It Could Happen Here Weekly 63

can make your own decisions. It could happen here is a podcast, UM, and it is kind of happening here because they're just was just an attack on uh, several power substations in the city of North Or City in the state of North Carolina, UM that left something like forty people without power for several days. I believe that at the moment at least one person died as a result of this. There have been car crashes. It's pretty fucked up, and UH we are going to be talking

about that obviously. As a result of this. Number one where a lot of immediate suspicions that came out that this was tied towards Drag Queen UH Story Hour type event that was going to be being held on the day that the attack was carried out. There's suspicions that this is the result of far right activity. Um, and uh yeah, we're gonna talk about that and everything around that right now. Um. We have on the episode for today myself, Garrison Davis, James Stout, and we are also

bringing in friend of the pod, researcher and woman about town. Um, but not this town, a different town because we live on opposite sides of the country. Molly Conger, Molly, I've been saying your last name wrong for years, even though we've been friends for quite a while. I don't know

why I never said anything. It's come up so many times. Yeah. Um, so, Garrison, you've kind of been taking point on putting together this one, so I'm gonna let you kind of take the reins unless you want me to, uh to to to direct this more. But I do think kind of the place to start is all we're watching a gigantic right wing

insurgency unfold or is this a more complex case? And obviously the answer is the latter, as it is anytime someone poses a question like that now, is we're gonna We're gonna, we're gonna pick this the simple, more scary, more inflammatary option and leave it at that. Yeah, let's

send tweet no so yes. Um, the aftermath of the North Carolina attack is kind of it's gotten a lot of people to learn about infrastructure attacks for the first time and get really scared about them and realize that this is a problem, and then start bringing up past incidents when this has happened and trying to draw this like overall pattern, which isn't entirely incorrect, but the way they're going about it is not very responsible nor really

well informed. Yeah. So one of the things we've seen is like the there have been a lot of attack Like, uh, it does seem accure to say that over the course of the last year or two there have been more attacks on power infrastructure. Um, But that doesn't mean we have we have lots of data on this. It has the past five years there has been a pretty strong

increase in the number of attacks on power stations. And it's also true that this is a thing the right has been The far right, like the Nazi right in particular, has been trying to get people to do for longer than anyone on this podcast has been alive. Um. This goes back to the Turner Diaries even pre that stuff. This is in siege, um, and this is you know, there has been very recently this summer a couple of pieces of fairly well put together Nazi propaganda that was

advocating for people to carry out attacks like this. And the reason is that it's easy and it's high impact. It's very easy to funk up a power substation. All you need is a gun, um, and it's very easy to get away with it because most of them have effectively zero security. Yeah, and it explained how to do it as well, right, sorry, money like it. It was literally a guide to fucking up the substation. Yeah, because they're specific, We're not going to give you guys a

guide to fucking up power substations on this podcast. But it's not hard. Yeah, that's next week. It's on the Patreon. You go on Patreon. That's that's the Patreon special episode, how to Destroy power Infrastructure for fun and Profit. No, but I thin think too. If you're trying to propagandize people to take action, you know, we've all seen plenty of manifestoes from people who carried out mass shootings trying

to propagandize people to take action in that effect. Um, But we've also seen the chats when somebody fails, right, like if somebody doesn't get what they call it, you know, a high score. If somebody carries out a mass shooting that doesn't result in very many debts, it's embarrassing for them. But this is for the perpetrator, relatively low stakes. If you fail, no one will know. If you miss, no one will know. Um, if you hit the you know, if you hit it, it just looks like vandalism and

the power doesn't go out. No one will know that you failed, and you can try again later. You don't die. And that's Let's the title of one of the one of the pieces of propaganda that I sent to you, right. The title of it is make It Count, which is an impredated form of a quote from Siege. I wish it's a Nazi and I'm not going to read from the general effect. The general gist of the quote is that you know, the price of failure is death, So

whatever you choose to do, make it count. So this is a way to relatively low stakes for the perpetrator, way to have a very high impact with low risk of personal failure. And what I did find and we'll get off. We'll move to the broader topic in a second, because I think focusing too much on the Nazis right

now is going to frame things the wrong way. But one of the things I did find interesting about that piece of propaganda was the acknowledgement of the introduction that like, carrying out these mass shootings is not going to accomplish our brother goals in part because people have gotten and

neared to them. Whereas destroying power infrastructure, if you can funk up the grid, they believe that's going to like and I think, obviously this is a silly line of thought, but they think it's going to like lead to the I mean, this is always what I think it's going to lead to, like the race war that they want, right, That's that's the thinking there would be in that equation. Isn't like a two B two C like this question mark question mark race war. Yeah, they're Nazis, you know

they're Nazis. They're not right about things. But the the fact that all this propaganda is out there, the fact they've been talking about this so long, is part of why everyone is convinced that like there's this massive new insurgency that's just broken out and that that's what all of these attacks are, which doesn't mean that none of

them are. Um. It's also worth noting that the year before this happened in the same state in North Carolina, a group of Nazis were arrested by the FEDS for trying to attack power infrastructure, and they also had plans on the Pacific Northwest, where there have been in Washington Portland attacks on some power infrastructure. They also they're also just so happens to be a lot of Nazis here, both the Carolinas and the Pacific and the Pacific Northwest are home to a lot of people who self describe

as like militant neo Nazi accelerationists. And what I think we should do now before we get too much off this and we can return to this topic, is talk about the fact that, and this is kind of the important context, a lot of people who aren't Nazis funk up electrical grids all the time. It's actually very easy,

and people seem to just enjoy it. American I think there's there's there's been a lot of missteps people have taken in talking about this, and kind of you know, some people have gotten scared and kind of you know, uh not not looked at this uh fully analytically in a way that is actually really helpful, because there's been a lot of kind of retrospective misinformation going around on attacks that have happened in the past few months that I've only really gotten reported on or noticed in the

wake of the North Carolina attack, which is kind of caused this narrative to come out that since the North Carolina attack, there's been like a bajillion of other other attacks happening in quick succession, which actually isn't true. So that's I first, I want to talk about the types of stuff that is that people are generally getting wrong about this because it's a good a good deal. People

are are are misunderstanding some some of what's going on here. Um. So there was this you know, pretty pretty viral uh story made by a new station in Florida that came out a few days ago talking about how it's all caps substations targeted reports shows intrusions that Duke Energy power stations in Tampa Bay and elsewhere in Florida, so very scary obviously because Duke Energy is also the place in North Carolina that was attacked founded by the guy who

invented the modern cigarette, by the way, Bay based. Yes, but if you if you look, if you look at the actual story, these intrusions that they're talking about happened last September. They did not. They did not happen a few days ago. And then also similarly, for the first time, there was reporting on a whole bunch of substation attacks

in the Pacific Northwest. That reporting was dropped after the North Carolina attacks, in part because a memo was was was posted by a few different news sites that they probably did open records requests in the wake of the North Carolina attack, they found this memo, reported on it, and now people have this, you know, have learned about

this other thing that happened in November. So but people who don't, who are really only looking at headlines or only looking at tweets, um or posts wherever, right, uh, they look at these attacks and they look at, you know, the succession of them becoming public after the North Carolina thing, and they're kind of drawing this narrative that these things have happened one after another and it's part of this brand new wave of things, and it is part of

a wave of things and like the broad sense, but it's not all happened within the past two weeks. So the first thing is like, when it's super easy for a disinformation and misinformation to spread very rampantly in the aftermath of these types of attacks UM, and these types of incidents, you know, some of these probably are not attacks UM, And it's really easy to kind of glom onto an arative that's compelling and scary, and if you just dig it a little a little bit deeper, deeper,

you'll realize there's a whole bunch of context that you're missing. So that's always an important first step when the when these things are happening. Yeah, and it's part of the

part of the story here. I think part of why it's important to understand that, like the surgeon, attacks on power infrastructure is a thing, but it's not necessarily tied to the fact that Nazis are attacking the power infrastructure, is that like it's easy to do, it's easy to do casually, and this has been known for a while. About a decade ago, two dozen thirteen, there was an attack in the Bay Area on I think was it was it to power substations. Um, yeah, the Metcalf sniper.

And we don't know how many people were involved, but suspected, it's it's it's it's suspected more than one. Yes, yes, sniper. And this was a very if if this was a practice attack, a training attack, then it was a very effectively carried out one. Because we still don't know who did it and regardless of the mode of this incidence of has been mythologized in a lot of extremist circles as like an example of here's a successful thing that

is replicable and you can get away with it. This is this is one of the most highly referenced incidents of infrastructure attack on you know, across you know, whether you're like anti Siev bloodite or whether you're a neo Nazi accelerationist. This is, this specific attack is highly referenced. And we'll circle back to this towards the end. But because I'm going to quote from a recent report by the George Washington University on power substation attacks. Um, they are,

they are extremely common. They are they are becoming increasingly common since white supremacists are not the only ones who do them. They were also from from nineteen, A whole bunch of ISIS inspired terrorism also hit UM substations across the United States. They are they are, They're not exclusively done by white supremacists, and there's also sometimes they're just shot at by random people with guns. And let's be honest.

So the Metcalf attack, it's not impossible that it was just an un usually lucky group of ye who's who wanted to shoot some power infrastructure we have I think the number of rounds fired directly in yeah, no, unlikely. Almost every intelligence agency will disagree with you on that, Robert. You know what they didn't catch. They didn't catch ship. But to Robert's point, I think I think there is some value in remembering that a drunk guy in the woods might love to fire a gun at something that's

gonna sparks. Shoot a gun, you might as well shoot it a lot. No, I I probably wouldn't shoot it two times that it was very It was it was very anyway, I there is we and we talked about this a bit in our planning. There was one attack and Molly, you probably could recall a year better than I was. But it was a couple of years ago where the guy attacked the power substation because he and he talked about this at length in his trial. He thought people were on their phones too much. So I said,

I sent this one to you. I loved. I love to find a court record. I'd love to spend all my all my pocket change on pacer and they give me access to the law library. So I spent all day today, UM, looking for any case we're not not just charge? Where can PICCTI of any case where UM USC eighteen USC thirteen sixty six was brought up? So thirteen sixty six is the federal statute for damaging or

conspiring to damage and energy facility. And so energy facility means power lines, power substations, coal mines, nuclear facilities, any place where power is made. Right, So it's a pretty broad statute. And so I looked up a few dozen cases where that was on the table to sort of bring the temperature down and say, like, okay, aside from Nazis trying to cause a race war, what are some other things that lead to somebody getting charged with this?

Other motivations, other scenarios. UM. In that case was Jason wood Ring, UM. Jason wood Ring in August he tried to use a This is a quote from some news coverage the time tried to last. So a train with a cable attached to a high voltage tower. Critical support. He is still in prison, right, distracted by their screens, by their phones, by their gaming, and he just wanted people to remember what's important. So he tried to locker train with high voltage wire. Now I probably, yeah, we

probably don't need to add this. He was a big enthusiast of methamphetamy, has ordered substance abuse treatment, and we wish him nothing but the best, right, I think he's going to be just fine. But so I found some other cases where there was an intentional attack with the you know, with the stated intention of bringing down the grid, but for like non Nazi reasons. In the early two thousand's, UM, a bunch of E l F activists were charged with

thirteen sixty six for arsons to energy facilities. UM, this is an odd. In twenty nineteen, a guy named Stephen McCrae was sentenced for attacking one substation by shooting out the cooling fins, and as part of his plea agreement, he admitted to three other attacks. UM. He got caught because he told a friend of his that he'd been

shooting ship up. I was concerned and went to the FBI, and they had his friend record some of their cosends and so he said things like he stated motive was attacking corporate America so some couldn't be done about global warming. He wasn't noted as an environmental activist, but he was concerned about the corporations, which I don't know that Alex

Jones code in language globalists from a couple of different places. Yeah, listen, people, maybe, but he right before his arrest, he told his friend that he was planning a grand daddy event that would make national news and shut down the whole West coast. Okay, okay, that's maybe. That's sometimes you can't don't tell that to

your friend, yeah, or anyone. Your friend is still snitching and that sucks, but like, don't don't tell that to your Although, according to the euro of Prisons innate locator, which is another tool I really enjoy, he was released in September. That's yeah. This I think it helps to make the point that like this is not all are

mostly Nazis doing this kind of thing. A lot of people wanted to think to make about the you know these sort of I found a third case that sort of fits the same pattern, a guy who shot out a transformer for reasons I can't quite discern based on the court rhylings. But again, in all three of these cases, the Miles Maynard case in Alabama in two thousand eight, Jason woodreyeen, Stephen McCrae in twenty nine, they all had court order psyche valves, and in mccraye's case there were

questions about his compensy to stand trial. Miles Miles Maynard died shortly after being released from prison. These are people who were not well. Yeah, not that not that being unwell or having a sub problem make you shoot a substation. But these aren't explicitly ideological. These are people who just

got an idea in their head and didn't control it. Well. Yeah, And I think part of when you're kind of looking at just any of these attacks, you're trying to discern as stuff pops into the news, is this likely part of an insurgent trend? Or is this like some dudes fucking around? One of them would be like, what was the how much like how much effort and planning? Does it look like when into the Metcalf attack, looks like

quite a lot. I would say the most recent Portland's and Washington attacks, given the extent to which there were breakings, looked like it was very a lot of steps had to had to go in. So let's have an ad break and then we'll go into some more actual details of the North Carolina attack and some of the Pacific Northwest ones, and then kind of circle back to why people are talking about accelerationism so much. You know who loves planning a series of infrastructure attacks. The sponsors of

this show, attacks on the infrastructure of your wallet. We're bulk, and nothing that we said before the break can legally

be called incitement. Um, it's a joke. It's fine. So now we're gonna we're gonna talk a little bit more about the details of the North Carolina attack and some of the attacks in the Pacific Northwest, and yeah, just getting get into some more of the actual details that have been going on with these most recent attacks that have kind of caused people to speculate on various things. So the agencies involved in investigating the North Carolina More

County attack have disclosed very little information about what's happened. UH, They've they've said that the equipment was hit by gunfire and that the shooters appeared to know what they were doing. UH. Investigators have found nearly two dozen shell casings from high powered rifles in the area around and people lost power and UH that power outage lasted for like at least five days, as as the company tried to replace these very large pieces of equipment, many of which were damaged

beyond repair. So investigators are zoning in on two threads of possible motives centered around extremist behavior for the for the for the attack that happened last last Sunday. One of these one of these is writings by extremists on online forms encouraging attacks on critical infrastructure, as well as a series of recent disruptions of LGBTQ plus events across the nation by domestic extremists, according to law enforcement sources disclosed to CNN. So these these are the two things

that people are looking into. Initial UH speculation, like of the night of the shooting, centered on right wing backlash towards a drag show that was set to be held that same day at a nearby theater. The drag show was shut down as it was going on because the power went out. Um, and there was a local a local activist made some cryptic comments on their Facebook and they then received a police visit the police about it.

