youth heavy than the market is a bit more
[28:01] Speaker 5: focused in those zones. Anyway, back before CBS News was
[28:06] Speaker 5: compromised by Barry Weiss and essentially Ramdit's head so far
[28:12] Speaker 5: up Trump sass they could check for cavities, CBS actually
[28:16] Speaker 5: had journalists doing their jobs. This was from several years
[28:20] Speaker 5: ago on CBS News a segment called Hate Rising White
[28:25] Speaker 5: Supremacy in America.
[28:27] Speaker 7: So it just arrived at the Southern Poverty Law Center.
[28:30] Speaker 7: It's a group that monitors hate activity in the real
[28:32] Speaker 7: world and now more and more online.
[28:34] Speaker 4: In all the years that we've been tracking, we've never
[28:36] Speaker 4: seen this many of these groups everywhere. We've never seen
[28:39] Speaker 4: their ideas penetrating the mainstream in the way that they are.
[28:42] Speaker 7: Heidi Byrick is the director of the SPLC's intelligence project.
[28:47] Speaker 7: CBS News is the first major network she allowed into
[28:50] Speaker 7: their secure facility where they monitor hate group activities online.
[28:54] Speaker 7: How worried should Americans be looking at this map of activity?
[28:59] Speaker 4: Well, I would say most Americans don't realize how much
[29:02] Speaker 4: there is of this. There's more than nine hundred hate groups.
[29:05] Speaker 7: They define hate groups as organizations with beliefs that attack
[29:08] Speaker 7: an entire people. Two thirds of the groups they are
[29:11] Speaker 7: watching subscribe to ideals of white supremacy, and last week's
[29:15] Speaker 7: rally in Charlottesville is considered the largest white supremacy march
[29:18] Speaker 7: in decade. The idea that white America is discriminated against
[29:25] Speaker 7: is growing. In fact, nearly seven in ten white American
[29:29] Speaker 7: workers without a four year college degree or salary job,
[29:33] Speaker 7: along with a majority of the public overall, believe the
[29:36] Speaker 7: US is in danger of losing its culture and identity.
[29:40] Speaker 4: Anytime a country goes through demographic change, it's difficult. We
[29:44] Speaker 4: had a hard time in this country digesting people that
[29:48] Speaker 4: we now consider white, but we didn't back in the
[29:50] Speaker 4: nineteen hundreds. It is entirely possible that that's what we
[29:52] Speaker 4: could face here right, a full racist backlash in terms
[29:57] Speaker 4: of policy and everything else against people color in this country.
[30:01] Speaker 7: Do you think we're going to see white nationalists openly
[30:04] Speaker 7: running and potentially winning office.
[30:07] Speaker 4: Maybe I expect more of these people are going to
[30:09] Speaker 4: pop up. They're interested in politics. They didn't care before.
[30:12] Speaker 4: They thought Republicans were as bad as Democrats. Nobody wanted them,
[30:15] Speaker 4: and they couldn't influence the political system. Now they don't
[30:18] Speaker 4: feel that way.
[30:19] Speaker 5: Interesting to hear that conversation from a CBS News report
[30:22] Speaker 5: from eight years ago. They're more interested in politics. They
[30:27] Speaker 5: used to reject the Republican Party. Now they probably find
[30:31] Speaker 5: it useful. At the very least. That's kind of chilling.
[30:35] Speaker 5: You want to talk about how normalized white supremacy has
[30:38] Speaker 5: become in Trump's America. There's a guy in Tennessee. His
[30:43] Speaker 5: name is Eric Orwall, and he wants a white only community,
[30:49] Speaker 5: like no non whites allowed an entire neighborhood. What This
[30:54] Speaker 5: is part of the report that was filed in late
[30:57] Speaker 5: last year on news Channel five. Check it out.
[31:00] Speaker 6: How do you describe yourself? Are you a white supremacist,
[31:03] Speaker 6: white nationalists, neo Nazi, any of the above.
[31:06] Speaker 1: None of the above. I'm a white identitarian. I think
[31:10] Speaker 1: that ethnic identity. Racial and ethnic identity is a big
[31:14] Speaker 1: part of who you are.
