Deep Dive with Shawn C. Fettig

The Murderer is Inside the House: Trump, Militias, and the End of Democracy (Featuring David Neiwert)

• Sea Tree Media

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Donald Trump's second presidential term is less than a week old and everything already seems to be coming undone. American democracy might be at a breaking point. How did the far-right militia groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers gain influence with the help of government allies, posing a grave threat to national stability? Author and journalist David Neiwert joins the pod, and provides expert insight into the radical right’s impact on our democratic experiment.

The controversial pardoning of January 6th insurrectionists signals a disturbing breakdown of the rule of law, potentially paving the way for authoritarianism. As we all grapple with widespread radicalization across the nation, we discuss the historical connections between American elements of fascism, focusing on how these ideologies have been fanned into flames by Trump's rise, and how emboldened far-right militia groups might be America's undoing.

Recommended:
The Age of Insurrection: The Radical Right's Assault on American Democracy
Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump

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Speaker 1:

I covered about 20 different Proud Boys events between 2017 and 2019, and actually 2020, and covered a number of other extremist events in the same time period and certainly had plenty of on-the-ground experience observing these folks and listening to them, listening to what they were saying, listening to you know the things that they fantasized about. You know, they've been fantasizing about a civil war for forever.

Speaker 1:

I mean since the 1990s and it's really reached a fever pitch. And that's, I mean, there's a reason. They all have these AR-15s and huge loads of ammunition, and it's not so that they can kill all the feral pigs in their neighborhood, trust me, so that they can kill their neighbors, and that's what they talk about doing all the time.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to Deep Dive with me, sean C Fettig. Hey folks, I'm going to let you know up front that this is a dark episode, but no darker than the state of our American democracy. We're about a week into Trump's second presidential term and he is doing what he promised, shock and awe, and despite knowing this was coming, it has been shocking and it has been awful. He has signed, I think I can say, hundreds of executive orders aimed at and this is just a small sample dismantling the civil service, destroying the infrastructure that administers everything from our national security to our health care, to our food supply, eradicating any diversity in public life, sealing our southern border, renaming the Gulf of Mexico, threatening war against Panama because why not? And cutting off federal disaster relief and efforts to help states and communities recover from disaster. He's also done a couple of things that, taken together, make me truly anxious about the future of American democracy.

Speaker 2:

One of Trump's first acts was to issue full and unconditional pardons to all of the January 6th traitors, the insurrectionists. This alone is a shocking violation of the rule of law and floods our streets with dangerous criminals. But that, coupled with the fact that he has been stripping security detail protection from his perceived enemies. John Bolton and Anthony Fauci are just two of them. People who have received credible death threats suggest that Trump is truly craven and is itching for violence, if not advocating for outright civil unrest or even war. Remember, this is the same individual who once led an attempted coup, an insurrection aimed at toppling the very government he now controls. He's now the president of a country that has long stood as a symbol of justice, equality and rule of law to the entire world, and now he's using that highest office not to protect these ideals, but to systematically destroy them. Pardoning violent offenders, not because they've repented or served justice, but because they're loyalists, foot soldiers in his political crusade, is a disgusting violation of his oath. Removing protections from critics, leaving them vulnerable to threats, harassment, violence, maybe. Death is not just unconscionable, but it's cruel and, barring the capitulation of the Supreme Court, criminal. This is not the democracy we were. Criminal. This is not the democracy we were promised. This is not the democracy we know. Frankly, it's just not democracy.

Speaker 2:

Today, I want to talk about one particular aspect of this dynamic the pardoned offenders, the far-right militia groups and members that have infiltrated the highest offices of power in the United States. This is a broad network of actors who see violence as a pathway to influence, and, with Trump in office and allies in the GOP, the guardrails that once restrained political violence and safeguarded the rule of law have been dismantled. Militia groups have a friend in the presidency, and this is the moment they've been waiting for. What lies ahead is dark, to dig into all of this.

Speaker 2:

My guest today is journalist and author David Nywert, who has dedicated his career to studying and reporting on militia movements in the United States. He's written numerous books, including the Age of Insurrection, the Radical Rights Assault on American Democracy and Alt-America the Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump. He's also the creator and author of the sub-stack SpyHop. I'll drop some links in the show notes. All right, if you like this episode, or any episode, please give it a like, share and follow on your favorite podcast platform and or subscribe to the podcast on YouTube. And, as always, if you have any thoughts, questions or comments, please feel free to email me at deepdivewithshawn at gmailcom. Let's do a deep dive, david. Thanks for being here. How are you?

Speaker 1:

Nice being here, sean, pleasure to meet you.

Speaker 2:

So, look, I feel like we kind of have to start here.