I also like that the this person who who made these cryptic posts, um, was also an Army psychological operations officer, so they literally worked in pop. Yeah, like her job was psyops. And this was the person that that that posted about this big tied to the drag Show. So take that as as you will. Um. This person's group earlier that day had had a protest uh involving armed individuals in military gear to to you know, push back

against the uh the Drag Show. So but but yeah, So those are the two threads investigators are looking into. Is one accelerationist rhetoric and writings that have gotten more popular the past few years. And then two maybe connected to this wave of of of like anti queer stuff. Let's see, um. One what what One interesting kind of thing of note is that three weeks before this attack, another substation was deliberately disabled in eastern and North Carolina.

This this this attack happened on Friday, November eleventh. It shut down electricity for about twelve thousand homes and businesses. Power was restored in a few hours, though this one, this one was easier to fix. UM In a statement posted on the company's website for a few days after the incident, UH they described it as vandalism, and the company said that vandal's quote damaged transformers, causing them to leak cool into oil. But the statement does not explicitly

say what the method was. Yeah, and this is again not uncommon, because you're trying to like find people who might have Like that's part of how you can like make a case against people is if you can prove they know details of the case that aren't publicly possible, Like there's a reason why they're not going to say what caliber the weapon is or whatever. Yeah, they did say it wasn't the same as the one used in

the Metcalf attack, which was seven six too short. So yes, but the gun that was used on the December North Carolina attack was different than the case. Things found at at the doesn't mean much. That does not mean much at all. I know there was a lot of initial sort of anger and frustration over the use of the word vandalism and the initial reporting um I think it's fine to use that word because when you don't know what happened, all you can see that happened is that

someone damaged property. We don't know the motivations behind it. We don't know that they intended to knock outpower because, like we said, sometimes people in the woods just shoot it ship because it's it's funny. So I think it's fair to not want to use that word. But I think in initial reporting, especially from authorities, especially from people who could give suit reliable later down the line, the

word vandalism is not incorrect. No, and it's this is like I think, if you're at if you want to know like what would immediately set some someone off, that like something is likely not vandalism or the Metcalf attack is good because so much was fired at the transformer. I would say if like a thing that would make me think maybe this is just some you who sucking around is if it's thirty rounds are less fired and there's no attempt to actually break onto the facility kind

of a standard capacity magazine. Which the reason why because because the North Carolina attack in December did not have any rounds. But the reason why it isn't we do know it's intentional. Is two substations were hit. Um like like one person hit one, then travel and went to another. It was like, I just seem like a lot of a lot of people sort of expressing this outrage. But you know is we're trying these other instance to it, you know, the ones in Florida, the ones in Pacific Northwest.

When we have very little information, it's okay to call it vandalism because that's the baseline, right that you don't have to if you start using terrorism for every minor incident, it it dilutes it. It's not helpful. It creates the steria I just wanted to on the table. I mean, like so even in like November, the FBI was issuing warnings of of of reported threats to electricity infrastructure by people espousing racially or ethnically motivated extreme ideologies to quote

create civil disorder and inspire further violence. So FBI was sending bulletins to to private industry um multiple times in the past two months. There's been a lot of bulletins being sent out, which is I think part of why this in the aftermath of the attacks, with all these public record requests and more reporting on it where people are realizing how much of a thing this actually is.

Um I think and and and a tax with these on on substations or other power grain infrastructure are definitely more common than what you might think, and do seem to be increasing in frequency on in the in the broad sense, and some of some of them are certainly have as we know from arrest that have taken place, are part of decentralized right wing attempts at an insurrection.

That's not wrong to say, it's just the problem is larger and more complicated than that, and to some extent it's a problem of like like I I would, I would be shocked if part of the explanation for why this is happening so much more is not that Americans have a shipload of guns and during the pandemic people were bored and kind of going crazy, like you know,

people have no chill. Yeah, they have no chill. They're stuck at home and you're out in the middle of nowhere and it's easy to do and you want to see something spark. That's part of the problem, right, yeah, I mean, and they have an increasing since there's uh, there were seventy reports of emergency every electric incidents and disturbances caused by suspected physical attacks, sabotage or vandalism from

January to August two UM. That figure represents increase around reports in which is the first year that there's comparable data for, and it's it's also worth really noting that there is and was. As soon as this happened in Metcalf, suggestions were made as to a really easy way to make it harder to do this, which would not be wildly expensive, which is to put sandbags in front of

the coolant systems, which will block most conventional rounds. And at that point, yeah, not not hard to accomplish, and it would also let you know anyone who is going to get around those sandbags ideologically committed, right whatever. You And the reason why there is so many of these attacks is because a lot of these very important pieces of infrastructure are highly visible and really only protected by

a chanie link fence. So in a lot of cases, an attack can be carried out without even entering any kind of restricted grounds. You can point a gun through a channe link fence and and do the thing. I mean, you can be yeah, hundreds of yards away, right, It's very like a three oh eight. You could be easily several hundred yards away, out of the range of any camera, and you could take enough pot shots to destroy it.

It has that kind of penetrative power A thirty at six you know, yeah, not hunting, right, whether your granddad has you know, yeah, anyone who shoots elk regularly could do this, you know, without any without without any realistic way of catching them if you're out in a rural area. I'm kind of shocked that these people actually didn't, like in terms of like, I don't know, like there's there's

this we can talk about this later. But obviously the area they're in has a very high concentration of very heavily trained people in unconventional warfare. But oh yes we should that isn't that is a factor in North Carolina that all of this is occurring on the outskirts of Fort Bragg, and a year ago people who were active duty Marines attempted to carry out a similar attack, and we're not Do we want to talk about a little

bit about that, specifically about Robin Sage. Yeah, yeah, I think it's relevant, certainly, Like the first thing I thought when I thought about this area was like, oh, ship, that's right by Southern Pines. I think maybe the show was supposed to happen in Seven Pines, which is kind of central to the United States Army Special Forces community, and a few times a year there, people newly qualifying to be SF soldiers will do an exercise called Robin Sage.

It's it's military LARPing. Yeah, well like the terms. Yeah, yes, it's the military doing laughing, but also not the military, right, So like people I'm sure will be familiar, and people who enjoy Twitter dot com will be familiar in the fact that the United States have sometimes helped rebel movements across the world to overthrow a government. So it's the

thing that it likes to do. It's yeah, it's shocking that the yeah, they every revolution, in fact has been fermented by the United States and the CIA specifically because people can't think for themselves, and so they what they do in Robin stage is they practice training a rebel movement that's comprised of civilians, right or untrained fighters. So these people will go out in small teams in phil and then they'll meet a bunch of people who are

not soldiers. They might be former soldiers, they might be local volunteers, there might be people from the area, um and they will train them for a few days, right, just like they would if they were actually training up like a gorilla army, and then they'll do a simulated attack which you might recognize us potentially a bad idea, which which we now might be seeing as an issue

because someone someone didn't attack. So like you have in that area a ton of SF troops, right, and who span the political spectrum, and a ton of randos who have been trained by SF troops in guerrilla warfare, right. Unconventional warfare is what they call it. And if you were doing unconventional warfare, this would be a very effective thing to do, right. That's why there's been this massive panic about cyber attacks on the grid, especially since the

start of the war in Ukraine. Very funny we panicked about cyber attacks from the fact you could just go shoot it. You don't need to be that complex. But that's right, it's a weak point and and you would know that if you've been practicing unconventional warfare, and so like this happening in this very specific area kind of racing flags from me. It's not super weird that this is the second time in the course of a year that there's been an attempt or successful attack on North

Carolina power infrastructure. Right, Like, it's not supplied, it's this is this is at the very least the DHS is not surprised about this. Earlier this year, they've they have issued many alerts warning that domestic rylan extremists are gonna are are planning to target the power grid. UM in February three people like to plead guilty, which we already talked about. UM, there was those people arrested in Idaho.

They were planning attacks on on power stations and highlighting, highlighting locations of transformers and other substations and other power infrastructure and planning to take them out and then using the black oats to go do other crimes, including assassinating

ideological opponents. So like, there's there's been a lot of there's been a lot of extra focus on people's plans to do infrastructure attacks and uh, you know plans on like, hey, this seems like a problem, and people have been talking about it more because it does seem to there isn't at least increasingly high, high high profile cases UM and at least in the case of this past one in

North Carolina. The d the DHS is currently saying that it does appear to be deliberate UM and they're they're investigating to see if it's if it is tied to ideological motives UM. But again it's it is worth emphasizing that not all of these things are are these types

of incidents. Think an example of something that I think has been misreported on is this recent attack or it's not an attack, but it's been reported as an attack in South Carolina UM on December seventh, there was an individual in a truck that opened fire near a a Dooke Energy facility. UM employees witnessed this truck pull up. It was around five thirty pm UH. This guy opened fire and what appeared to be a long gun and then sped away. No one was hurt, there was no outages,

there was no reported property damage. UM and currently sheriffs are saying that this was that this was a completely random act that was that wasn't even targeted at the power station. They said that the only connection between this shooting and the power station was their proximity. This wasn't an actual attack on a power station. Is this just

a coincidence? But because this was a few days after this attack in North Carolina, people can read headlines about someone shooting outside of power station in South Carolina and get turned into this big thing and you're like, that's actually not what's going on. You need to look a little bit closer. Similarly with this stuff in Florida. Uh, you know, there's been a lot of retroactively, you know, trying to apply this this this accelerationist idea onto those

onto those instances as well, when there's simply not the evidence. Yeah, it's um. One of the things you have to, like, as talking about the fat the folks who are like insurrection ary, one of the force multipliers they have is that the United States has a tremendous amount of people who are just assholes and have guns, um, and that that's just their own guns, guns they stole from the military.

That that is also a factor specific. A lot of James point about the proximity to Fort Bragg though you know Fort Bragg and Campbell June obviously different branch of the military, different parts of the state of North Carolina. But you know, there was that attack last month. It was near Camp ll June. We have the Camp La June cell that was wrapped up. They're actually still awaiting

trial on the third superseding indictment. And they were stealing guns, right, or at least that's how they got cans from the military. The initial indictment was for illegal for trafficking any illegal guns. Yeah. Yeah, the marine caught lost a ton of plastic explosive at twenty nine palms last year as well, like a very large amount, which is is concerning, Yeah, a startling quantity

of high explosives. Right, And so I was combing cantors for anything mentioning Fort Bragg looking for other cases related to this specific Geogho area because the More County is literally right outside Fort Brag, which is where the U. S. Army Special Horses um are are hanging out. And so this would not be the first time we had radicalized

soldiers out to four Brag. I mean, you go back to the eighties, Michael Tubbs, a founding member of the League of the South, did his first terrorism when he and some other Special Forces buddies committed armed robbery of machine guns from the Army for the Clan with the intention of using them to start a race war. But then in August of this year, a Special Forces soldier named Killian Ryan was indicted for lying on his security

clearance application. He had already been granted a security clearance. Mind you, he had been granted this clearance. Um, but it turns out he was a Nazi. I don't know how the security clearance process didn't catch the fact that his email address was Nazi ace fourteen eight at gmail dot com. That he catch that, and sometimes sometimes it's sometimes it's it's hard to check. You know, there's lots of civil mistakes that anyone could make. Anybody can make

this kind of this thing. So you know, you see, this wasn't a surprise to DHS, and it shouldn't be. These are their mistakes. UM. I also did want to note, as we're talking about these Special Forces guys and the potential of them being radicalized, there's also Timothy McVeigh or well, Timothy McVeigh was regular army, Um, but he washed out a Special Forces. Yeah he didn't quite make it, um. But what's his name? Yeah? Um, yeah, there's this is this is like not a this is not an uncommon thing.