[31:15] Speaker 6: Well portraying himself as someone mainly interested in preserving white heritage,
[31:20] Speaker 6: Orwal has developed a closer relationship with the white nationalist
[31:24] Speaker 6: Patriot Front, which wants to turn the US into it
[31:27] Speaker 6: Ethno state for whites only. What is your relationship with
[31:31] Speaker 6: the Patriot Front.
[31:33] Speaker 1: I believe that they are good faith actors. I think
[31:38] Speaker 1: their ambitions for seeing political change are noble, even if
[31:43] Speaker 1: I don't completely agree with their strategy or perhaps ultimate objective.
[31:49] Speaker 6: But photos posted by Patriot Front show Orwall was one
[31:52] Speaker 6: of the speakers recently at the group's first national conference,
[31:56] Speaker 6: alongside Neil Nazi Robert Rondo. This is Rondo at hecking
[32:00] Speaker 6: a counter protester at a Trump rally in twenty seventeen,
[32:03] Speaker 6: and here at the Patriot Front conference. That's Rondo on
[32:07] Speaker 6: the left. To the right is or Wall giving the
[32:10] Speaker 6: fist over hearts salute Life Victorie, the official salute of
[32:16] Speaker 6: Patriot Front. You had a post on x on September fifteenth,
[32:22] Speaker 6: that said, folks are willing to call for violence, but
[32:25] Speaker 6: unwilling to join one of the few groups on our
[32:29] Speaker 6: side that know how to organize and deploy men. Who
[32:33] Speaker 6: is that group that you were referring to.
[32:36] Speaker 1: I was indirectly referring to Patriot Front.
[32:39] Speaker 6: As our news General five investigation has revealed a Patriot
[32:42] Speaker 6: Front has built a compound in East Tennessee where it
[32:45] Speaker 6: trains men to fight.
[32:47] Speaker 5: Okay, let's talk about some of these hate groups, and
[32:50] Speaker 5: I'll get into Patriot Front specifically in just a second.
[32:53] Speaker 5: According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, we are seeing
[32:56] Speaker 5: a dip in membership and the actual groups. I think
[32:59] Speaker 5: they listed fourteen hundred and thirty groups in twenty twenty three.
[33:04] Speaker 5: There was about one hundred lesson twenty twenty four. Now.
[33:07] Speaker 5: It is speculated one of the reasons for this is
[33:10] Speaker 5: that white supremacists are seeing more and more of their
[33:14] Speaker 5: own beliefs in the mainstream, so they don't necessarily feel
[33:18] Speaker 5: the need to go out and join the Proud Boys,
[33:21] Speaker 5: the Three per Centers, Patriot Front, etc. Because society in
[33:26] Speaker 5: general validates them. They feel like, from the top down
[33:30] Speaker 5: they are already part of a major white supremacist organization
[33:35] Speaker 5: Patriot Front itself. This is of course a white nationalist
[33:39] Speaker 5: and an overtly fascist organization. They are advocating for quote
[33:43] Speaker 5: the preservation of white European culture, so immigrants bad, multiculturalism bad,
[33:50] Speaker 5: diversity bad. These are existential threats to the United States.
[33:54] Speaker 5: They're big proponents of the Great Replacement or white replacement
[33:59] Speaker 5: conspiracy theory. The group is formed by a guy named
[34:03] Speaker 5: Thomas Rousseau. This was right after Charlottesville, and they unite
[34:07] Speaker 5: the right rally and these guys distribute literature, they hang banners.
[34:12] Speaker 5: They commonly vandalize or deface public displays. They have marches,
[34:17] Speaker 5: including what they call flash marches. They just show up
[34:20] Speaker 5: quickly and they parade through streets with signs and banners
[34:23] Speaker 5: and flags and chants and bullhorns, et cetera. At their
[34:27] Speaker 5: first official protest in public September twenty seventeen, this happened
[34:31] Speaker 5: in Houston, Texas. They brought banners that said things like
[34:35] Speaker 5: for race and Nation, and they were chanting blood and soil.