Speaker 2:

So we're recording this. On Friday, january 24th, four days after Donald Trump gave full and unconditional pardons to every single January 6th riot or insurrectionist that was prosecuted and convicted by a jury of peers, and then they were welcomed back into the Capitol, in fact hosted by Republican members of Congress. Honestly, this feels like a passing of a Rubicon here, that the country has entered territory that we won't come back from for a very long time. This signals not just, I think, a breakdown of the rule of law, but it sends a very strong message to people in groups that you study and you write about and you have for years Far right militia members and groups and the message is that they can operate with impunity. Impunity and if you couple that, you know, with just a few minutes ago, trump stripped security protections from Anthony Fauci, who had security protection because he had received death threats, some from people in these militia groups. So that all suggests to me that we have some very dark days ahead. But I guess, how do you see this? How worried are you?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I'm very worried, mostly because I think all the guardrails have been removed and I think he wants to drive everything over a cliff, and I think it's by design. Authoritarians require chaos and he's trying to create as much chaos as possible to assert his authoritarian regime. When the country's in a state of disaster, he'll be able to declare a state of disaster. He'll be able to call, declare a state of insurrection, impose martial law, military law, and unleash his brown shirts, who are better known to us as Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, which is who he just freed.

Speaker 1:

You know, he just freed the leader of the Oath Keeperskeepers and he freed the leaders of the Proud Boys, and those guys are unapologetic about what they did on January 6th and they're also unapologetic in their view that, you know, donald Trump should be should basically be a dictator for America, the America. He should basically be a dictator for America, be America's dictator. And the problem with this is look, it would be one thing if we just had this fringe faction that I've dealt with for 30 years, who kind of sat on the outside of American politics. But not only are these guys now deeply embedded, not just in the heart of mainstream politics, but in the seats of power itself. And even more problematic, I think, is that their extremism has spread to nearly half the population. And these are extremist beliefs that they hold, these ideas that they hold about what America is about and what the Constitution says, and all of this, you know, is not a it's definitely not a pluralistic democracy anymore, and they would be glad to say that.

Speaker 2:

I'm glad you kind of outline what you perceive Trump's plan to be, because I still and I don't know why I do this, but I'm still pulling my punches on this. I don't want to be seen as histrionic. I don't want to be because I still and I don't know why I do this, but I'm still pulling my punches on this. I don't want to be seen as histrionic. I don't want to be seen as overreacting, but I do believe that Trump is agitating for, at minimum, violence and chaos. But I also to the point that you made about invoking the Insurrection Act. Invoking the Insurrection Act, I think I believe that Trump is advocating for some type of civil war in the United.

Speaker 1:

States in pursuit of full power? Yeah, yeah, no, I think it's. I mean, I don't think it's a coincidence that it aligns with Vladimir Putin's vision for America, which has been, since the early 2000s, this idea that America would descend into a civil war and would break into sort of an agglomeration of regional states, you know, and this was an argument of Russian historians back around 1999, 2000. And Putin, you know, definitely adopted this theory and honestly, I think that that's kind of where Trump is trying to take us. And I don't think it's, you know, I don't think it's just a coincidence. The guy does everything Putin wants him to do.

Speaker 1:

Now, whether Trump himself believes in this stuff or what, but he believes ultimately that he's the big honcho who has the authoritarian rule and that everybody should follow him. You know it's all about worshiping him and you know it's a deeply toxic place and, like I say, it would be one thing if he were widely despised. But you know, no matter how you cut this, even after the man's gone, half the country will be radicalized into this belief system. And how do we pull back from that people to return to this belief in a multiracial, pluralistic democracy?

Speaker 2:

that is actually about you know, encouraging freedom for everyone instead of just freedom for white males. So before we dig into how we got here which is a lot of what you've written about as well as you know how it's playing out, I guess I just want to ask specific to the point you just made. You know how we go back from this, I guess. How much hope do you have that we do?

Speaker 1:

I have good days and I have bad days. Some days I'm very pessimistic. You know I do think I mean.

Speaker 1:

The thing I've been dealing with for the past 10 years is, you know, I have a meme on my desk that says the road to fascism is lined with people telling you to stop overreacting. Because I've had people telling me to stop overreacting for the last 10 years and, for that matter, much longer. You know, I actually took some of this criticism to heart for a while, but I had to always refer back to my reporting and what I had seen, what I had experienced and what I had found. And the reason people were telling me to stop or reacting to was the conclusion that we were headed down this road, toward these real fascist tendencies in America that had always been latent in our political soil and that it would only take a really skilled politician to be able to pull them out and give them fresh life. And people say, oh, you know, yeah, yeah, this will never happen, and especially for the last 10 years, once Trump came along, and even before that, I was seeing these issues come bubbling up and people would tell me to stop overreacting.

Speaker 1:

I'm long past taking that stuff seriously anymore, because they want to believe in this comforting myth that we'll always have democracy and it'll always be there and things will just always be better, because that's how our lives have been. It's always been there and it's hard for us to conceive of it not being any other way, and we're apt to mock anyone who thinks that it might get bad. So you know, and that's where a lot of that comes from. But ultimately, what I've also found over the years is that Americans don't react to looming crises until things actually start happening, until bad things actually happen, until people start dying, and sometimes even then they don't react.