I currently writing a story that includes a large section about a marine that tried to steal equipment, uh from military bases to then go do a mass shooting at a synagogue. Um. And this guy has what was a Nazi before he joined the Marines. He shot on the Marines until we figured out what's going on. We have got to shut this down until we figured out what's going on. Yeah, and you've got Eric Rudolph, the guy he's carried out the Olympic Park bombings in nineties six.

Was was with the first Airborne Division. He was an air assault specialist. UM and he carried out the bombing of the Olympic Park in Atlanta, Georgia, and then went on the run for months. I think, Yeah, and he was a Nazi by the way, Oh it was. He was on the run for a long time. He all the squirrel and nuting he did in the woods, yes, uh. And by the way, he carried out a number of other bombings, including a bomb he carried out a bombing of an abortion clinic. He carried out the bombing of

a lesbian bar. We talked about this earlier this year on Yeah. We did part of one of our mini series we talked about this guy. We had we had we had a whole episode dedicated to him. I do want to briefly talk about some of the stuff happening in the Pacific Northwest as well, and how this ties in and how there is as opposed to some of the incidents that were like the incident in South Carolina.

Stuff in the Pacific Northwest, while happening previous to the North Carolina attack, does seem to be deliberate um and has There has been some interesting pieces of information that have come out in the past few days. So the electrical grid has been physically attacked at least six times

in Oregon and western Washington since mid November. Attackers used firearms and at least some of the incidents in both states, and some power customers in Oregon and Washington experienced at least brief service disruptions as a result of the attacks. Just two days before the North Carolina attacks, the FBI and Organs Tighten Fusion Center issued a memo that warned utilities about this about both these recent attacks and how

there could be more of them, uh, saying quote. Power companies in Oregon Washington have reported physical attacks on substations using hand tools, arson, firearms, and metal chains, possibly in response to an online call for attacks on critical infrastructure. Uh continuing to say that in recent attacks, criminal actors by passed security fences by cutting the fence links, lighting nearby fires, shooting equipment from a distance, or throwing objects

over the fence and on too. The equipment and the aim, according to memo is quote violent anti government criminal attack, which is kind of a catch all term that these people use for a whole bunch of kind of white supremacists affiliated accelerationist violence. It's kind of a silly term because these people really aren't anti government. They just they just want they're anti this government because they think this

government is too liberal. Um. But but yeah, so there was there was an attack on a substation in Clackumus County on Thanksgiving morning. The power company calls this a deliberate physical attack. Um. This is the one where two people cut through fences and use firearms to shoot up

and disabled numerous pieces of of equipment. A security specialist for the company wrote this kind of brief on it and and and has mentioned how that there are local people who are affiliated with you know, larger networks of extremist groups that have called for such attacks and have provided instructions on how to do these types of things UM and saying, quote, there's been a significant uptick in incidence of break ins related to copper and tool or

materials theft, but now we are dealing with quickly escalating incidents of sabotage. UM. So that's the kind of that that's that's the brief from the security security specialist who works at this power company. UM. Four days after that Thanksgiving morning attack, there was another incident at a Portland General Electric substation, also in the clack of this area. So these things happened pretty close to one another in the same county. Some of the same people were affected.

A few details on this one have been released UM, but the PG and E team said that, quote, our teams have assessed the damage and have begun to repair the impacted facilities. Knocking out the lights is it can be an end goal, right that everyone it's it's darkness. Everyone's inconvenience, and there's an idea that you know, making things worse will help fence sitters radicalized towards towards the

right and become acceleration as themselves. But the darkness, it's not its own end goal for some of these people, you know, in the the Campbella June cell in the Collins case, they specifically spelled out in some of their planning discussions that the darkness was stepped one. Once the lights were out, once infrastructure was damaged, the police were distracted, communications were down, people couldn't use their cell phones. They would use that period of chaos to carry out a

series of targeted assassinations. And that's not a new idea either. UM. I found a case from the nineties even UM this case from the late nineties, the North American Militia, It was a splinter group from the Michigan Militia Wolverines Randy Graham and Ken Carter went down. In this case, UM, they were reconning targets including power stations, TV stations, and military based federal buildings, and their plan was to knock out communications and power and use that period of chaos

to kill several federal judges and politicians. So this is a recurring theme. You know that this case was in the nineties, and then we have that recent case, the Collins case. Those guys haven't even been tried yet, UM, and the stated intention is to use that period of

chaos to do additional crimes of terrorism. And I mean there has been more incidents that definitely do seem to be intentional, Like beyond the ones in Oregon, there was also ones in western Washington, UM that that included setting the control houses on fire force entry and sabotage of intricate electrical control systems, causing short circuits by tossing chains over the overhead bus work, and a ballistic attack with

small caliber firearms. And so that's that's a lot of stuff going into uh of like like in terms of planning and preparation going into something that's happening. That's a perfect example. Yeah, And if you're, as a general rule, if you are encountering one of these stories and you're trying to determine should I put this in my head as something that is maybe part of something bigger or something that might be people fucking around? That's the kind of stuff to look for is like how much effort

went into it, how elaborate was it? Does it seem like planning was involved? I would say Another thing is like does it seem is it timed for something like Thanksgiving? Right?

Like it's not an accident that they picked Thanksgiving to attack a substation, because if you're trying to do something that's going to have an impact, doing it on a day like that where everybody's at home, people are and there's also a higher power draw in general, Like, there's a lot of reasons why someone would want to do that, but it all points towards this is something that's part of an organized set of actions, as opposed to the

normal thing of Americans attacking their own power infrastructure for no good reason. Yeah, which we love to do. Do you do you know? Do you know what else we we love to do? Robert consume goods and services Gars, that's right, we love we love hogs and our hero based Lasso King would say that's part of the problem. Hey, we're back, all right, Garrison, take us, Take us home, which hopefully is not Fort Bragg. No, yeah, yeah, this podcast is run by the USA. Talk Yeah hopefully hopefully

not so so. Yeah. The past year, we've seen federal authorities multiple times worn about these types of threats to critical infrastructure. There was a local bulletin posted in late November after the attacks in Oregon and Washington, UH saying that the targets of potential violence includes public gatherings, faith based institutions, l g B, t Q plus communities, UM schools, racial and religious minorities, government facilities and personnel, and US

critical infrastructure. So it's it's definitely, it's definitely something that are the people are talking about more as incidents have have do do seem to be getting more common. Um, now I'm gonna I'm gonna gonna use some of the research from a not an article, but I guess not quite a study like this. Uh, I don't know how

to describe it in an analysis piece. I guess from George Washington University's Program on Extremism entitled Mayhem a Murder and Misdirection Violent extremist attack plots against critical infrastructure in the United States. So since twenty nineteen, w spremacist attacks and plots against critical infrastructure. Uh, you do seem to have distinctly increased Between two White spermacis plots targeting energy

systems dramatically increased in their frequency. Thirteen individuals associated with the overall White spermacist movement were arrested and charged in federal court with planning attacks on the energy sector. Eleven of these attack planners were charged after the rise of eccelorationist ideology and doctrine during the past decade did likely fuel these increased attacks UM within the white from assist mill use that are targeting critical infrastructure and and the

energy sector in particular. So if if you look at the data from two if you look at ninety four cases of individuals who are alleged to have planned quote violent extremist attacks UH, fifty of those people identified as white supremacists, and thirty seven percent of those incidents involved

some level of planning UH, specifically planning attacks on critical infrastructure. Now, six of those sixteen white supremacist plotters had discernible tangible connections to named groups and organizations like the base Attamwafen Division and the National Socialist Movement. And but and fourteen out of the sixteen people were known participants in a greater kind of online network that connects various like cells or even just aesthetic styles common among the neo Nazis

accelerationist movement. So and one of the more kind of interesting data points is the number of white sermacist plots that are specifically focused on the energy sector relating to nuclear reactors, materials, UM with the waste sector and of

course power substations. UH. There's thirteen thirteen cases of individuals who reportedly planned to conduct attacks on a variety of energy infrastructure, from small assaults on local on local power lines to potentially devastating attacks on power grids or even nuclear facilities and UH and those represent eight seven percent of the white sermacist related cases in which critical infstructure

was targeted. So most of that is specifically on power grids like that's that is that is what these focus on. And the first case within this data point range of two UH dates back to seventeen when a former Florida National Guardsman and the founder of Adam Often Division was arrested in Florida and charged with UM, you know, a

lawful possession of FLOS advices and floser materials. UH. They one of one of one of this guy's roommates, who was also a member of Adam Often told told jurors that this guy intended to target a number of different locations for explosive attacks using this material, including a Jewish synagogue, power lines, and a new and a nearby nuclear reactor site. UM. And this guy in his apartment had had a propaganda and and book materials on the functioning nuclear reactors and

other power supply stuff. So like, you know, that's these types of things that people study on and then plan out to do. And what we're seeing more commonly now is of very intensive propaganda team putting together kind of manuals on how to do these types of things, both both like both for like to inspire you to do it, but also like instruction manuals and like here's here's where you should shoot. Here's like here's how to actually do it,

and it's it's there unfortunately designed quite well. And that's something that is newer that is a direct product of the types of aesthetically driven uh propaganda that has flourished on sites like Telegram, and they're they're getting quite good at making propaganda. It's not just it's not just you know, random random books strewn upon your apartment anymore. It's very well made documents on how online. So they're the three men who just pleaded guilty in February for their their

conspiracy to attack power facilities. Um one of those men, Jackson Saywall. In the the original complaint, it says, you know, um Cook had recruited his friends, say Well to join the cause. From the outset, Cook believed say walls graphic design skills could be an asset to the group's propaganda effort, so he was recruited to the cell because he was good at graphic design. Now I've read these manifestos, I would not say the graphic design is good, but it's

certainly better than sort of a cut and paste scene. Right. There's a clear digital design element here, um, and that's on this and they know that that's how they're going to get eyes on this stuff. I mean, Robert, we both read all those manifestos in the last couple of days.

They are certainly a step up. They are what they what they make me think of is when I first when I first got into reporting on extremism, it was because I went through every issue of like Isis magazine debat right after the BOTA Clon attacks and it's number one. Like there was when that Adam Waffan guy killed his roommates and he had converted to Islam and was like very much um into Isis. There was this like surprise from people who don't think a lot about this stuff.

But a lot of these guys had a lot of admiration for the way that ICE has put together their propaganda campaign, which included a lot of very detailed guides for how to do things like carry out rent vehicles and carry out vehicular attacks. Right like this is um, you know, we're this is the way terrorism works, and these guys are taking a little bit of a different tack.

But again not that like as as Molly pointed out, there were a number of this inspired attacks on power infrastructure just didn't get a ton of of of play. But like, none of this is like, all of this is is in line with the trends that we have seen globally in the way in which insurgent movements function. And I think you know this well produced easily spread propaganda and these online networks that they created to spread

this propaganda. I mean that we're not just you know, we have these cases of these organized cells that got caught, but it's not just organized cells that have the capacity to carry out these attacks, because any idiot in the Telegram group can open that manifesto with the detailed instructions for carrying out an identical attacked disseminates and becomes contagious there's this, there's this people who talk about a lot online now about stochastic terrorism, and some of us here

might be a little bit to blame to that, but a lot of times they're they're getting it wrong. Um, because what's what what these Nazis are doing. This is inspirational terrorism, which has been a thing for as long as terrorism has existed. When people under I mean, that's why they have their calendar of Saints, you know, yeah, exactly.

And there's a lot of debate about, like whendy U stochastic terrorism, but kind of in my mind, when I tend to think it's appropriate is when the attempt is to kind of use the way algorithms on various sights on the Internet work to spread propaganda that's meant to cause that's meant to inspire attacks, because that is it's a type of inspirational terrorism. But it's it's it's clearly a new evolution of it because of its reliance on those networks. But this is again we're getting into the weeds.

Is there anything else you wanted to kind of get into here, Garrison? I mean no, I kind of I kind of wanted to wrap up by talking about some of the terrogram stuff. So I think we we kind of we kind of hit on a lot of stuff that I that I wanted to mention. I mean, in twenty nineteen, two years after that first uh that that that that first attack of twenty seventeen, two years later uh bew Maryman was was arrested for planning to blow up power grid substations. He was member of Adam Offen Um.