[34:41] Speaker 5: They use a lot of Americana type imagery. They've got
[34:45] Speaker 5: the Betsy Ross flag. They've got red, white and blue
[34:48] Speaker 5: in their logo. The whole idea is true. America is
[34:53] Speaker 5: white America. What do we do with these people? Well,
[34:58] Speaker 5: you've heard me mention on this broadcast, asked Dia Khan.
[35:01] Speaker 5: She's a human rights activist and she produced and directed
[35:05] Speaker 5: a documentary that won several Emmy Awards. It's an hour long.
[35:09] Speaker 5: It used to be on Netflix, but regardless of where
[35:12] Speaker 5: it is, find it, rent it, watch it. It's called
[35:16] Speaker 5: White Rights. Da khn deeeya A. Six years ago, she
[35:22] Speaker 5: screened her documentary at the United Nations and then afterwards
[35:26] Speaker 5: she sat on stage with some interviewers and talked about
[35:30] Speaker 5: her experience. I found one of her answers most interesting
[35:34] Speaker 5: when she was dealing with the media and how the
[35:37] Speaker 5: media has presented white supremacy.
[35:40] Speaker 8: The media's responsibility is so so severe in this. It
[35:44] Speaker 8: doesn't matter if a young man has joined ISIS or
[35:46] Speaker 8: has joined some sort of you know, neo Nazi organization.
[35:50] Speaker 8: Part of the reason they're doing this is to be seen.
[35:53] Speaker 8: It is to be I mean, I would say that
[35:56] Speaker 8: the media ends up glamorizing them by showing how bad
[35:59] Speaker 8: and tough and violent and horrific they are, because that
[36:03] Speaker 8: speaks to there, that gives them the cover that covers
[36:07] Speaker 8: up for the fact that he is insecure. It covers
[36:09] Speaker 8: up for the fact that he is suffering or struggling,
[36:11] Speaker 8: or in pain, or is broken in some way. What
[36:14] Speaker 8: extremism provides for all these men, regardless of what type
[36:18] Speaker 8: of movement that they subscribe to, is that it provides
[36:21] Speaker 8: the perfect escape and the perfect facade for everything else
[36:25] Speaker 8: that's wrong in their life. It's very easy to say
[36:27] Speaker 8: that what's wrong in my life is the fault of
[36:30] Speaker 8: someone Muslim or someone brown or black or Jewish, rather
[36:34] Speaker 8: than self reflecting and looking at your own faults and
[36:37] Speaker 8: your own brokenness. And so these movements are providing these
[36:41] Speaker 8: incredible outlets for these young men, and then the media
[36:44] Speaker 8: is completely and utterly feeding into what it is that
[36:47] Speaker 8: they're so desperately craving and the reason for why they're
[36:51] Speaker 8: doing it in the first place. Imagine being small and
[36:54] Speaker 8: insignificant and powerless and invisible, somebody that nobody cares about,
[36:58] Speaker 8: but then they care about once you do something absolutely monstrous.
[37:03] Speaker 8: And again that goes back to that says something about
[37:06] Speaker 8: us as a society more than it says about these
[37:09] Speaker 8: young men.
[37:10] Speaker 5: I go back and forth on my own approach to
[37:13] Speaker 5: white supremacists. The nerves are dead. My empathy well is dead.