Speaker 1:

I mean honestly, I thought we would finally tackle this plague of semi-automatic weaponry after Sandy Hook and we haven't and honestly thought that we would tackle the rise of far-right extremism, that people would take the rise of far-right extremism seriously. Finally, after we had four years of Donald Trump, and especially after January 6th and you know, initially there was some hope of that. But I'll tell you what. Authoritarianism is a powerful drug and it just manages to overwhelm all of that. People think of authoritarianism, of course, in terms of the leaders, the people who are at the top, the Trumps and the Mussolinis and the Putins. That's sort of the context in which we always think of authoritarianism. But the real phenomenon of authoritarianism is the millions of people who support them. These people would not hold power if there were not millions of supporters. Now, it doesn't have to be the full majority, it just has to be a substantial enough number to support them in sort of an international election, as Trump found.

Speaker 1:

And people you know what people are responding to is in some ways, some sort of natural tendency.

Speaker 1:

We all want to keep our country safe and we naturally get somewhat annoyed with how democracy works or fails to work many times, because it frequently dithers in the face of the need for action. And that's where we've been, especially in the last 20 years and I think a lot of people are willing to turn to the appeal of an authoritarian like Trump, a guy who can you know an Alexander who can cut the Gordian knot with one blow right. That's very appealing to a lot of people. It has a lot of psychological appeal. It's also a lot simpler than thinking. I mean, democracy requires us to think and to understand issues on a frequently complex and deep basis. Authoritarians just want you to go yeah, what he says. That's all the thinking you need to do. You know that has a lot to do with why we're at where we're at, because there's so many millions of people who actually Americans do actually do find that appealing and that's where they went in the 2024 election.

Speaker 2:

I agree with you that there were moments of time in history that something horrific has to happen to break the fever, although I think even speaking in those terms, like saying break the fever, just kind of diminishes the actual threat we're facing.

Speaker 2:

And I agree that.

Speaker 2:

You know, sandy Hooker, take any number of the mass shootings, especially those that were clustered so, so close together, you would think that there would be some change in consciousness at a social or cultural level, and that didn't happen.

Speaker 2:

Social or cultural level, and that didn't happen. And January 6th, especially, was a moment for me that I thought would be, or could be a breaking point and I really think, had perhaps they succeeded and actually hung Mike Pence, the vice president of the United States, that maybe that would have been a moment, right, right, but it wasn't. And for someone like you who has been studying this for decades, have been in this work, for you who has been studying this for decades, have been in this work for decades and has been sounding the alarm for decades, it must feel to you like we are just sleepwalking into our own undoing, because it feels like today or January 6th would have been a good moment for some resistance there or at least some confrontation on that front right, and it didn't happen and I don't see it happening now, and to me it feels like we have just given up the fight on this.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, well, honestly, I don't think there's going to be any kind of return to normalcy as we knew it. I don't think there can be. I think, you know, people are deluding themselves if they think at the end of the four years, this is all just going to be, we're gonna make this go away. You know, with a, with a fresh election. I don't know that they're gonna. Let us have an election. B, I don't know that the voters would, uh, would turn away from, you know, trumpism, uh, in the next election.

Speaker 1:

I think that you that, once you've gotten this taste of authoritarianism, it's pretty hard to break the momentum until it creates the inevitable disaster that it always does, because authoritarianism always fails. It causes a lot of damages and maybe kills millions of people in the process, but inevitably it stumbles because it doesn't operate in the real world. It has to operate on its prefabricated narratives and they don't believe incoming data from realities on the ground and fail to respond accordingly. So they're constantly wandering into disasters, just like the pandemic of 2020. That was a classic example of an authoritarian refusing to believe facts on the ground, just blundering into a disaster, and I think it'll be on probably a larger scale next time.

Speaker 1:

So I do think that if we're going to have a revival of democracy in America, it's going to have to be really a different democratic regime than the one that's been operating for the last 200 plus years, mainly because there are so many things that went sideways under this system that brought this disaster upon us that I don't think any kind of succeeding system will have any chance of success without, you know, these complete major changeover in the way we go about our democracy. One of them is that we have to separate politics from money and we have to no longer allow billionaires. The plague of extreme wealth and the incredible concentration of power that has gotten into these people's hands, into the hands of a few men and you know the super wealthy and their absolute, you know their clear disdain for democracy is just. I mean, it's like having trying to have Nazis. You know you can't have Nazis in a democracy and you can't have billionaires either.

Speaker 1:

Not. If you want it to function, I think that media has to be taken out of the hands of corporations and put in the hands of the public, put in the hands of the people, employee-owned and operated, and do away with corporate media ownership, because clearly our democratic discourse suffers. Our media are in the hands of our sources of information, are in the hands of billionaires and oligarchs who clearly twist and shape and censor the sort of discourse that we actually are able to have in a democracy, and this is something that's just constantly going on now. So, yeah, I do think that there are things that are in our current system that led up to this that absolutely would have to go away and change if we were to be able to effectively revive democracy. But I think that there is going to have to be some kind of huge disaster before Americans turn back to democracy and embrace it again.