And we already are we already talked about we already talked about the two other kind of main instance that are well known of from and then stuff that is that that just got um uh there was there was court cases as recently February two. We also mentioned in terms of the their their plans to take out power stations to then carry out assassinations. So those are the

two other instants that I wanted to mention um. But yeah, I mean it's I think the the other kind of aesthetic similarity I think is that I think we actually are seeing some of the some of the recent telegram stuff also take cues from not only like isis and is not terrorism, but also some of the types of anarchist writing that have that have has gotten more popular since you know, uh, the left type stuff like where I think we're seeing some of some of the aesthetic

stylings feels very reminiscent of like early crime think, um, some of it, some of it is is similar to things around um the types of like eco sabotage manuals that that were that were very popular in the nineties and two thousands. Um. You know, some of the techniques are very similar because both eco terrorists and uh excelration accelerationist nazis both find value and attacking things like powers and powers, power substations, UM, or you know, burning down

five G towers. That's a big emphasis of this recent like almost three hundred page manifesto, and in instruction manuals they focus a lot on how, you know, in early regular people felt inspired to burn down five G towers, people who are not otherwise extremists, and how how do we get people who are regular people to get to that point where they're willing to damage public infrastructure. And that's kind of a lot what a lot of what that three hundred page kind of manifesto slash manual tries

to talk about. Mum. It's uh, it's if we want to end on on a hopeful. Note. I have at least sort of a small bright spot for us UM. It's in the original UM affidavit for the search warrant into Liam Collins, the head of the Camp Lejune cell Um, so that a regional affidavit for the search warrant um in his case. The FBI agent writing the affidavit says that they first started looking into Collins because he was

docked in the Iron March leagues. So they were we were reading those dockses and they said, oh wow, a marine who's a Nazi. We should talk to him. So, you know, when doing this work in identifying these people from these leagues and sort of the slog of picking through like maybe this guy's a fucking nobody, but we will identify them so their communities can keep an eye on them. That work matters. That work made it into Newsweek,

and it made it to the FBI. It's a weird filter system, but eventually this guy got caught before he committed a massive nationwide active terror. So keep doxy Nazis and it works. In a similar incident, there was an officer of the Lafayette Police Department that joined I believe this this exact same terrorist cell that was then Doc he was he was he was docked by anti fascists and then he turned and snitched on his fellow Nazis. UM. So the investigation opened because of the docks and they've

got a powerful cooperating witness because of another docks. It makes them nervous if eyes are on them, they can't conduct covert operations. So keep docs in your local Nazis like it can it can literally be like in terms of these cells planning to do assassinations of people, it can actually save people's lives if these people are actually serious and are willing to carry out their plans that they are you know, actively training for actively preparing materials

for UM. This type of work is is some of the most solid anti fascist research that people of that people have done. It absolutely saved lives. Yeah, I've no doubt about that. Will continue to save lives. So Docs Nazis. And you know, if if you're drunk out in the woods and one of your buddies says, hey, why don't we shoot a power substation, don't do it. Just can stop signs. It's the America. Stop signs. Expired fire extinguishers,

those are fun to shoot. Let me all of the ant people turn off this podcast in a and the and then have a moral crisis. So yeah, uh to the anti cit people who have built a radio out of sticks, I realized that podcasts don't come out through the radio. Tragic anyway the episode, so you think, hi everyone, it's James. I just wanted to explain why you're only going to hear my voice in the first episode, but you're going to hear Garrison any other episodes as well.

And that's because I would to Tonatius Unicorn Ranch twice, once during the period that we're going to call the siege, and once again in the summer. And so the part that only I experienced only I'm going to talk about. We felt that was the most honest way to do it. I hope you enjoy it. I have worked on this for a very long time. Hard scrabbled pass in southern

Colorado in the winter. It's not where you'd expect to start a story that's fundamentally about the Internet, but it's where a four wheels lit a rental car in the spring of If you remember, back then, Biden had just been inaugurated, some chads had stormed the Capitol, and vaccines were gradually being administered across the country less Remarkably frontier air lines are taken forever to find my damn bag, and I was trying to get there before dark, about

a week before. It's in a tweet, I foughtow this Anatis Unicorn ranch because I grew up as a farm kid who didn't really slide quite as easily as others did into the super matcho stuff, and I certainly didn't slide anywhere near conservative politics. What the ranches were doing building a queer haven and anarchistyle pack of farming co op inspired me. I've been missing country life a lot during the pandemic, and they wanted to get out onto the ranch. But that wasn't really why I was driving

an appropriate rittle car through a white out. I was doing that because I've seen this tweet, and that tweet said the ranches under attack and they needed help. That Tenacious Unicorn ranches under attack by local biggots and militia. They have threatened violence publicly to us and those that help or associate with us. They have encroached on our property armed at night, with the intent to harm those of us that live here. We need help. That's where

this story starts for me. It's where the story starts for a few characters you're going to hear this week, but it's not where the story really starts. It starts with Penelope log we'll call Penny, working at a big box store and dealing with increasing transphobia both online and in person in the early Trump era. Penny's a veteran and a country girl, and she was looking to get out of the city along with her partner's Canton Gin. She decided to rent some land, set up founding rescued

out Pakis. So we started in Livermore, Colorado, which is on the whole entire other side of the state. UM. And it really was a reaction to what was happening to the queer community UM, not only locally, but kind of what we were seeing nationally. Went about two years into the Trump presidency, where things were just getting really bleak and dire for the majority of people that we

hung out with. UM. We we were originally going to try to like just make a make a bus that was roadworthy and we could live in and just kind of be nomadic, but we couldn't really on board and help other people that way, Like that was really just like it would have been hard to have the cats we have. We also had like even at that point we had like four cats, so it was or two three cats whatever at the time, but still too many um, yeah,

dog and whatever. So so we uh so I had always wanted to do a homestead, and I grew up farming and ranching, so it was very natural for me. UM and so we found a ranch that we could rent and livermore. UM and knee cat and gen Um just kind of set out to start somewhere. So I was a haven for career people, UM, but also a home for us. You know. It turned out the United States didn't something given alt pack of crisis. The animals were once extremely fashionable, and hurts popped up over the

West in the nineties. Now that generation about pacer ranches are aging out of the hard physical labor that makes about every day on a ranch, and there are packers are often left to their own devices. The unicorns, as the people in the valley called them, adopt these al packers, which are often neglected, and care for them. They re feed them slowly so they won't die from the blow that comes from refeeding too fast and they sell their

fiber as yah. Gradually, with a ton of hard work and a growing community, they built their ranch into a sustainable operation. But as the herd grew and their unfortunate rental agreement became clearer, they decided they needed a different ranch, and so they moved across the state to Westcliffe. And it was a rented ranch that we were trying to

rent to own. We thought we were renting their own actually um, and then that road got pulled out from underneath us, like they just they just when we went to purchase it, they were just like, no, you haven't been renting, going, you've just been renting. And we were in an additional hundred thousand dollars. So it was like, yeah, we had to move right as COVID was getting bad in America, so like March of that was fun. Yeah, it was. It was the worst and best move all

at the same time. Because the roads were fucking empty, like if quarantine was in full effects, so the roads were empty. So we were traveling with trailers full of animals on empty roads. And then after like the restrictions lightened and we got used to what like the normal traffic flow was we were like, fuck this like but it was cool, like having everything shut down, we couldn't like the big problem was we couldn't rent anything because

every rental place had shut down. And so the really it was like the beginnings of like the community for for us, right, it was like we t have friends and you know, comrades to how social media. Yeah, and everybody really stepped up and helped with that move. So it was it was cool. West Coasts where I met them. It's a beautiful town in the sound grade to Christo's. In the summer, it's full of tourists taking weekend trip to the mountains and eating ice cream. And in the

winter it's quiet, snow covered, beautiful and absolutely freezing. In March, I drive through the town in the afternoon, and what I figured was an inconspicuous man everyone else who visited the ranch that month and picked up a tail. Aside from a few strange looks, I think I got through, okay. I took a long, lonely winding road through the valley and then turned down a dirt road towards the ranch. Penny met me at the gate in a plate carrier with it rifle we briefly hugged, and then I quickly

parked my car outside. They don't that the grown queer community at the ranch called home. It was a profoundly strange experience. Inside the house was full of warmth, conversation, and laughter, people enjoying each other's company and enjoying being out of the biting wind and snow. Outside was cold. We wore plate carriers, and the ranches carried a long guns. I carried a camera, a go pro and a kniffac

and then dressed in battle rattle. We broke the eyes on the art pack of drinking tanks and tried to stop the recently adopted animals from re feeding too quickly. I walked and talked with Penny and j another of the unicorns whose story will get to you later, about the stress that the increasing threats to them had had on them. But first we met the animals. We have sheeps,

we have goats, We have of course alpaca. We have ducks and chickens um day to days, five pyrenees which are life start guardian dogs, and a couple of blue heelers rescues Um and my dog Starbuck, and oh yeah, eight cats. Um, But the vast, vast majority are the alpacas. Yeah, it might sound a dilic, and in many ways it is a dilic, but the work on the ranch never stops, and sick al packa need tending to almost constantly, even during the siege, which we will get too soon, I promise.

There was a lot that volunteers could help with, but animal husbandry wasn't on the list. So even after long night's patrolling their ranch, cold and afraid, Penny j often had to take it. In terms of looking after old animals with blow let's, they labored to breathe. Here's one that I recorded, Um, can you set that down and help me stand her up, because we're just gonna see if we can get her to walk? All right, if you'll run it? Okay, I don't know, I don't know. Yeh,

there you go, there you go, there you go. You all right. My felts are perfect good. Next up, they can set it in there. You gotta walk, baby, that's part of this. I know. That's part of this though. Okay, okay, okay, oh baby, I can't do that. It's all right, love, it's sorry. M hmm. Well, if you're not gonna walk, my life. I gotta do this. I know it hurts. Yeah, Okay, let's get crush. Yeah it's okay, it's there. That's a good burb. Sounded like there was a little bit more movement. Yeah.

I'm getting the feeling that they probably didn't even start asking for help until we guns thought they heard was actually dying in the old field. The story about how we got from a thriving and happy ranch community built on the anarchist principle of mutual aid and solidarity, to what the Unicorns called the siege. If this story it's about lies, bigotry, and the Internet, but it's hard to think about those things too much of the ranch because in the two trips I've taken and I felt nothing

but incredible sense of love, solidarity, and supportive community. If you've engage with the story of the ranch at all preppt following Tenaci's Unicorn Ranch online, it's probably because of the siege. But I don't want this to be storied. It's just about guns, bigger tree, and community defense. I also wanted to be a story about how long before the siege began, the community at the Anais Unicorn Ranch realized that nobody was coming to save them, and so

they decided to save themselves. They were they want to kill us, and yeah, but when we like call it out, you know, I, hey, stop killing us, not even like fuck you, just hey, like, did you just like lay off the whole killing us thing? You fucking fucking fund happy, like fucking unsympathetic victim screaming training for all? Right, So now no you can't stop killing that good? Maybe time

to get guns now. The day I slip slid my way across hard scrabbled past in my not so trusty nous and our mirror with the same day that the gunman walked into a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado and killed ten people with an a R pistol, my social media feed was filled with the sadly all two common reactions to these, all two common mass murders that happened in this country. But the next day I saw people flooding gun shops in the fear that the state would begin

enforcing tot to gun control laws. It didn't. As I edit this draft, another young man with another gun has walked into a gay bar in Colorado Springs, about an hour from the ranch. It's an intensely conservative city. The host focus on the family. You'll know by now that the club queue shooting result in the death of five people,

including two trans people, and injured twenty one more. I'll be honest with you, it felt a bit weird driving through Colorado to write a story about guns was broadly positive, and in a sense it still does today. But the reason this story about guns is positive really has very little to do with guns and everything to do with people. It's really a surly about solidarity what it is about a R fifteen, But some people will never get part

of the A R fifteen enough to see that. In case you missed it or you caught one of the reports at the time that seemed to skim over the fact that the rant is around. We should give an account of the siege up top here so you understand what happened. Understanding why it happened, that's another episode. So

for now, just to understand. That's some boomer's log into their social media and the queer elimination rhetoric we've reported so much about overlapped with their small community in a valley in the sun readA Cristo Mountains, and this was a result. Things started as they often do these days online with a throwaway comment about a parade in town. The girls didn't really know that they've moved into the reddest County, Colorado. At a time, Lauren Bobot was that

congress person. But soon they started to get an idea of what some people, pretty small minority of people, if it turned down, I thought about them. So it started on Facebook, like honestly, like we started seeing more comments and people getting weird about it, and then there was literally to this day, I will still say it was a fascist fucking parade you're talking about July they had they did a fascism, like the local fascist did a fascism.

And we observed this by accident because we were like, oh, parade, that doesn't sound interesting, But we did go into town to get some coffee and ran smack into a fascist parade and and fascist and what what sort of like fascist in the most like like direct way that there was Christian nationalist flags three percent of flags, Confederate flags carried by armed white people screaming about the government and the libs and the queers. Like it was a they

did a fashion. In the photos, there's that one guy with a shirt that says I know things and own guns or something like that and shooting and shoot things, um and so like it was a overtly hard right sponsored parade that was supposed to be like hard like that, Like it was like set up as a protest because of the COVID restrictions, they weren't letting people have a parade, and this was their answer to that. Um and so really all we did was call that out on Twitter.