[37:19] Speaker 5: I have no more fucks to give. I have surrendered
[37:22] Speaker 5: to that, and I will admit am I giving up
[37:25] Speaker 5: on some people who might be reachable. I mean, we
[37:29] Speaker 5: have to see it in this way. And this is
[37:31] Speaker 5: not popular. This is not a popular opinion. But I
[37:35] Speaker 5: think if you look at it with nuance, it does
[37:37] Speaker 5: hold up. The people who are the victims of hate
[37:42] Speaker 5: are victims of hate. I also think the people who
[37:45] Speaker 5: are the perpetrators of hate are victims of hate. Now now,
[37:50] Speaker 5: hang on, hang on, Let's talk about an Islamic extremist
[37:56] Speaker 5: right the suicide bomber, the person who goes out and
[37:58] Speaker 5: murders dozens of people. This is an agent of hate,
[38:02] Speaker 5: a person who has surrendered to inhumanity and must be stopped,
[38:08] Speaker 5: even crushed, at all costs for the safety of the
[38:10] Speaker 5: rest of us. But if we look at the precursors,
[38:13] Speaker 5: how did someone get there? They might have in other circumstances,
[38:19] Speaker 5: had they been raised in an environment where they were
[38:21] Speaker 5: taught to love people, where they were educated about the
[38:25] Speaker 5: value of all life, where they were not indoctrinated with
[38:29] Speaker 5: radical Islamist ideas. You know, cult thinking, if they had
[38:33] Speaker 5: been introduced to the beauty of the rest of the world,
[38:35] Speaker 5: to their fellow travelers on this planet, imagine what pro
[38:39] Speaker 5: social things they might have accomplished. But instead, all of
[38:43] Speaker 5: those energies and all of that focus got sort of
[38:47] Speaker 5: boxed in and it got distorted, and then they were
[38:51] Speaker 5: put on this path where they became the agents of
[38:54] Speaker 5: destruction in this world. So not only were the lives
[38:58] Speaker 5: lost to the people that they murdered, but there their
[39:00] Speaker 5: own life, their own potential, is totally gone. And I
[39:03] Speaker 5: think that's how Diacon sees white supremacist people who for
[39:08] Speaker 5: a number of reasons, but obviously disenfranchisements, programming in group reinforcement,
[39:14] Speaker 5: the hero narrative, fear insecurity, ignorance about everybody else, blah
[39:19] Speaker 5: blah blah. All of these things create a perfect storm
[39:23] Speaker 5: where someone then can go out. They have a sense
[39:25] Speaker 5: of belonging, they have a sense of purpose. They get
[39:28] Speaker 5: to be the heroes in their own story. And the
[39:31] Speaker 5: more other people try to punch them or crush them,
[39:34] Speaker 5: or throw bottles at them or call them every name
[39:36] Speaker 5: in the book, the more they feel empowered that it's
[39:39] Speaker 5: us versus them. Now, let me say it this way,
[39:43] Speaker 5: like with Maga, I've come to the place in my
[39:45] Speaker 5: life where my days of trying to reason with Maga,
[39:49] Speaker 5: those days are over. Maybe a few years ago I
[39:53] Speaker 5: had some something left in my empathy. Well maybe I thought, well,
[39:58] Speaker 5: there's a chance I'm saying that they're not reachable. But
[40:02] Speaker 5: I myself, I've just come to a point when I
[40:05] Speaker 5: just can't do it. I've just my energies are going
[40:08] Speaker 5: to go elsewhere. I think we're gonna have to steamroll
[40:11] Speaker 5: over or pass them to build the better world. It's
[40:14] Speaker 5: been ten years of jaw dropping awfulness. You know what's
[40:17] Speaker 5: it going to take. And I'll admit that I've come
[40:19] Speaker 5: to that point. And I feel much the same way
[40:21] Speaker 5: if there is a neo Nazi or someone. But then again,
[40:24] Speaker 5: I also admire somebody who can go in and do
[40:28] Speaker 5: what Diacon is doing, and she's doing it with some success. Okay,
[40:35] Speaker 5: I got a hand it to her. Hats off, high five.
[40:38] Speaker 5: I've got to give props where they are due, because wow.
[40:42] Speaker 5: In fact, she told the audience at the un that
[40:46] Speaker 5: after the documentary White Right was released, she got a
[40:50] Speaker 5: call from a former white supremacist that she had interviewed
[40:55] Speaker 5: only months before.
[40:56] Speaker 8: You know, the young man with the Swaska tattooed on
[40:58] Speaker 8: his chest. Ken He called me a few months months
[41:01] Speaker 8: after the film and said he's left. He's completely renounced
[41:06] Speaker 8: every and that tattoo. He's now in the process of
[41:08] Speaker 8: having it removed. And remember he said he's never going
[41:10] Speaker 8: to break bread with a Jewish person. He's done that.