Speaker 2:

I agree with you. I told you in the green room before we started recording that your book Age of Insurrection, which is what precipitated the conversation we're having, it's a tome, it's a big book but it reads very well, and I told you that I think this book should read at this point, should be essential reading in civics classes in the United States, because it does such a good job of explaining the current crisis, the current threat, but also how we got here. So I'm wondering if you could maybe, maybe even in broad strokes, or just highlight some of the bigger moments in our most recent history or more recent history that kind of got us to where we are as it relates to far-right militias and their role in our government.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, Sure, Well, you know, of course, as you know, the book actually has a sort of introductory section where I talk about how I got into this, covering the, because they're rioting extremists always generate dysfunction and eventually crime.

Speaker 1:

It's a really powerfully toxic movement that destroys people's lives, destroys families, destroys communities, and so and I saw this, you know, with the militia movement back in the 1990s, when we were dealing with the militias organizing first in Washington but really throughout the Northwest, and then saw them organizing as well in places like Michigan and then joining arms with old Klansmen down in the South, you know, and then forming border vigilante outfits down on the US-Mexico border. Those were things that, you know, I paid attention to because I knew that these are really powerfully toxic elements that could harm democracy, and that was why I felt it was an important story to begin covering. Back in the 1990s. I'd spent a lot of time among these elements, certainly, and had studied neo-Nazism and fascism and things like that. One of the things that I knew very well was that a lot of fascism, a lot of what we define as fascism, actually has really powerful American elements in it that, you know, hitler was inspired by the Jim Crow laws and the genocide of Native Americans and things like this.

Speaker 1:

There was a lot in the American story that he found to be inspirational. That being the case, it was always, you know. The question always was, you know, you look at the history in the 1930s, when there was a surge in neo-fascist activity, particularly under the aegis of the silver shirts, and before that, their predecessors were the Ku Klux Klan, who Robert Paxton identifies, as you know, probably one of the earliest sort of real examples of fascism, and they preceded the brown shirts and inspired the brown shirts. So that was one of the things that you know.

Speaker 1:

I knew that I always wondered well, why haven't we had fascism in America? And a lot of it has to do with the fact that they couldn't really find political space under a democratic setup, and it was also that we had been very lucky that we never had this sort of singular, very charismatic figure who, you know, that person is essential to the success of a fascist movement, because that's the essence of authoritarianism is to have a single great leader around whom the authoritarian movement can revolve. So, you know, most of us who studied this stuff, and particularly, you know, in the 1990s, were watching these sort of neo-fascist elements come out of the woods and try to reassert themselves in the mainstream under the guise of the militia movement. You know we're all wondering. Well, will they find their charismatic leader to go up around? You know there was some hope.

Speaker 1:

They had some hope in the 80s and 90s that David Duke would be their character, but he was not, fortunately, and something that I used to sit around and talk with Chip Berlay about is, you know, we've been really lucky that we haven't really had this charismatic figure. And then, come 2015, and Trump came along and he just fulfilled. He just checked all the boxes and that was sort of the sign that we were heading down a really dark road as far as I was concerned. And sure enough, you know, he lifted the lid off the right-wing extremism Pandora's box and just let all the demons come flying out. And that was right after as soon as he was elected in 2017.

Speaker 1:

You know, we saw waves of hate crimes. We saw huge surges in recruitment among white nationalist groups and militia groups and then the formation of these street brawling groups like the Proud Boys and things like that. I could see that he was building this sort of street fighting army in the form of the Proud Boys and the militiamen. I covered about 20 different Proud Boys events between 2017 and 2019, and actually 2020, and covered a number of other extremist events in the same time period and certainly had plenty of on-the-ground experience observing these folks and then listening to them, listening to what they were saying listening to you know the things that they fantasized about.

Speaker 1:

You know, they've been fantasizing about a civil war for forever.

Speaker 1:

I mean since the 1990s and it's really reached a fever pitch. And that's. I mean, there's a reason they all have these AR-15s and huge loads of ammunition, and it's not so that they can kill all the feral pigs in their neighborhood, trust me, so that they can kill their neighbors, and that's what they talk about doing all the time, and you know. And then when you tell people this, when you say, you know, these guys want to start killing you, they want to start killing every liberal they can get their hands on. People say, oh, you're just overreacting, they're just talking big. And I go yeah, maybe. So I mean, sometimes they are just full of hot air. Most of the time they are. Most of the time they're too cowardly to actually do anything about it. But inevitably there are going to be a few of them who aren't that cowardly, who are actually capable of doing it and will start pulling it off. I mean, that's what we call, that's what these lone wolf domestic terrorist attacks always are is somebody who you know kind of an unstable type who takes the exhortations seriously and walks into a grocery store in Buffalo or a Walmart in El Paso and starts shooting people. But that's what they do and what they really have a fantasy about is. Or you know a guy who walks into the LGBTQ club in Colorado Springs and starts gunning people down. You know, those are the kinds of things that they fantasize about and that they actually hope will happen.