We're like, wow, Like, there's a fashionst parade in West Clifton. We'll come back to this parade next episode. It's organized by a local newspaper, which is, to be perfectly frank, the most batchit, crazy, boom and brain worm thing I've ever seen in print. It was an open carry event when the issues from across the US come to open carry unloaded guns for reasons that we can really pinned down. Soon. The unicorns calling out the parade on Twitter set keyboard

fingers clicking. I've said fingers here, but these people give up a distinct single finger typing vibe if I'm honest. We started. The first thing that we noticed was the tails. We started getting tailed from points that everybody that we were very public about frequenting like Paragrine Coffee and Chappie's. We started getting picking up tails uh from those points routinely. Um and that. So like people like following you yeah, yeah, not very covertly in the same three vehicles. And they

wouldn't just follow us anyone that they figured out knew us. Yes, anybody that announced on any social media platform that they were coming to see us, they would then follow. And then it really got it became super into the physical world when nine News, well nine News did a piece on us in which the Sheriff's department came up because

they were mass reporting us for animal abuse. A lot of the harassment came from a website you're probably familiar with now, but maybe you wouldn't have been back then. It might have been farms and locals. You don't have to say their names. Yeah, if we could blank out. But it's one of those things where like sis, people don't even know that Kwie Farms exists and more people need to fucking now because it's it's it's ridiculous. We've

done a couple of episodes. I don't want to give them attention, but like I don't know, I don't know whatever you think is best. Yeah, it's an entire forum dedicated to harassing trans people that get any sort of popularity, ruining their lives as best they can, with the stated goal of making trans people kill themselves. And it's there's a lot of members like like like like notable turfs are part of it, like like like everyone has found this website now and people need to know it at

least existed. That it's a truly awful cesspool of They've been all of our time obsessing over that. It seems like it's worth naming them, but please save yourself the time and don't click over there. It's nothing good. Soon things got more real local news your porter who covered the ranch, you've got apostle with a white powder in it. That powder wasn't deadly, but it was a real threat.

Soon that threat came to the ranch, the nine news reporter thing happened, and then we started getting like warnings from people that were monitoring chat rooms, like they were like, oh, hey, like the chatter about y'all has skyrocketed, and like it is blatant, like people making plans to burn your home down and kill you, like, and locals started warning us that like Hey, this has happened before. You gotta get ready.

This is real. Don't have people yeah, like, don't be PREDENSI about this, Like we're being serious, And so me and Jay started. For about two weeks, we were walking patrols around the perimeter. The unicorns were afraid, so they took steps to defend themselves. Lots of the people that the ranch, like Jen and Cat you can hear in this interview, didn't want to carry guns. Penny and j had some military experience and they knew how to use

and carry guns. So every night they set out walking the perimeter to watch for intruders on their property line patrols. They realized that there were people out there at the night looking back at them. That night is when me and J came back from that and put out a very whole heartfelt cry on Twitter like we don't know what the funk to do. We're terrified and any help would be amazing. They were armed at this point, but

they weren't ready for a gunfight. That's a very different thing. Sadly, though, the gunfight they weren't ready for wasn't going to wait until they were yeah armed, um rudimentally armed by the way, like Jay had a hunting rifle, no, a shotgun at that point, Um and I had my springfield are uh and so we scared them off, but like that made it like clear and present for us. And so we

put a heartfelt call out onto Twitter. Um and although was up here like the next day and caught people on the property that night, like it was armed people on the property, multiple people. Altho arrived the next day, spread on by that same tweet. I'd see this isn't his voice, but they are his words. We wouldn't say too much about him other than that he has significant experience with this kind of thing, and he spent his own time and money to drive across the west to

help some queer folks he'd never met. He just wanted to raise our package, and he left the funk alone. I saw a post on Twitter from someone else boasting the original Tenacious Unicorn ranch plea for help. I reached out to them, and after some back and forth and letting them vet me, we agreed I would drive down to help them out. I took a little time to do some map studies of the area and confirm some

suspicions about local law enforcement. The sheriff at the time had really spoken at and supported oathkeepers rallies as a keynote speaker, alongside Stewart Roads, as well as other prominent oath keepers and three per centers. The cops haven't ever been much of an option in keeping marginals people safe, but this was on a whole other level. I called some people to tell them I was heading to its

nacious Unicorn ranch for accountability's sake. At the time, I was binging an unhealthy amount of letter Kenny, and when one of them asked me why I was driving six to seven hours to help total strangers, the first thing I thought was when a friend asked for help, you help them all. They gave us his account of what happens again for everyone's safety, were not going to use his voice. But that night he patrolled the perimeter, often nearly being run off the road on the way to

the ranch. He said, at first, when he saw the tweets, he thought Penny and j were of reacting, But after that tale, and after what happened that night, he knew something very strange was going on. So on arrival at the hard Pack road off the highway, there were two cars on the other side of the highway from the intersection, backed in with their headlights off. There's an old Durango and a truck that I couldn't make the model of

on the other side of that Durrango. Once I turned down the road, probably two yards after turning, I looked back and saw one of them turn on their headlights and started gaining on me until they were tailgating. I started to slow and pull over to see if they would pass, and they slowed and stuck with me. I had a suspicion about the two cars initially, and this

was confirmation. I can't really say how fast we started going, but I know it was significant enough that I was starting to oversteer and lose traction on the back end of my car. On turns, I knew Penny and the rest were waiting at the property gate, so I signaled Penny to say, Hey, I got a tail keep the gate locked. You'll see me driving by. Tell me what vehicle is following me. The vehicle slowed down as we approached the gate, so it appeared they may have been

anticipating me to do the same. Once I passed the gate, they continued to follow it. Turns out it was the Drangle, which I later found out had been doing drive byes of the property of the past couple of days. The Durranga quickly realized what all those doing and pursued him postive ro further down that snowy dot. Right after I passed the ranch, I accelerated a little more to create some distance and drove to a spot that I had seen the map on the way down that looked like

I could effectively turn around without extra maneuvering. As I turned around, they had closed the gap and started to slow. Once they were pulling up next to me, I turned my high loom and carry light on them to at least distorient or over stimulate them with bright white light and try to catch faces. The windows had a dark tent, so it was not feasible. My other goal was trying to convey I see you and I have the advantage

without actually visually threatening them. The driver had been rolling their window down until I put that light in the window, then immediately stopped and rolled it back up. At that point, it was apparently enough to make them decide it wasn't worth it and take off. I legally carry a side arm with me the majority of the time and had it on me. I had my hand on it, but

didn't feel the need to draw during that encounter. In the two minutes since he turned off the hard top, does ideas about what he was in for had pivoted almost as fast as his card did not put out earlier on. While driving to the ranch from my house, I had the thought, you know, this is probably bullshit and a bit of an overreaction on their part, So maybe at least I can deescalate some of their anxiety and give them some rest. This will probably just be

a lot of nothing. Clearly I was mistaken, and after that encounter my mind was very much re oriented to the present reality. Driving through the gate, I had to prepare myself to the new possibility of actual exigency, and I thought, oh shit, there's something to this well pitter pattern. Motherfucker's I'll just send a message to Penny saying that he was free of his tail, and she opened up

the gate quickly. He drove up the same dirt road I did a few days later to the dome who had a scared and sleep deprived unicorns were hiding from the code and from the same people who had just tailed him down the Debt road. Once at the house, we made introductions and I explained that a trusted source had boosted their call for help and I was willing to drive over to see what, if anything, I could

do to offer them in the form of assistance. They gave me situational awareness of the property, who lived there, et cetera. Then went over what had been happening up until my arrival. The local harassment people following them and doing drive byes of their property, the Kiwi farms threats

of quote burning them out of their home. They had also mentioned there was a probing incident a couple of nights before that had really set them off when they caught another unknown individual probing their fence on the southern side of the ranch. They detailed how they hadn't slept for almost forty eight hours since that incident, which had prompted their call for help. I could tell they were just done mentally, emotionally, physically, but still keeping it together.

So I said something to the effect of you've done a great job, go get some rest. I'll stay up and take the watch. That was around nine pm. The crew went to get some deserved rest and I got ready to go out. Before stepping back outside, I had to ask myself what the actual funk is going on? I walked outside, grabbed my rifle and plates, put on some extra layers of warm clothes, and got ready for

what turned out to be a long night. Quickly as a unicorn slept, I would have got to work making a plan to keep the property and the people they're safe. Having never been on the property, I went ahead and, to the best of my ability in the dark, started a domaining distances high low ground, points of opportunity, weakness, cover concealment, hazards, and any other unclear backdrops. Like the other residences that I had needed to be aware of

that all came into play later. Based off what I found my best guesses, I started working at patrol on foot, covering the areas I thought were vulnerable and most likely for incursion. The roadside seemed like the most likely point of opportunity for them since there was no barbed wire and a single low wire fence being the only barrier to entry on the property. Pretty quickly things go weight.

At around I heard the first vehicle pass by. There was decent moonlight at the time, and I could see that it matched the shape and size of the Durango. They were driving by with their lights off, slow rolling and had made a stop about halfway down the property line on the roadway. They repeated this multiple times, so this kind of confirmed my theory they would go for

the easiest point of access off the roadway. The drive bys continued sporadically, and twice from high point on property, I watched them turn their headlights back on, heading towards the highway and stop on the hard pack, where another

vehicle could be seen sitting with its headlights on. Although it is pretty experience in this scenario, so it's pool another of the defenders who came a few days later, And it's not my first radio with these things either, But that doesn't mean it wasn't scary for all of us, but especially for Adah arrived first and was patrolling a small farm he'd never seen, facing attacks from an unknown

number of armed assailants. I can't remember how many times I wish I had my m v g's with me for better situational awareness, but they have been sent off for repairs, so I relied heavily on the moonlight which there was a decent amount of not ideal doing a foot patrol on your own and the dark with an unknown number of people. Multiple times I thought I should get one of them up. There's way more ground than

I can safely cover. I don't know the terrain well enough, and doing this alone is fucking dumb if this turns bad. But of course I ignored that intuition and told myself, Okay, I'm overthinking this right now. These dudes are just trying to funk with the queers, and this is purely intimidation. I'm just gonna keep working the vulnerable areas, watch them play their dumb bulsh ship games, and let the tenacious Unicorn ranch folks rest. Besides, at the time, I didn't

know the Nacus Unicorn ranch folks before that night. While they did great with what they had available to them, I had no idea how they would respond and a ship hit the fan situation, what their personal capabilities were, if they could be relied on for team movements, and didn't want to risk relying on someone running on fumes, so I said, fuck it, it'll be fine. His fears,

as it turned out, were more than justified. A little before midnight cloud cover came in while I was walking along the west fence line and saw what I assumed was a dim flashlight or a cell phone light flash about halfway along the north fence line by the road, and at fifty to twenty seconds later another flash, making me think that they were moving west towards the ranch gate.

It was the first time I noticed anyone on foot, so I started slowly working my way down quietly to see if I could get closer for a good visual on who it was walking the roadway. Since the moonlight went away, I stopped about forty or so yards from the gate and squatted download or reduced my profile and just watch. After about ten minutes, I heard quiet voices and then a very distinct from the man that appeared and turned to call out after he activated the gate's

motion sensing light. I remember I had to stop myself from laughing from them not only having such shitty discipline, but also at what was a perfectly comical chud name. I stood up and watched another dude come out of the dark into the light of the ranch gate, who very much had the build of an earl. The first guy began lifting and pulling at the gate lock and chain while Earl was trying to cover the most sensing light.

They stood at the gate and I could hear them whispering for about a minute before I got annoyed at just how dumb they were and how they didn't notice me creeping closer to them while they were doing all this. Finally, from around fifteen yards, I went ahead and lit up the two males on my flashlight, who both had their faces covered in no visible weapons and a fairly sarcastic voice. I said something to the effect of, Hey, what are

you idiots doing? Stop playing with the gate. Go away it would I didn't really feel I had much recourse other than to give a verbal warning at that point, because they were still technically not on the branch property and they had not made any visible attempts to trespass or do any property damage. Both of them ran off in the most awkward, non athletic way you could think of. I didn't see anyone else in the area, so I approached the road to watch them jump into a car

and drive off. I kind of laughed at myself and remember saying out loud, cut, you guys are impressively stupid. Okay, they're probing the property. Now I realized these guys weren't working at a higher operational capability. I also felt a little more comfortable that even though I didn't have my n VGs to work in the dark environment, they didn't either.

After staying out for another thirty minutes to make sure they were taking a break, I went back inside to warm up for a few minutes, get some food, and change my socks. After it seemed they had maybe gone and reconvened after they got caught trying to tamper with the gate, I turned off the lights inside the house that were visible from the road so I wouldn't be visible, and also just to see if that might make someone tempted to believe that the nation's unicorn ranch folks had

turned in for the night. Things were quiet for the next hour or so. While out walking close to the east fence line toward the road, I remember a fox letting out a scream from less than a hundred feet away from me that honestly was more startlingly all the other events in the night up until then. If you haven't heard of fox screaming, it does indeed sound like someone being murdered in the most brutal way possible. I had a fox, probably the same fox a few nights

later on the ranch. Even in the midst of the siege, it was still a working ranch, and so as well of protecting people from violence, the ranches and they're pretty and mountain dogs also had to make sure they were protecting the chickens from foxes. Sadly, though foxes weren't the only business that night. A few hours later, a much more serious threat emerged. The night continued to be quiet for the next while, and I decided to move along

the east side of the property line. The cloud cover broke around two fifteen and I could see some movement and hear low voices again. I got low and held my position since it was fairly safe. It could make out two figures walking towards me inside the property boundary. I waited until they were about thirty or so yards away, and I was pretty sure there were no others working flanks before using my rifle light to begin the process of p I d and figuring out if they were armed.