[41:12] Speaker 8: He's joined an all black congregation. We've become very good friends.
[41:17] Speaker 8: I'm going to see him soon, actually, I mean he
[41:19] Speaker 8: left me a message last night, so I was terrified
[41:22] Speaker 8: of him, you know, but that capacity existed within him,
[41:27] Speaker 8: and he said, look, yeah, I just wanted to tell
[41:29] Speaker 8: you thank you for not giving up on me, and
[41:31] Speaker 8: thank you for being kind to me even when I
[41:32] Speaker 8: didn't deserve it. That to him, was the starting point
[41:35] Speaker 8: of it falling apart. And then other people, you know,
[41:38] Speaker 8: this black congregation that he's joined. He went there and said,
[41:41] Speaker 8: I used to be a part of the you know,
[41:42] Speaker 8: I've been a part of the Ku Klux Klan. I
[41:45] Speaker 8: am now a Nazi and I believe this and this
[41:47] Speaker 8: and this, And apparently the people within the congregation came
[41:50] Speaker 8: up to him and hugged him afterwards and said, look,
[41:52] Speaker 8: we don't like what you stand for. We completely disagree
[41:55] Speaker 8: with it, but it takes a lot of courage for
[41:56] Speaker 8: somebody like you to stand here and say what you've said.
[41:59] Speaker 8: And that was the last STU for him. Him being
[42:01] Speaker 8: shown kindness and compassion and respect by people who he
[42:06] Speaker 8: thinks are not even human, showing more humanity to him
[42:11] Speaker 8: than he's worthy of. That made him start questioning, well,
[42:16] Speaker 8: then what does that say about me? What kind of
[42:17] Speaker 8: a human being am.
[42:18] Speaker 5: I agree or disagree? You got to hand it to
[42:22] Speaker 5: diacon I mean, she's got to be frustrated and depressed
[42:27] Speaker 5: and occasionally filled with rage, and yet she continues to
[42:31] Speaker 5: put herself right there in the crossair. She walks into
[42:34] Speaker 5: the lion's den, and her method is producing results. I
[42:38] Speaker 5: don't know that I could do it, but I certainly
[42:40] Speaker 5: do admire that she is doing it. We've talked so
[42:45] Speaker 5: much about the problems. Let me leave you with just
[42:48] Speaker 5: a sliver of hope, a tiny ray of light, as
[42:52] Speaker 5: I share with you the story of an anti racist
[42:55] Speaker 5: who is also out there spreading some love, a man
[42:58] Speaker 5: named Darryl Davis, and I will tell you his story next.
[43:09] Speaker 5: The Guardian did a profile on Daryl Davis. He is
[43:13] Speaker 5: a musician who is out there engaging and helping to
[43:18] Speaker 5: dprogram members of the gay Gay Gay Darryl Davis an
[43:23] Speaker 5: African American man who is just His story just blows
[43:27] Speaker 5: my mind. The Guardian wrote a profile on him a
[43:30] Speaker 5: few years ago. Let me just read this because I
[43:32] Speaker 5: like the way they framed his story In the first place,
[43:35] Speaker 5: it says Daryl Davis is a musician, a pianist to
[43:39] Speaker 5: be exact. He's jammed with the likes of Chuck Berry,
[43:42] Speaker 5: Jerry Lee, Lewis, Bbee King and even Bill Clinton. Loyal
[43:47] Speaker 5: to music but not too genre. He plays jazz, blues,
[43:51] Speaker 5: rock and roll, country, boogie woogie, swing, big band, and beyond.