Speaker 1:

You know, read Libs of TikTok's comments. You know, of course, libs of TikTok doesn't actually say these things herself she's smarter than that but all of her fans and followers do. I mean. You just log on to her account and see what people are chiming in and saying. The problem is that someone like Trump actually eggs them on. He actually encourages them, he actually tells them that they're empowered and he tells them that they're right. And the more he does that, the more likely we are to have these people acting out this way in real acts, very real acts of violence, when they invade the CNN newsroom or something like that, which I think is inevitable. Then all of these corporate media types are going to go wow, we never would have imagined. And there are going to be a lot of us who are saying actually, a lot of us imagined this because we were telling you they were going to do this.

Speaker 2:

I want to talk about the relationship that Trump has with militia groups and vice versa in a minute.

Speaker 2:

But before we get there there is a very chilling passage in Age of Insurrection that kind of made it clear to me in a way that I don't think I had wrapped my head around how these folks think about the rest of us.

Speaker 2:

So I live in Washington state and we have, as you've written right that you know Pacific Northwest has kind of got a pretty strong history of militia movements and militia groups. You know, you see them, you can kind of see them a mile away, right, and it's easy to roll your eyes at them and think that these are people that are just cosplaying some type of, some type of a power trip that you know never really actualized for them. But this passage in your book is essentially that you had heard some member of one of the groups say something like that during the pandemic their liberal neighbors were like stocking up on things and becoming like preppers because they were afraid that they were going to run out of food or toilet paper etc. But that they were stocking up on guns because if they ever needed food or things like that, they would just go and shoot their liberal neighbors dead and take everything and they would just consider that shopping yeah, that was that came out.

Speaker 2:

That laid bare for me just how violent their thought process is and, ultimately, how they view us, which makes the issue much closer to home, literally. I don't know if this is a survival mechanism, but for me it makes me a little more paranoid. I'm not going to lie about who I'm living next to, you know.

Speaker 1:

I'm not going to lie about who I'm living next to, you know. No, I think actually. I mean I'm, I'm telling the people who, who know me and who don't don't, who are constantly telling me to overreact to themselves, you know, keep their heads on a swivel, be aware of who their neighbors are, and what their?

Speaker 1:

activities are and be able to respond. Make yourself able to respond to a situation where they decide to invade your home. I don't think we need to be paranoid about it, but I think we should be prepared. I don't know that it's going to happen, but I do know that they hope that it happens. They hope that it will happen.

Speaker 1:

You know, they have a thing that's this myth that came out of the Turner Diaries the day of the rope, which is the day where they all get the signal to unleash the violence on people who've betrayed the nation and go around and basically hang race mixers and liberals from the street lamps. And this is a scenario that was laid out in the Turner Diaries, which is the neo-Nazi blueprint for the takeover of America, written back in the 1970s, and it was a book that not only inspired the Order who did that rampage back in the 1980s. They recently made a movie about it that ended up kind of finished up on Whidbey Island. It that ended up kind of finished up on Whidbey Island. But those guys are basically following the blueprint of Turner Diaries in their sort of rampage of terror, as well as Timothy McVeigh. You know, mcveigh used to go around and sell copies of the Turner Diaries before he blew up the Oklahoma City building and there have been recent variations on it.

Speaker 1:

A guy who sort of alt-righter who got all involved in the neo-Nazi white nationalists through the alt-right movement the 2010s, wrote a book called Day of the Rope. That was sort of a further exploration of the idea that you know what America was going to look like after they went out and hung all these traitors and yeah, it's very chilling to. I mean, it's very worrying and you know, one of the things about them, of course, is that they their whole purpose is to make you fearful, to make you paranoid and make you fear them. And the truth is they really are a bunch of cowards who like to talk loud. But because they are a bunch of cowards, if they get enough critical mass, they will be glad to sort of act as a gang If they have numbers, they'll act.

Speaker 2:

I think that there is probably some real concern let's just put it this way I wouldn't want to live in Idaho or Montana right now about Trump and his relationship to the groups, because you had mentioned earlier that you were always afraid of that charismatic leader that could corral these quote unquote troops Right and what that would ultimately mean for American democracy. Irrespective of how much Trump actually shares the same ideology as as these groups do or have have the same objective, they do have some type of a symbiotic relationship here. I guess my question is twofold when did you look at Trump and say, oh, that's the guy. Like what was the moment that, irrespective of just his personality being potentially threatening to democracy? When did it become apparent to you that this was the guy, and when do you think it became apparent to these militia groups that this was their guy?