As soon as I saw them, I noticed they were both armed, one with an a r with no op X and the other with an m one a with optical on it. I realized that while I had the high ground, I was not comfortable with the backdrops due to the house across the road potentially being in line with my firing position, and started shifting to a safer spot in case the confrontation escalated into an engagement. I called out my first command, while moving to a better

position to their left side. You are trespassing on private property. Slowly place your weapons on the ground and show me your hands. Do it now. The two men frozen place but did not comply, and I recognized in that moment that these were two different men than who I had seen earlier. I called out again, drop your weapons or I will fire on you. Do it now. As soon as I finished that sentence, they both looked at each other with their rifles and low ready turned to the

right and ran. I pursued them so that I wouldn't lose the advantage I had, and to make sure there was no way they can make it up hill towards the house or get into a more advantageous firing position if they decided to turn on me. While parallel to them, so I could keep on the uphill side, I called out,

stop and place your weapons on the ground. Realizing there might be others out there watching my light move, I turned it off so I wasn't such an obvious target and made short bursts of the two men fleeings that I could maintain a visual on them. It wasn't an ideal way to handle it, but this was all an

incredibly unideal situation to begin with. After sustaining a fast paced run over uneven terrain and somehow not falling on my face, I realized we were moving toward the fence line and quickly looked around with my light to make sure no one else was waiting for them and also armed. At that point, I turned my light back on them, and they both pivoted directly to the fence, since we were still some distance from the gate, where it appeared they were heading toward. The first one with the m

one A pushed the fence down and hopped over. The second one panicked and with both hands tossed his a R across the small ditch on the other side of the fence, and I watched it fly halfway across the road While he struggled over the fence. He scurried over and kicked his rifle across the road before picking it up, and disappeared with the other mail into the small ravine

on the other side. I realized I was disadvantaged where I was located and repositioned to a small rocky mountain nearby so that I could at least get prone and have some cover if they decided to fire on me. I laid there and recovered my breath for a minute or so, watching to see if anyone else was out there, and then moved toward the house to make sure there weren't other incursions I may have missed while occupied with the other two who disappeared after trying and failing for

a second time. It seems that the local biggots took a break for the evening, but out on the unicorns couldn't. That was it for the rest of the night. I did go back down and find their entry point, where the fence had been newly damaged and bent inward, and tracks leading over the patchy snow from the roadway. Then I walked back to their egress point where the fence had been bent outward. Everything that occurred that night was clearly a hostile incursion, and they demonstrated intent to harm

others on their own property. The only reason that didn't happen is because we were armed and prepared. I think they realized at that point that the ranch was not a soft target, and the occupants these men painted as weak were in fact hard people willing to protect themselves and stand up against their aggression. More importantly, the residents of the Tenacious Unicorn Ranch just wanted to be left the funk alone. It was a couple of days after Although had its run with the locals when I arrived,

if one was on edge. If where we went, it was with guns. So I remember there was a point when I was here, which was like a week or so after the Aldo run, those guys off that like we were going out somewhere, and so folks like, well, can someone who is comfortable using a gun stay behind? Yeah, that's what it was at, Like, yeah, yeah, it was because not all of us like want to or can Like I can't, I'm too scared of guns. Like I

recognize that they're very important. I'm glad I am surrounded by people who can like defend me, but um, and I think that's important to allow space for that too. Yeah, what kind of saying there is really important, not just for this story, but for folks listening to this and thinking, oh funk, I need to get guns. If you want to get guns, go ahead and get some if you can safely and legally. But what you need is community. Everyone at the Ranch works hard every day to keep

their project going. Sometimes that's with a gun, most of the time it's with a sack of crunchy al pack of food, or sometimes with a keyboard. The community that sustains the Ranch is much bigger than the people on the ground, and it's a great illustration of the power of solidarity to sustain a project, which, in times like today, is the world a really needs today. Hundreds of queer people visit the ranch every year for hundreds of different reasons.

CAT takes care of the ranches visitors a monitor social media gen helps administer a Patreon account for the ranch, complete with daily alpaca photos and updates on events. When I arrived at the ranch in it became pretty clear that I wasn't the only one who'd seen the tweet Paul Now the both have backgrounds in combat arms, both of him before it was they now I don't think

we're a great idea. Both of them were waiting to use skills of State gave them to protect people who to state wouldn't Paul like Caldo and I came because of a tweet. I saw Aldo tweet like a stop sign or something, and it said, you know, a few years ago, I never would imagined being on like a transgender anarchist alpaca farm, but here I am, and I think I d med him or something. I was like,

what the funk are you talking about? And uh, we ended up signal chatting and he explained what was happening and what had happened the day he was there, or one of the days he was there, and I was like, oh wow, that sounds super fucked up. Hey, I'm gonna book a flight. Before they left, they picked up another tail. We went into Westcliffe, the closest town, for something, I think,

just to the gas station. And when we when we came back down at the query down by the airport, which is like three or four miles down the road towards the town, two to three vehicles pulled out and started following us, and one of them pulled down the road the ranches on and we we just drove straight and then they followed us, and we turned around two or three roads down, and then the third vehicle that had been waiting now was waiting for us to come

back and pull in, so like they were trying very hard to tail anyone and get like identified. When I arrived, Paul and I slept in the guard trailer. Well, I slept, Paul stayed up all night walking patrols and keeping it on the fence line. If you're familiar with Hayduke and Edward Abby's echo anarchist novel The Monkey Ranch Gang, that's a pretty good way to envision Pool, albeit without the misogyny and racism that makes it pretty hard to have

any respect for that bookoys author. Through Out the night, I check in on Paul. It wasn't a large trailer, and when I did, I looked through his night vision at the strange movement in the fields around the ranch. People seemed to huddle behind a pickup and they used

a headlight to try and blind us. Now vision doesn't really work that way anymore, but they moved around throughout the night thinking that we couldn't see them, staging in different areas on the ridge, above us with the commanding field of view and presumably a field of fire as well. We assume they were trying to watch us as we sat there watching them. It was actually pretty fascinating. Um So a house that happens to be visible from the or another property that's visible from from the hilltop of

the ranch was on here. Like every evening. It would start to get dark out and then like fifteen or twenty cars would show up. Oh yeah, it was like, which has never happened since yeahs, like fifteen twenty cars would show up, and um, I can't remember what precipitated it. But the second night I was here, Oh, I know what it was. Somebody had walked their dog and I happened to kind of meet them down by the gate

because they were walking up the road. It was like two o'clock in the morning during a blizzard, and I was like, this is very unusual. So I met them down there, and um, I happened to have like night vision gear and they it was obviously like from them because from that point on they would actually point vehicles at the ranch with their headlights on the entire night. From some properties that are closer to the highway, which

like is semi effective. It makes this bloom for fifteen ft around that vehicle, but then everything else you can just see, so it didn't matter. Inside the house, it got harder and harder to move over the course. In the next few days, a support came flooding in. There was sounding the rounds of ammunition plate carriers, plates, the kind of stop bullets, and boxes the first aid supplies.

One day Paul Knight set around staging first aid kits, unwrapping and preparing the products to make them Easia to Use. People messaged every day volunteering to help, and we looked them up using some background check websites they often use to work to check that they weren't to trying to infiltrate their ranch. The amount of support that we've seen is largely absurd, Like I would have never guess that,

Like people would have come out. It's hard for us. Yeah, they must be nice to know that, Like everybody fucking wants you to succeed, right, yeah, Like it gives us through, Like you can't troll me. Yeah, no, there are no haters that can get to us because of how much support that we know is out there, not only locally but internationally, like you're nationally, we have people from all over the world that have taken a moment to be like what can I do? Like what do you need

right now? Like that is just like you can't roll that out of me. There is nothing you can say that and be like yeah, but also I've got twelve people who would kill you for me, so I don't know. The Ranch became something of a course celebration. The arm left, the outpouring of support was incredible. In March one, we all probably felt a little bit helpless. A summer of uprising and VAULT had yielded a new geriatric white dude

in charge. COVID was still raging, and the cops had shown less anger at thousands of church storm in Congress than they did at kids holding Black Lives Matter platts in the street. In a time when it was difficult to feel powerful, the Ranch openly defying attempts to scare them out of the valley gave people a sense of success and they were more than willing to show up

and help. So, yeah, I want to talk about that because you guys attempted to basically stuck up on far around at the time in American history when that may have been hardest and most expensive, And what sort of got you through was a lot odd of people from all over the Internet, sharing from all over the world, like it was literally all over the world. Any fascist organizations, Yeah,

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

the ranch began, the unicorns knew they were coming. They knew because people told them, and people told them because they cared about them and wanted them to be safe. They cared about them because from the outset, the unicorns had made themselves an important part of their community. When the County Star recycling waste it could be recycled, the

vehiclen steppedop and volunteered to do it themselves. On my first trip, I joined Penny and Ja for the long drive into Canyon City with a rickety horse trailer full of old beer cans and a truck with a struggling transmission. The money they get paid to recycle the cans is less than the gas they spend getting there. But it's an important thing to do, so they do it. Hey Garrison, here, Now that we have talked about how the siege happened,

we need to explain why. At the start of this series, we said that this was a story that was about the Internet, and it is. It's a story about how the Internet has allowed a section of the American right that's always existed to develop links and gained both power and coherence in the last two decades, thanks largely to online organizing. The story of all these groups got where

they are is a long one. It starts with talk radio with Rush Limbaugh and then with Glenn Beck and the gradual drift to Fox News, from bad journalism to outright barking for genocide seven nights a week at prime time. The story that we can't tell here, not in its entirety, but we can show you a little of what it looks like when that rhetoric leaves the forums and Facebook comments and lands on the ground in a small town in Colorado. There are two versions of the truth in Westcliffe.

There's the one that most of you are going to hear, and then there's the one that you can find George Gramlich purveying in his local newspaper, the Sangree Cristo Sentinel. The Sentinel is probably best summarized as a print version of the Facebook comments from some of your older relatives that you've hopefully long since muted. It's the guy who doesn't know when to stop booming on about Obama at

the Thanksgiving table. But in a stream of consciousness, unedited print format, we're gonna let George lay out what the Sentinel is about in his own words. We didn't get much joy out of trying to speak with him, and not for lack of trying. I approached his office numerous times, knocking on the door and trying to have a good old chat with George. But luckily he did go on the record for the Texas t l in Exile podcast.

This kind of spectacular programming two white dudes shooting the breeze is certainly a tried and true recipe for success in the podcasting space. But you could be forgiven for not having heard of this particular podcast before, because even though we knew about it, it took us forever to even find it on the hit podcasting app Rumble. Wait to Custer County from the Antarondack Mountains in northern New York about twelve years ago, and Uh, the Wois and

I were basically political and second amended refugees. We had a couple of friends who had moved to uh, southern Colorado, and they said that, Uh, the most conservative county maybe in the state, So certainly in southern Colorado is Custer County. It's about an hour and a half south of Colorado Springs, high in the Rocky Mountains, population hundred m a ranking community, stunning dues, just simply beautiful. Uh. Two small towns right in the middle of the county. Each was about five

six hundred people in it, and hardcore conservatives. I'd say six of the county's registered Republicans. Even in his conservative paradise, George found that most folks couldn't live up to his high standards for political engagement. After Obama got elected his first term, totally over that four year period, UH, interest in the Tea party started to diminishing as Obama was

destroying the country. Um, after he got elected the second time, we had our first meeting since his election in January, and normally at that point after four years, we were again fourty sixty people showing up. At that meeting, only twelve people showed up, and it was doom and gloom. You know, Obama's destroying the conscious. Nothing we can do, blah blah blah. We started talking law pool, you know, we've got to keep Custter County red and uh and uh.

And the fact came up, which is the problem in the county forever, was that the local newspaper, in the only newspaper in the county was extremely liberal paper. And we had done research over the years and we found out that a corporal America, this phenomenon was common, that the rural counties that tended to have liberal papers. And it's just to goes the lists vegetate to that media and they know they could have an influence on the population via that. So I mean, I mean it was over.

We went home and on the way home, I turned to Advice said we're gonna start a paper. So uh, next day, I like it's been a whole day building a business plan on how to start a Christian conservative newspaper in the rural community. Now, we couldn't find the research that George is talking about, and that's probably because it's not true. What we can find is that largely

small newspapers closed in the past fifteen years. To learn more about the newspaper business in southern Colorado, we spoke to George's arch rival, the publisher of the only other publication in the west, or at least the only other one in the valley, Jordan Hedberg. You are the editor of the owner and publisher and I could barely spell my own name, so the publisher of the Wet Mountain Tribute newspaper. Jordan's and George aren't exactly best pals, largely

thanks to George's attacks on Jordan's and his publication. We asked Jordan to give us a sense of the competition in the local media market and for his overall thoughts on the Sentinel. I think it's his lies. I mean, that's the problem with the Sentinel. I don't see the media spaces as zero sum game. Um, if somebody wants to have a openly conservative newspaper, in this town. I

think there's plenty of readers. Um, it doesn't really compete with me because we do just community news and we always have since three so we've been here for a little while. But I don't see it as a zero sum game until you start lying about things because you're in what you perceived to be a power struggle. So that's the problem of the Sentinel. There's there's no problem with the Sentinel overall, other than that they like to

tell lies two kind of justify their existence. Yeah, Jordan's take on the founding of the Sentinel, whose logo prominently features a bald eagle on the cover. If you hadn't quite picked up on the vibe yet, it was a little different. You know. They got started in their minds during the Tea Party movement to combat hyper liberal newspaper. But they only labeled the Tribune that because they needed

an enemy. You know, they were they're very whipped up about Obama getting elected and Um, at the time, there had been that Aurora shooting, and so the real reason they really got started was when Carroto put a assault weapons magazine ban into place, so you couldn't have anything that could fire more than fifteen rounds after the Aurora Theater shooting, which was I guess ten years ago this week. Um, so that that was one of the big things that really got him started, was what they felt like an

attack on weapons. But they did it in a community that's very you know, pro Second Amendment. I mean at the time it was probably Republican. These days it's fifty but still a majority. Um, even the moderates and most Democrats probably have guns and are okay with the idea of that. But they had a much more militant style saying, hey,

we should be allowed to arm ourselves with whatever. But again they still had to create a bunch of lies locally saying that, um, you know, at the time it was the former owner that the Tribune was hyperum liberal communist, you know, against guns, which wasn't the truth. Gun rights and the threat of gun confiscation have been a constant source of profitable panic for agitators on the right for decades now. In Westcliffe, that doesn't really seem to be

much controversy about guns. People who want them have them, and people who don't don't. On my drive from the airport to the ranch, I stopped at a couple of gun stores, and I've seen people lining up to by magazines, guns and other things that they'd worried about the government banning, which seems a very odd reaction to a mass murder in your state. But once I got to rural Colorado and pass Mantique's gun room, there wasn't really any of that.