[43:56] Speaker 5: No matter his musical style, Davis will play it because
[44:00] Speaker 5: he believes that music, in all its variations, is a
[44:03] Speaker 5: great equalizer. So when he entered the Silver Dollar Lounge
[44:08] Speaker 5: in Frederick, Maryland for a country gig one Fateful Night
[44:11] Speaker 5: in nineteen eighty three, being the only black man present
[44:16] Speaker 5: did not perturb him at all. While this was not
[44:19] Speaker 5: his first country gig at the Silver Dollar Lounge, it
[44:22] Speaker 5: was his most significant. After he and his band finished
[44:25] Speaker 5: their set, Davis was approached by a patron, who was
[44:29] Speaker 5: around fifteen years his senior, not an unusual occurrence for
[44:33] Speaker 5: a working musician. However, while praising Davis on his performance,
[44:38] Speaker 5: the patron candidly noted that he had never seen a
[44:41] Speaker 5: black man who could play like Jerry Lee Lewis. More
[44:45] Speaker 5: curious than offended, Davis used this encounter as an opportunity
[44:49] Speaker 5: for friendly discourse rather than outrage. I explained to this
[44:53] Speaker 5: older white guy that Jerry Lee Lewis was influenced by
[44:56] Speaker 5: the same black boogie woogie and blues piano player as
[45:00] Speaker 5: I was, Davis says with a chuckle, he didn't believe me.
[45:04] Speaker 5: Then I told him that Jerry Lewis is a good
[45:06] Speaker 5: friend of mine, and well, he didn't believe that either,
[45:09] Speaker 5: but he was fascinated. So he asked me to join
[45:12] Speaker 5: him for a drink. He continues, So I don't drink,
[45:15] Speaker 5: so I had a glass of cranberry juice, and then
[45:18] Speaker 5: he took his glass and cheered me, and then he said,
[45:20] Speaker 5: you know, this is the first time I ever sat
[45:23] Speaker 5: down and had a drink with a black person. I
[45:27] Speaker 5: was instantly curious, and I thought, what's going on here?
[45:30] Speaker 5: So I asked him why he didn't answer it at first,
[45:33] Speaker 5: but eventually admitted that he was a member of the
[45:36] Speaker 5: Ku Klux Klan. This is a story that Davis shares
[45:41] Speaker 5: on lecture stages and in classrooms, both nationally and globally.
[45:46] Speaker 5: It's an important anecdote as it marks a catalytic moment
[45:49] Speaker 5: in which Davis's trajectory pivoted from working musician to race
[45:54] Speaker 5: relations crusader. What began as a hobby gradually transformed into
[45:59] Speaker 5: a car. As his music career continued to flourish, Davis
[46:04] Speaker 5: also became enmeshed in quite arguably the world's strangest side hustle,
[46:09] Speaker 5: meeting with KKK members of various ranks and attending so
[46:14] Speaker 5: called cross lighting rallies. Some of these klansmen became close
[46:19] Speaker 5: friends of Davis's. The aforementioned Silver Dollar patron included their
[46:24] Speaker 5: long conversations untangling a nod of hate that had coiled
[46:28] Speaker 5: for decades. In many cases, these civil dialogues led them
[46:32] Speaker 5: to quitting the organization because they no longer believed in
[46:36] Speaker 5: its tenets. While some say Davis converted these men, he
[46:41] Speaker 5: prefers to say that they converted themselves and that he
[46:44] Speaker 5: merely provided the impetus for them. To do so. Over
[46:47] Speaker 5: the past thirty years, Davis has become well versed in
[46:51] Speaker 5: the organization's ethos and hierarchy, which led him to becoming
[46:55] Speaker 5: the first black man to write a book about the KKK,
[46:59] Speaker 5: entitled Clandestine Relationships of black Man's Odyssey in the Ku
[47:04] Speaker 5: Klux Klan, which was published in nineteen ninety eight. The
[47:08] Speaker 5: Ku Klux Klan was formed in eighteen sixty five by
[47:12] Speaker 5: a group of Confederate soldiers at the end of the
[47:15] Speaker 5: American Civil War in an attempt to keep the newly
[47:18] Speaker 5: emancipated slaves suppressed. Having seen several iterations, what remains consistent
[47:24] Speaker 5: across all chapters of the group is its hate toward
[47:28] Speaker 5: people of color, sometimes resulting in assault and murder. In
[47:33] Speaker 5: twenty eighteen, one hundred fifty years later, a record high
[47:37] Speaker 5: of more than one thousand hate groups, including the KKK,
[47:41] Speaker 5: were documented as active in the United States by the
[47:45] Speaker 5: Southern Poverty Law Center's Civil Rights Group. Davis said recently
[47:49] Speaker 5: on the Joe Rogan podcast, our ideology needs to catch
[47:54] Speaker 5: up to our technology. So why would a successful musician
[47:58] Speaker 5: like Davis willingly meet with high ranking KKK members in
[48:03] Speaker 5: his spare time. The journey to that answer begins long
[48:07] Speaker 5: before his Silver Dollar Clan encounter in nineteen eighty three.