Speaker 1:

So I would say, in the fall of 2015, I recognized him as potentially the guy and that's when I started putting together a database that we eventually turned into the investigative report that we did for Mother Jones magazine in October of 2016, detailing all of Trump's multifarious connections to right-wing extremists. But I started putting that, assembling that database back in. I think it was November. It was around the time that he released his immigration plan for his 2015-2016 campaign and that was the moment when he actually when know, all the red flags went up for me and I said, ok, I need to start tracking him because clearly he was inspiring a sort of fresh round of recruitment among white nationalists and far right extremists and particularly, I should say, among the patriot movement. And I got to tell you, it still drives me kind of crazy that he uses the term patriots, his followers use the term patriots all the time, and even the media have gotten around to constantly refer to his followers as patriots without actually understanding the significance of that term. That's what the militia movement called itself in the 1990s and that's what these people are. They believe there's people who have a very conspiratorial view of the way the world works. They think that the world is secretly run by a cabal of conspirators a la the John Birch Society. I mean, it's basically ultimately an outgrowth of John Bircherism and that's where this whole worldview originated and that's where it really began festering in the 1990s, especially the more we had the Internet and there were Alex Joneses around to spread conspiracy theories. And then it really took off after 9-11, which is when the real conspiracy theory cottage industry became a major industry and we started seeing the degradation of journalistic values.

Speaker 1:

Journalistic integrity is really a dead letter now, and I say this with great grief because I was an old newsroom hand. Uh, I ran newsrooms for quite a while and was in charge of, you know, their discipline. I was the news editor, had several, a number of newsrooms here in the northwest and you know, when that's your job, you're in charge of maintaining the standards. Uh, you're you're responsible for basically making sure that the paper doesn't get sued right. So I was never. I could see that the guardrails were deteriorating. So when Trump came along and he started, he basically adopted and adapted all of theseot movement worldviews into his own politics and he started attracting all of the huge levels of Patriot movement support and that they started calling each other Patriots. You know, I could see that. That was when I knew we were headed in a really bad direction. And it still does trouble, it still bugs the crap out of me that people don't recognize what that term means, what the term patriot actually signifies.

Speaker 2:

I outside of this conversation. I have always been reticent to go too far down this rabbit hole because I just don't want to exist in that space. But I think there is something very clever in calling themselves patriots, in wrapping themselves in the flag although that flag has become bastardized and kind of weird variations of it over the years but in that, I think, to some degree, what they're tapping into is, you know, like an almost like a revolutionary kind of spirit, right, and that's's very at the heart of the origin story of the United States and our democracy, right. But underneath all of that runs this undercurrent of absolute authoritarianism, right, which cuts against the revolutionary spirit of American democracy, right. So these are two things that are in conflict with each other, but you've touched on this, we've touched on this a bit in our conversation and I don't want to put too fine a point on it, but I think it's probably worth spending a minute just honing in very specifically on what the objective and the goal of these groups is.

Speaker 1:

Basically, their objective is, yeah, an autocratic system led by a single, very right-leaning dictator. It's not an accident that the John Birch Society originated this whole trope that America is a republic, not a democracy, because they've always had this really obvious hostility to democracy and the way it operates, mainly because it enables all of the wrong people. As far as they're concerned, it's essentially what the Ku Klux Klan vision for America was back in the 1920s, which is white Christian rule, and they very much wrapped themselves in exactly the same way In patriotic bunting. They were the all-American organization. It was America first. That's where that slogan comes from is the Ku Klux Klan. And all of these things were very much part of what the Klan was promoting, actually beginning in 1915. And it didn't die out until about 1930 and was shortly displaced by the Hitler-esque silver shirts.

Speaker 1:

As far as right-wing extremism goes and that was one of the things why didn't the Klan grow? Well, because it was actually a scam. Inevitably, these right-wing extreme movements attract scam artists. You know the Klan fell apart because they were all ripping each other off monetarily and they were taking advantage of their members, and the members figured it out. You know that they stopped paying their dues because they realized that the leadership of the Klan was misappropriating their funds. And, you know, inevitably I think that's probably what's going to happen with Trump too but because, you know, this rubber always hits the road when it comes to these kinds of things eventually, but it sometimes takes quite a bit of time before it gets there and they can cause a lot of harm in the meantime.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, they can blow a lot of shit up in the meantime.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and kill a lot of people.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I hate that this is attributed to this guy, but I also think that it's true. Yeah, I hate that this is attributed to this guy, but I also think that it's true. There's this Joseph Goebbels quote about democracy that built into the design of democracy is its own demise, right, something along those lines. That's not an exact quote. Clearly I think we're seeing that American democracy, the guardrails that were built into it, are failing. We're not a defensive democracy. Arguably the design of German democracy after the fall of Nazi Germany is supposed to be a defensive democracy. But they're facing some of their own challenges in the same area that we are. But I guess it does beg the question if you think or have come across or seen anything and I guess it would have to almost be at the state or local level that has been effective in curbing, like a militia, influence or mitigating the damage that they can do to a community.

Speaker 1:

Well, definitely the best responses that I've seen are community-based ones. There is a rural organizing project out of Oregon, for example, run by a woman named Jessica Campbell, who goes around to communities and helps the local people there to be able to organize to stand up to these right-wing extremists, because most people aren't used to having to deal with this stuff. Most people run for school board never thinking for a day that they're going to. You know, in two years have somebody screaming at them, calling them groomers because they want to include some LGBTQ texts in the school library. You know, but that's what's been happening, and to be able to handle that, you know, what actually happens, of course, is that a lot of people get driven off from participating in democracy, which just makes our democracy that much thinner on the ground, and so we need to be able to, we need to have, you know, community-based responses in which local people can get together and link arms and provide a sort of mutual defense against this stuff, so that we push back against.