It was just some old dudes depining about the relative value of different big bore revolvers and then SKS, which has been entirely violated by someone's attempt to make it more modern. George apparently has seen an earlier mass shooting in Aurora as an opportunity for the liberals and rhinos he's so loath to take away his guns, and an opportunity for him to take a stand against him. He decided to take a stand at a place where no one really disagreed with him and against the thing that

wasn't really happening. But nonetheless he decided to rally the troops and whole as well. Well. But he described what he held about. I don't know, six or seven years ago, t l the lists and called Ronald Endeavor passed the gun uh gun laws, and they one of them was the magazine limitation law and before there's no limitation and they passed laws that you can't have any you can't pay any new magazines. Was more than fifteen rounds in it,

but they all went to grandfather. Now during this the legislative session, as you as you remembered, the whole state was up and on about this. I mean it was demonstrations in Denver. I mean, uh, we were passed off and the SLPs passed it. So Westcliffe has uh July Forces parade that we actually took over. The settle took over at a couple of years. Uh and uh and there's usually maybe twenty five thirty floats in the entry. You know, they got the horses, who know, hold on,

hold on, George. Let's dwell on that for a minute. When when I mentioned that, I came down there and then you had like five or six hundred people in this parade, Um, I think it might have got glossed over. How big are these towns to start with? Because it's it's basically a combination of Silver Cliff and West Cliff, right, Yeah, each town has about five people out of five people out of out of a total of a thousand people.

I mean you you can you can describe it, but describe that to the listeners for a little bit about um, what that parade looks like versus how many people are on the sidewalk. Yeah, in the in the Pea Party had an entry and we usually had maybe people marks down with you know, gas and flags and stuff. But that that those gun laws, the MacMan I mean, just

energized the sentinel tremendously. So we decided a couple of months before July fourth that we were gonna turn the Tea Party parade entry into a Second Amendment protests uh entry.

So we printed up flyers and uh we innovated Southern Colorado every gun shot, park shot everything with thousands of flyers come to the Westland July forth, saying and told them what part to go to, what place to go to, and protested the c S laws and stuff like that and so uh uh So that morning the priest parts of Dena Cross, uh we set up shop in front of uh uh. We told the parade or gus, we

might have some more people coming. So we've had a field where we could set up, and we set up there and we had a couple of sir we had three of us the guys there to check guns. We said, you know, you could bring uh long rifles, no magazines. They got to be clear shoulder uh carried on the holter pistols, you know. And we had all us people to check for safety and stuff like that. And so we had no idea how many people are gonna show off.

And normally there's twenty five entries and maybe a hundred fifty people in the parade, maybe two hundred total, And all of a sudden, uh, on Main Street where our field was, around eight thirty, there was a traffic jam that went down like a mile both ways, and people were turning into our part a lot field there and going nowhere else and they kept common and common and common and comming. This went offor hour and a half

the sha for freaking out. We had over five laundret heavily farm citizens there that morning, with about twenty military trucks and a half we had a Korean War half tract there with a fifty cow on top. Jildan the Tribune publisher, so things a little bit differently. So, but right before the sentinel got started, they were like, Hey, we're gonna advertise, and they did it. All across the state. They said, bring your big black evil guns to um Custer County. And the problem is is, you know, that

was the issue. It was this is a family event and so ever since then. So what happened was in response, the Republican town Council and the Republican Chamber of Commerce all said, we're not going to have a parade. We we can't have a bunch of Rando's showing up right after the Aurora Theater shootings, carrying of amounts of firepower, even if you claim it's unloaded or whatever. We just can't have that for a family event. And so the thing is is they took out a permit and did

the parade themselves. So that's really how things. So Fourth of July for them is sort of their anniversary every year. You know, they're very they really consider that whole thing to be that way. But that's really what happened. And it's a conservative area. There's no bravery MARCHI assault rifles Sucusta County. Now, if they've done in downtown Denver, where guns are banned, or at least those types of guns, at least you could say they had a backbone and

taking down. But it's not MLK gang. So the problem the Sentinel is the lies. You know, if they're just a conservative paper, fine, they're allowed to have their opinion, but they tend to tell lies constantly. George had miraculously managed to turn a mass murder into a sort of pseudo victory parade for a cultural war he was fighting every day with his newspaper. Soon enough and large he sanks to this parade. The culture war will be opening

a whole new front on this tenacious unicorn ranch. Of course, the Sentinel has opinions about the ranch and transpoke in general. When we arrived in Westcliffe Garretson, I grabbed a coffee at Peregrine Coffee Roasters, long term friends at the ranch and supporters of me staying up all night with Paul and an up all day with Penny and j. We also grabbed a coffee of The Sentinel from a spencer, pulled up a chair and started a live reading. Even after a year of me being aware of their rhetoric,

it did not disappoint. So I just I just sarched the word gender on the Sentinel's website. We got a We got an article on social emotional Learning, which is basically the al right trying to rebrand their like a critical race theory ship, but make it even broader. Um. And we do have an article from January of last year called meat at the gun toting tenacious unicorn ins an happy Valley. That's a let's click on that and see what the Sentinel has to say. What is this?

What is this guy's name, the Eric Siegel? Yes, High Country new Oh that's then what they've done. They have just they's plage rights piece fro high Gundry News. Oh so they just stroll this from somewhere else. If we're stopping here to point out that the Sentinel does this a lot. It's not clear if they have permission or not, but they seem to dedicate at least half their print prages to aggregating content. But it's mostly from the far

right of the internet. Notable examples include a really spectacularly racist piece on anti material rifles which we will not read, and numerous fire right commentary sites which turned shreds of news into a thousand words of panic rundering opinion. Anyway, let's see what they have to say about the pretty good article of Eric Siegel wrote about the Unicorn ranch for High Country News. Note The Sentinel has predominantly featured in this article negatively, of course. Hold onto your cowboy hats,

fellow patriots, this is one wild ride. For the first time ever, we are warning our readers that the article below is very, very disturbing in many aspects. It may not be appropriate for some folks or children. Are apologies, but the citizens of this wonderful county need to know how the county has been betrayed so apparent, I guess the article is kind of a yeah, so they do have an edit at the bottom that that's the central road based on the article. Well, folks, the veil has

been lifted. For those of you who haven't seen or experienced left wing fascism here it is from Biden to Polis and all the way down to this hypocritical bunch of hate filled xenophobes. They're all the same, felt with hate, paranoia, solbrighteousness, intolerance, and the desire to rule and control, and obsessed with violence. Their radical, narrow minded view of the world and our

rural community is the only allowable viewpoint. All of a sudden, the citizens of Custer County are fascists and nazis this fascist rhetoric. The George himself a transplant from outside the valley who has tried to transform local politics. It's referring to it's what sparked off the confrontation that bought me Aldough and pull to the ranch last year. Yeah, so

that one wasn't even a parade. What it was was it was a protest on the fourth of July because during COVID they weren't doing any parade things, so they just did this as a protest, right, and so the sheriff and everybody, I mean, you couldn't distinguish it from a Fourth of July prade, except there wasn't. I don't think the fire department and stuff took you know, the Sheriff's office and the fire department didn't take part. And it was just it was really a bunch of people

with on horses, marching guns, stuff like that. But the flags were a little more disturbing. You know, most of the American flags were replaced with three percent flags or the thin blue line flags. Um, there was a couple of Confederate flags. Always fun. I still can't figure out I still can't figure out the Confederate South here. Yeah, you know, but there is that lost cause myth that does take place here and and you know, they'll say

it's not a racist flag, but it absolutely isn't. This was the parade the Unicorns called out, and this was what put them at the center of Gramlich's conspiracy riddled hate machine. Jordan gave us a little more insight into exactly who those fascist groups were, the people that The Sentinel brought to town for their little protest parade. George

grime Like is a member of Oathkeepers. We've been able to confirm that through not only himself, but Thompson Writers had an investigative reporter that confirmed that for us um so, Oathkeepers is a big one three percent. You'll see some of those shirts around that the two of them are kind of synonymous. That none of it's super organized. You know, it's kind of like saying that antifa's superorganized. It's it's

very decent. The problem is is that they do write extreme things, and I think people like um myself, and then you know, definitely the Unicorn ranch suffers because they they can't really spread their message without an enemy. And you were asking earlier how how much influence do they have? Ye, not a lot. They have about out eight hundred subscriptions from what I can tell, some receipts accidentally got put in my box versus there. Because we're the wet Mound

Publishing company. Yeah um, and they are the Mountain Publishing the post Office at all their glory occasionally give me a win. But you know there're eight hundreds and maybe a thousand by their own own numbers. The sentinels stance on vaccines will definitely not shock you, considering everything else we've said about George and the Sentinel thus far. So

this comes from market ticket dot org. Effective as a primary infection against severe, critical or fatal COVID nineteen reinfection with ninety seven point three irrespected a variant of primary infection or reinfection and were similar and with no evidence for waning some results. We found the subgroup analyzies for those less than fifty years of age. Got it? No,

let me explain it. If you've got COVID ninteen lived, you're more than certain with a very narrow confidence band protected against severe or fatal d in hospital dead second infection, even though coronavirus is always mutate and I'm just going to check really quickly if that's what they're saying. Ah and normally yet they've quite a dis sort of out of context and there is no evidence of protection ever

goes away. That is not what the quote says. If you look at the JAB, I think you get the picture. It's pseudo science babble, transphobia and general boomer anti wokism. Oh there's a piece here said about the You know, the U. S. Army is really struggling to recruit right now. Right Imagine you're an eighteen year old white Christian male

in Georgia with a family history of military service. As you progress through your teen years, you watch Confederate statutes being torn down, a military base is being renamed, endless media and elitist demonization of your culture as racist and deplorable and backwards, and military and civilian leadership that thinks diversity and inclusion are fewer white men. It's the best thing since slight breast, I spread? Would you volunteer? Identity politics works both ways. Trash my tribe and I won't

associate with you, let alone risk my life. Shouldn't be a shock then that those expressing a great deal of trust and confidence in the military dropping today. So that's why. And no one wants to do in the military because we're not doing enough confederacy. Wow, there's a whole piece on how to protect your wealth, but oh well, no,

there's a whole section of this called the Second Amendment corner. Okay, interesting, there's a picture here of a bunch of a t F agents, obviously armed in plate carriers and a Pride flag. And this this is a joke, This is a funny, and it says corporate wants you to find the difference between this picture and this picture, and then it says they're the same picture. So I guess, and the A t F are out there enforcing Pride. The little meme

comic that we've seen was frankly bizarre. The two pictures on this comic were an A t F a visit. This particular a t F of it got hyped up all over the right wing media as a raid, a gun grab, etcetera, etcetera. In fact, what happened was a dude purchased a lot of guns and the A t F came by to check if he had sold any of them. It's not routine, but it's not super uncommon

either anyway. On one side was a photo of the A T F agents and plate carriers with rifles, and on the other was a Pride flag because apparently in Custer County the existence of queer people is a similar oppression to the people who did Waco coming to your door. Jordan's has also noted this turn in the rhetoric of the Sentinel. For two years, their sole purpose was to

rail against COVID restrictions. Now, with many of those gone, along with twenty two people from the county where the average age of sixty, they've pivoted to culture war topics when election fraud and COVID don't seem to have stuck. Now it's just we're it. Um. It was all you know, the big live the election was stolen, critical race theory, even though it's a bunch of crap, and unfortunately you know, the unicorn match, if there's if there's In the past,

it was more against anybody that was gay. Um, but there's not many of those in the community more because they kind of got run out and it just conserves in general really hostile deite. Yeah, but now it's you know, totally on the trans um, and again it kind of fights back against the conservative upbringing that I had, which was, as long as you're not interfering with me, then there's

really no conflict. We've talked about queer extermination as rhetoric before, and it's very evident to that what we are seeing here is a version of that. Fortunately, George doesn't seem to have stuck the landing, but it doesn't mean that this stuff isn't dangerous. It goes without saying that the Unicorns weren't trying to try anyone's gender from their ranch. They were just trying to be left alone. It's not their actions that people disagreed with, it's their mere existence.