[48:11] Speaker 5: Davis recalled with conviction. In nineteen sixty eight, when I
[48:16] Speaker 5: was the age of ten, I had a racist incident.
[48:19] Speaker 5: I was in the Cub Scouts and we were in
[48:21] Speaker 5: a parade when people started throwing rocks and things at me.
[48:26] Speaker 5: I didn't understand why people would do that, and I
[48:29] Speaker 5: formed a question, how can you hate me when you
[48:32] Speaker 5: don't even know me? The answer was always there's some
[48:35] Speaker 5: people who were just like that. Davis ads, well, that
[48:39] Speaker 5: wasn't good enough for me. What does just like that mean?
[48:43] Speaker 5: Where does that come from? You're not born just like that?
[48:47] Speaker 5: I was curious about racism ever since, but even still
[48:51] Speaker 5: nobody can seem to answer the question. One of Davis's
[48:54] Speaker 5: first and most fabled encounters was with the Grand Dragon
[48:58] Speaker 5: Robert Kelly, who had been eventually became the Imperial Wizard
[49:02] Speaker 5: of Maryland. After having his secretary set up a meeting
[49:06] Speaker 5: with Kelly under the pretense of including him in a
[49:09] Speaker 5: book about the KKK, Davis knew he was entering new territory.
[49:14] Speaker 5: Kelly was unaware that Davis was black, so the grand
[49:18] Speaker 5: reveal was a shock. After a few tense hours of conversation,
[49:23] Speaker 5: the two parted ways, but their relationship did not end there. Eventually,
[49:28] Speaker 5: Kelly began inviting Davis to his home and then to
[49:31] Speaker 5: clan rallies, in which ritualistic chants were intoned, giant crosses
[49:37] Speaker 5: were burned, and beer and hot dogs were served. Kelly
[49:42] Speaker 5: shared everything with him, including the deeply racial stereotypes that
[49:46] Speaker 5: helped form the foundation of the clan's hatred. All the
[49:50] Speaker 5: while Davis listened, asked questions, took notes, and through his actions,
[49:55] Speaker 5: slowly dispelled each stereotype one by one. With each other conversation,
[50:01] Speaker 5: the gap between them narrowed and they were able to
[50:04] Speaker 5: become friends. Finally, Kelly quit the clan, shut down his
[50:10] Speaker 5: entire chapter, and as a trophy of sorts, gave his
[50:14] Speaker 5: robe to Davis. That was not the last ku Klux
[50:18] Speaker 5: Klan robe that Davis would be gifted, nor was it
[50:21] Speaker 5: the last clansman he would befriend. I still perform sometimes,
[50:26] Speaker 5: and though I would much rather be on stage playing
[50:29] Speaker 5: happy music all the time and seeing people dance than
[50:32] Speaker 5: be talking about the KKK and neo Nazis, Davis says,
[50:36] Speaker 5: I found that lecturing and talking and educating people is
[50:40] Speaker 5: by far more important and necessary today. Davis has lived
[50:44] Speaker 5: through several eras of hate, from the assassination of Martin
[50:48] Speaker 5: Luther King Junior in nineteen sixty eight to the Unite
[50:51] Speaker 5: the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in twenty seventeen. Though
[50:56] Speaker 5: he has convinced hundreds of white supremacists to radicalize and
[51:01] Speaker 5: join the Land of the Loving, he does not deny
[51:04] Speaker 5: that some are beyond saving. However, that acknowledgment does not
[51:09] Speaker 5: deter his mission, as he continues to focus on those
[51:12] Speaker 5: who are open to conversation, open to civil discourse, open
[51:17] Speaker 5: to friendship, and ultimately open to change. Most recently, Davis
[51:23] Speaker 5: partnered with minds dot com, an open source social networking
[51:28] Speaker 5: platform that uses blockchain to reward the community with ERC
[51:33] Speaker 5: twenty tokens. I'm guessing this is crypto. Davis hopes to
[51:38] Speaker 5: utilize this platform, founded by Bill Ottman and John Otman,
[51:42] Speaker 5: to educate people on how to conduct civil discourse beyond
[51:46] Speaker 5: the world of white supremacy. The idea is to help
[51:50] Speaker 5: individuals navigate through opposing perspectives, be it at a political protest,
[51:56] Speaker 5: in a classroom, on social media, or at the dinner table.