Speaker 1:

You know the Chaya Raichiks we had one there in. You know, recently, Chaya Raichik and the Libs of Tuk-Tuk did their thing in Edmonds, where she targeted a local school district that was holding a session for immigrants to be prepared for the coming deportations, and basically these are just information sessions on you know when you should open your doors, when you should cooperate with authorities and when you should insist on having a lawyer, and that sort of thing, and that, you know, really is a fundamental. Here's how you defend your rights. Information set up and RightCheck tried to make it out to be something nefarious, where they were looking to evade the law and had all these people chiming in, of course, on her accounts, as well as on jason rance's account there at his radio station in seattle, who you know like. Well, let's just send ICE there and arrest them all.

Speaker 2:

And they canceled.

Speaker 1:

They did, they canceled it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

They canceled it and so we need to be able to have the community be able to come together and defend those attempts to help the community rather than run scared from them. We need to find ways to. I mean, that to me is just the first line of defense, but it's also been the local action has honestly been where I've seen us actually make progress in defending democracy, because on a national scale it's been hard to get people to understand that our democracy is at risk. But you know, if you see it happening locally, it becomes very clear. Over in Sequim they elected a QAnon city council a few years ago and it turned into such a cluster that local people realized what was happening and actually organized a political counterattack and put them all out of office in the next election. And it was very effective. And it's still the case in Sequim. You go over to Sequim and the Trumpers are not very welcome there.

Speaker 2:

In outlining the equation of. You know, I guess, to some degree, how we got here. We have talked about Trump, we've talked about the pardoning. You know, I guess, to some degree, how we got here. We have talked about Trump, we've talked about the pardoning, we've talked about taking security away from people that are considered enemies of the state or enemies of Trump, enemies of militia groups, and then empowering militia groups themselves.

Speaker 2:

But there's another component to this equation, which is we have two political parties, two major political parties in the United States, two political parties, two major political parties in the United States, and one of them, the Republican Party, is pretty much completely acquiesced to Trump, which suggests that one of two very powerful parties in the United States that could act as a check on some of the worst excesses here is not. In fact, they're probably cheerleaders for it. If we consider that entire equation, then and there are other components. But if we consider that entire equation, then and there are other components. But if we consider that in that context and I'm not going to ask you to be an optimist if you're not feeling that way, you can certainly feel free to be a realist here. But what are you expecting that we might see over the next few years.

Speaker 1:

I think the only positive outcome could possibly be, you know, seeing this whole thing run aground to see Republicans become massively discredited and driven from power, you know, and basically replaced. You know, I do think there needs to be a conservative element at work in our body politic, but that ain't it work in our body politic, but that ain't it. You know, I would like to think that they could be replaced by a democracy-loving, conservative party, but as it is, you know, it's got to be up to the Democratic Party, and what the Democratic Party, of course, has done is tried to bring a lot of older conservatives who do still believe in democracy into their fold. And so we saw Kamala Harris campaigning with Liz Cheney right, and I view that with some dubiousness. Frankly, I think, unfortunately, at this point, the Democratic Party is far too acquiescent, is far too accepting of what's going on and is basically rolling over and begging for belly rubs. So, you know, the only person I see out there who's actually standing up to these guys and saying no, we're not going to play along with fascists is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, eoc, and she's been pretty outspoken and Adaman doesn't back down. So AOC is about the only person I can see who's actually showing the kind of leadership that I would look for from an actual Democratic, a pro-Democratic party.

Speaker 1:

Everyone else is just proving so spineless that it's dismaying when our two senators vote for an immigration act that's going to basically enable attorneys general in various states to basically overwhelm federal law, they just lose me. It's like why are you voting for that? Why are you supporting basically the end of our immigration system? Why are you acquiescing to this fascist takeover? And Maria Cadwell are both going to vote for the Lake and Riley Act, which is really dismaying. But you know at least they're standing up on some of these cases. But you know it's got to be a unified front and you know the leader of the Senate Democrats is Chuck Schumer. Has all this spying. God gave a jellyfish.

Speaker 2:

If you really look at this past election, as much as there's this shock and awe on the part of Trump and the Republicans and as much as they're claiming a mandate, it was actually one of the closest popular vote losses for Democrats and they picked up a seat in the House and they lost the Senate, primarily because of malapportionment. So we're three months in and there's a party that's like when are you, when do you plan on picking yourself up, dusting yourself off and getting back into the fight, because now seems like a good time, you know.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, no, no, kidding. And, and unfortunately you know, a lot of this has to do. A lot of the way Democrats are behaving has to do with the utter obsequiousness of the corporate media system. I mean corporate media now they're no longer. Anybody who calls them the liberal media deserves to be laughed at in their face at this point, because they are so acquiescent to the right-wing agenda at this point that it's really pathetic. And yeah, I wouldn't want to work for any of these networks or large papers or anything like that myself, because, I mean, I did used to write for the Washington Post and actually when Bezos brought in the three ponchos from Murdoch Media, I ended my association with them. I wrote to them, canceled my subscription and said I don't want to be part of this Because I knew that these guys had foul ethics and I did not want to be part of an unethical journalistic operation. Turned out I was right.