[52:00] Speaker 5: People must stop focusing on the symptoms of hate. That's
[52:03] Speaker 5: like putting a band aid on cancer. Davis says, we've
[52:07] Speaker 5: got to treat it down to the bone, which is ignorance.
[52:10] Speaker 5: The cure for ignorance is education. You fix the ignorance.
[52:14] Speaker 5: There's nothing to fear. If there's nothing to fear, there's
[52:17] Speaker 5: nothing to hate. If there's nothing to hate, there's nothing
[52:22] Speaker 5: or no one to destroy. Daryl Davis interesting guy. You
[52:27] Speaker 5: know there's something about these conversations with people like him
[52:31] Speaker 5: and Dacan and others. The love conquers hate. We have
[52:34] Speaker 5: to de escalate, go and engage, rehumanize, try to break through.
[52:39] Speaker 5: I think these are meritorious ideas. I think these are
[52:42] Speaker 5: worthy conversations and approaches, But there's an element that I
[52:46] Speaker 5: find is missing when I hear many of these people
[52:49] Speaker 5: talk about how hate is taught. Right, you don't grow
[52:54] Speaker 5: up hating people. You have to be taught or trained
[52:57] Speaker 5: to hate people. And I'm not convinced that is accurate,
[53:01] Speaker 5: or at least it's not complete, because it ignores the
[53:04] Speaker 5: tribalistic tendencies that primates have. And we are animals. We
[53:10] Speaker 5: are primates, and so you know we see throughout nature
[53:15] Speaker 5: in grouping and out grouping, based on any number of factors,
[53:20] Speaker 5: we are much more inclined to favor kin those who
[53:23] Speaker 5: look and sound like us, those who validate us, those
[53:27] Speaker 5: who are or appear more closely related to us, And
[53:31] Speaker 5: then we start to build walls to divide us and
[53:34] Speaker 5: them in grouping, out grouping, tribalism. This is a big
[53:39] Speaker 5: part of the conversation that I wish was dealt with more,
[53:42] Speaker 5: because once we understand how it has worked in our
[53:46] Speaker 5: evolutionary past and how we've dragged a lot of this
[53:49] Speaker 5: into our present, I think we can overcome it and
[53:52] Speaker 5: better educate ourselves. You know, Darryl Davis is right right,
[53:56] Speaker 5: You've got to get rid of the ignorance, and with
[53:58] Speaker 5: that you can then get rid of all the baggage
[54:02] Speaker 5: that comes with it. But in any case, I'm so
[54:05] Speaker 5: thankful for the agents of kindness and humanity and humanism
[54:09] Speaker 5: out there, Darryl and Dia and so many other human
[54:12] Speaker 5: rights activists, and I think people here in this community
[54:14] Speaker 5: and beyond, we resist the hate. We hate the hates.
[54:19] Speaker 5: We don't want to live in that world. We want
[54:21] Speaker 5: to celebrate the diversity that makes us all unique, even
[54:25] Speaker 5: as we share this planet as brothers and sisters. Thank
[54:29] Speaker 5: you so much for listening to the broadcast today. Be
[54:32] Speaker 5: safe out there, and I'll see you next time.
[54:34] Speaker 2: Follow The Thinking Atheist on Facebook and Twitter for a
[54:38] Speaker 2: complete archive of podcasts and videos, products like mugs and
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[54:49] Speaker 2: and conventions. Log onto our website, The Thinkingatheist dot com.

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