Speaker 2:

I also canceled mine, my Washington Post subscription of an unethical journalistic operation Turned out I was right. I also canceled mine, my Washington Post subscription. So, yeah, ok, final question you ready for it? Yeah, what's something interesting you've been reading, watching, listening to or doing lately? And it doesn't have to be related to this topic, but it can be Well actually.

Speaker 1:

So lately I've been reading Jessica Plushko's book the Highest Law in the Land, which is a terrific book about the sheriff's movement, about how these sovereigns, these constitutionalist sheriffs who I've been writing about really for years although a lot of my hate watch pieces didn't have my name on them that serve as source material for infiltrated the ranks of law enforcement to an extent that I think they've that's law enforcement's always been one of our major guardrails, uh, for dealing with right-wing extremists and particularly the violent ones. And, uh, I think that that's an incredibly weakened guardrail right now, cause they've law enforcement's been so infiltrated with, uh, and so so many members of law enforcement are fully radicalized into this right-wing extremist belief system. You know the John Birch style empiricism. So I've been reading that book and it's quite good. I strongly recommend it to anyone.

Speaker 1:

Then I also picked up Michael German's book Policing White Supremacy. I've known Mike for years. He was an undercover FBI agent in the 1990s when he was the guy responsible for the bust of the Washington State Militia up in Hawkins County in 1996. And I covered that trial and Mike was the guy who kind of led that bust. It was actually my all-time favorite bust story. So he went undercover with these guys who were holding these sessions plotting the downfall of local government. He arranged a meeting space for them where they could sit around and not just talk but actually hold the lessons and classes that they wanted to do, classes in bomb making and things about, you know, basically primitive forms of domestic terrorism. But of course the meeting space that he set up for him was just filled with cameras, video cameras and recording equipment and so we got to see all this in the trial all these sessions.

Speaker 1:

We didn't see the very last session, though, but we heard about it. The very last session, mike got them all into the warehouse and got everybody around the table. Usually it had been somebody else who was giving the lesson that day. There were various kinds of lessons, mostly on making pipe bombs, but they got around the table or came in the room and said today, guys, mike's going to say it's my turn today, so I'm going to show you guys how to get out of handcuffs without a key. And so he gets out of this box of handcuffs and goes around, clicks them on everybody, and then, as soon as everybody's in handcuffs, he, he pulls out his pants.

Speaker 2:

his guys, you're all under her, god I don't know why, I didn't see where that was going, but that's a great end to that story that was the end of the was State Militia.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so, yeah. So I'm reading Mike's book on the how bad basically his book is about how badly the FBI has botched the job of policing and doing proper law enforcement treatment of right-wing extremists in their acts of terrorism and why right-wing extremists and their acts of terrorism and why and you know, and how they use domestic terrorism laws to not focus on right-wing extremists but instead use it to over-police left-wing extremists.

Speaker 2:

So just a little little light reading.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, For my light reading. I'm reading Middlemarch actually.

Speaker 2:

Oh, okay. Well, there you go, but you've also got your sub stack, the Spy Hop, which is a nod to orcas or killer whales, the way they pop out of the water, so people can check that out as well. David, thanks for stopping by. Thanks for the conversation. Keep fighting the good fight. Stay safe.

Speaker 1:

Same for you, sean, and yeah, let's all link arms.

Speaker 2:

For sure.

Speaker 1:

That let's all link arms. You know for sure, that's how we're going to get through.

Speaker 2:

this is by linking arms and saying we're going to defend democracy. Democracy is fragile and when its principles are attacked by a leader like Donald Trump, who rewards violence and silences dissent, the threat, the danger is clear and it's present. Pardoning offenders emboldens extremism and stripping protections from critics fuels fear and chaos and really could lead to blood, could lead to death, as militia groups armed to the teeth, legitimated, encouraged above the law and unchained, let loose on our country. Encouraged above the law and unchained, let loose on our country. This is not just a political crisis. It's an existential one. The consequences are not limited to our institutions. This will negatively impact communities and individuals. The next four years at minimum are going to be rough.

Speaker 2:

We've learned from historical incidences of democracy collapsing, how authoritarians operate, and we've learned how systems fail. Those alarms are going off. We've also learned how citizens can unwittingly contribute to democratic demise. Do not give in to fear or hopelessness. Do not turn on your neighbors. Do not be quiet in the face of violence and oppression. Be vigilant, take care of each other and don't give in. We have to find ways to support each other, fight the darkness and defend the values that keep us free. All right, check back next week for another episode of Deep Dive Chat soon, folks. Thank you, thank you.

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Shawn C. Fettig

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