And sadly, while the attack on the ranch might have failed, other attacks on queer folks haven't, and that makes havens like the Tenacious Unicorn Ranch even more important. Today. Next episode, we want to talk about what brought people to the ranch and how to make a queer home in rural America. The ranch in July two is a very different place

to the one I've visited in March of one. For one thing, it's not so called that my water bottle freezes every night but more notably, there's less tension in the air, and no one's wearing a plate carrier. Not everyone who was there for the seed stayed. Some of them had only been visiting or they found other places to live since then, but Penny, cat Jen and Jay have been constant on the ranch since something I've drugged away so far, it's giving a sense of just what

a welcoming and friendly place to tenaceous unicorn ranches. It's a thing I haven't really stopped thinking about since I first visited, and I think that a lot of folks have been looking for for a very long time, even in the worst time to the siege, when Penny and Jay barely slept when I was out running off ched with guns, or when Paul and I were sat up all night absolutely destroying the costcoatnag milunge that Penny had

prepared for us. People always seem to be laughing. When we sat down to talk about the siege, we started off by laughing. It's a difficult topic and it was a scary time, but I guess it's easier to laugh about it a year later, when you know everyone's okay, Well, let's go over everyone's legal names, date of births, such a security number, maybe you're four digit, what art or list of fears, that sort of thing. Lots they don't have. We don't want this to be just a story about

the worst week the ranch ever had. We wanted to be a story about a community that overcame adversity and is thriving. That community extends way beyond the dome which unicorns called home, and even beyond the valley that they live in. But we should start with that valley, because even at the peak of the siege, it seems like most people were on the unicorn side, or at least they just wanted to leave them alone. It was because of warnings from other people in the valley they need

to patrol their perimeter at night. Had they not been there, this might be a very different story a year later, everyone in the valley values the unicorns being there. During the few days we spent there this summer, we visit neighbors for drinks. We went into town for donuts and coffee, and dropped in on Jordan's The Tribune, Polisha hits Ranch. It's none of the unicorns of pariahs sitting up in the house, surrounded by guns and afraid of what's coming next.

The active members of the community, and they're very welcome. There was a time when this community wasn't as friendly to queer people, but they've always been here. I spoke to Penny about this last year, what we drove to recycling center in the next county to recycle Westliff cats. Yeah, like we're doing the same thing y'all are doing. Like you not pick up on that, like not to mention

also that like there are queers here. We first wave like yeah, it's like we're not breaking any fucking mold, like you know what I mean, Like it's we're definitely loud. We're not like we didn't like get cowed down and fucking like bent over and like told to shut up our whole life. So we're definitely like fuck you were queer, uh And they don't like that, like like yeah, that makes good old boys uncomfortable and I get it. Also fuck you, Like yeah, I know we're gonna be who

we are, living the way we want to. Like if you can hang to Trump flags and a Confederate flag from the back of your truck and drive down Main Street screaming fucking horrible, hateful things, and feel perfectly justified in doing that. I'm gonna just be queer, Like, I'm gonna go ahead and be as loud as I want to be. Like, obviously you think it's okay to have personal expression. Yeah, like right there, right, you really really think it's okay. So I'm gonna go ahead and take

you up on that. They had to, like I keep it was some kind of like donasco tell yeah, well that's what they keep saying, does right. It's like, well, you don't have to be in our face about it. I'm just living like I'm not like you know, I'm not coming into your home and humping your couch like I'm just like. It can be easy, especially if you only connect with the royal places through the media, to see cities as queer spaces and the countryside is unfriendly

to quit people. Well, politics and roll America can be pretty bad. It's never really been true that quit people don't belong there. The Unicorns pointed this out historically if you know anything about history, like country spaces are queer fucking spaces, Like we're the ones out here doing the actual work while fucking old fucking sis white men just collecting money from doing shitty ranching that damages the animals, damages the earth, and fucking does not build community or

help anybody but themselves. For your integration into country spaces is so fucking important because we bring heart and empathy and all these things. Uh that that capitalism has stripped out of these areas. Um, we bring that back, and we've always fucking been here. Like fun off, real cowboys were constantly fucking constantly, They fucked a lot each other, and they were mostly like black and brown people. Yeah, yeah,

it wasn't white. The West was not white. And by the way, like we have said this before and we'll say it again, nature is inherently queer. And we fucking belong here, like we fucking belong wherever the funk we go, Like that is a queer space. There is no like hard line that country spaces are for sis people. Fuck that, Like, we belong here. We've always been here, and we're really

good at it. After the siege and its coverage, everyone knows that the Unicorn Tolte quer icons, but they are only parts artical queer community and they have other folks

over for Game ninth once a week. They told us one story about Pride Month in Westcliffe this year, and thankfully it didn't involve the a t F. There was a really adorable during Pride Month, we went to Family Dollar, which is like one of the few stores in town, and I guess we were talking to the manager who was checking us out and uh and he mentioned like, oh, yeah, like I have, like I have a gay and a trans working here, Like you know, I love y'all, you know,

And it was it was very it was a little a little embarrassing, but but the heart was there. It was very like But but the point is, like, like even Family Dollar, in the middle of nowhere Westcliff has two queer employees, Like, you know, we're everywhere. Queer people had always been in the valley, but it had become harder to share who they were with their neighbors in

recent decades. They never stopped existing, but they stopped being safe. Yeah, we're connecting with a lot of queer people that have lived here for a long time. Yeah. It's the fact that a community is so hostile that their queer community has to be closeted does not mean that the queer community isn't here. It just means that a lot of assholes are here. Don't ask, don't tell, an institutional version of closeting, is something that Penny is very familiar with.

She was in the Army as a Calvary scout while the policy was still in place. If you're not familiar, Don't Ask, Don't tell was a military policy that was in place nineteen ninety four until two thousand eleven. Under the policy, anyone who wasn't straight was to remain in the closet, and in theory they were protected from discrimination, but if they came out as gay or buy or

trans or otherwise queer, they could be discharged. Queer people were not even allowed to talk about anything related to their queerness because doing so, quote would create an unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order, and discipline and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability.

Don't ask, don't tell. Like, I remember a girlfriend when I was in the military, UM, and I definitely was like, this is my best friend of Germany and it sometimes spends the night because we're best friend knows, I don't know. It was really really damaging. It was just really really

damaging to like not being able to be yourself. Um. But then also like be able to leave posts and have a secret life where you were yourself, you know, like and then when you go out with the guys, like there's always those weird moments where you like do run into other gay locals that you have like known and like you've had deep conversations with another context and just have to be like, no, don't don't talk to me.

Everyonet know each other, um, which is I'm sure damaging for them, you know, like that can't be fucking normal, Like, I don't know, that's weird. And then on the throw on top of that that you're also a girl, like you know what I mean, Like, so you're pretending to be a gay man who's straight sometimes around certain people, um, but really you're gay. You're a bisexual woman um pre

surgery and with the wrong um hormones. And so it just ends up being a soup of just like compartmentalization to the point where you just like forget people and then they show back up and you're like, oh, yeah, like you're from this quadrant of my life. Like I don't know, it's not healthy. Yeah, it doesn't do good things. Don't ask, don't tell. Had pretty devastating consequences for the

mental health of thousands of service people. The National Transgender Discrimination Survey found that of trans people have served in the military over twice the rate of cis gender people, but until very recently, they weren't even allowed to do so openly. Not being able to be yourself with people that you're expected to risk your life for isn't really conductive to good morale or indeed quote the unit cohesion

that is the essence of military capability. There's no doubt that being familiar with guns, something they gained from military experience, did help the unicorns, but it's not the only thing that helped them. Sometimes, especially on Twitter, where things seem to get reduced to simple terms to fit into the discourse of the day, the Tenaceous Unicorn Ranch story has been reduced to a story about guns. Undoubtedly, guns are a part of the story, but they would have been

useless without community and solidarity. That is something that the unicorns at the ranch have taken to heart. A year later, they're doing mutual aid work with the Lakota people on the Pine Ridge Reservation, driving truckloads of donations to them every few months and using their Internet presence to get donations.

If we want to look at this story as an example of anarchism in action, and it's important to remember that if we want a world where the state is not the only entity with the ability to do violence, then should also want a world where it's not the only entity responsible for caring for people with unmet material needs. Alongside ranch work, Penny and j also make ends meet

by working construction jobs on local buildings. Something that George from the Sentinel is very proud of and that other local residents are beginning to regret, is that Custer County doesn't have a building code. Here's the snippet of his conversation with t L about that. Then one example, t L is, who county is so free? We don't even have building codes. If you're going to live here, you can build yourself a shock with tway to live in it. You know. That's uh, that's the way it is here

in my little Bergen, Texas too. Do you really need him? Do you really need I mean, that's something I think should be attacked in other ways. But go ahead, but to one of the things that make Custer County and one of the reasons I moved to this one. Yeah, yeah, I mean that basically cause housing crisis, who become unreachable

for the middle class. The problem with this conservative utopian vision is that it has resulted in a lot of residents getting ripped off by less than upstanding builders and now left with their homes falling apart. That's where Penny and Jake can step in and make a decent side income drywalling and finishing buildings that well often are not very old, are already crumbling. Like we've always said, um, this community is awesome. UM and that has held true.

We uh we do contracting work because there are no UM building codes in Custer County, as opposed to what like the libertarian ideal of no building codes is. It actually just means that there's a bunch of shoddy houses that need repaired constantly. UM. And we have construction skills. So we're in people's homes, repairing them and doing work for the actual people of the county daily. UM. We frequent businesses up here because we're all about local support.

We build community, UM gleefully, we build community like we really enjoy it up here. The community now is a little smaller than when James first visited. Currently five people live at the ranch full time, but they still have a couple of trailers open to transfolks in need of a safe place to stay or you know, visiting journalists looking for a safe place to stay. Is how Jay first came to the ranch. Like a lot of us, she had a difficult time at the start of the pandemic.

The world was changing and it seemed in May of that America was as well. For a lot of people with less progressive parents, the BLM uprising presented a difficult choice between family and community. Jay was one of those people that had to face that choice. So basically, um, I was living in Dallas, work in retail when living in my car when the um pandemic started, and so I was furloughed. Luckily, Texas is actually surprisingly good about unemployment,

so I you know, had that. Um it was my parents are retired from the military around there, and when the BLM uprisings happened, Uh, I participant, you know, did some things, and basically my parents were like, you either can stay here or and not be associated with Antifa, or you know, you you can't stay here if you're as social shaded with Antifa and so I was like, okay, I'm I guess I'm leaving then, which is fine. Um,

there was a lot of tension there anyways. Uh it wasn't good for me, so um I because of the unemployment. I was like, okay, I you know, for once, have some resources. I can just kind of you know, I'm already living in my car. I can just kind of travel around for a bit. Why not? And I think I just posted on Twitter like trans commune whin you know, as as probably most queer people have, and one of my permaculture mutuals actually it was like, hey have you

heard of this place? It's not far from you and posted a link to I think it was the Vice article. Yeah, And I sent a message and with a bunch of questions about it and making sure it wasn't you know, like trans medicalists or anything like that, which is always like what you want to see when somebody contacts the ranch, think about coming up, I wait, prefer an in depth breakdown and a lot of questions to I'll just show

up and figure it out. In case you're not familiar with what a trans medicalist is, will let Paul ask that question for you. And we're gonna play this not to make Paul look bad. We're playing it for you because I think it's important to see what kind of space the ranch is. It's not one where you can't get things wrong. It's one where you can ask if

you don't know something. And because everyone there had shown that they're willing to risk life and limb for one another, they assume that you're asking it because you care about them and you want to know how to say things in a way that won't hurt anyone. What the fund is?

A trans medicalist someone who think that primarily well, so this does not describe any of us, but a trans medical list is someone who, uh, first and foremost thinks that all trans people should be on hormones, all trans people should have surgery, all trans people drive towards or and they don't believe in yeah, and they don't believe in anything but the gender binary as well, Like basically, if you don't want to transition directly from like a

male to a female or direct whatever to a male, like, you're not not transon did they think they think those trans people are making it worse for other trans people? Like? Okay, so, like that was my next question to like our non binary. Yeah, they hate those people. They think they're faking so but like do they say they're not trans and different groups they often call them trans trenders because it's like a popularity contest. They think, so, yeah, okay, and those people suck.

Jay has found a home at the Ranch now, and just like everyone else there, she's a part of the family which takes care of one another. It was actually really funny because Jay showed up and the assumption I thought was that just gonna stay for a little bit and then you just didn't leave it. It was great. Yeah, it was very exactly what you know a lot of queer people talk about online, which is ye, well, when Jay brought a passion that we hadn't seen with a

lot of people that had come up. A lot of people had come up with this like yeah, we'll just see what it is or whatever. But Jay came up with like knowledge about theory and like had studied and was really like conscientiously a part of this project um, which was huge. I mean for me, like part of what Jay has been able to help with is organizing the moving of animals to different pastors. James was at the Ranch last year when they were replacing their old

fence and planning out their fields ready as fence. UM and this back fence here as we build the new kind of structure for the girls out in matt Field. UM, when we're doing the fence heightening, so it's not only um security increase, but we're also we'll fence off the driveway and then the girls watch the babies that mama will actually get access all the way down the driveway

and up this hill a little bit. Hey, babies, come on, um and uh yeah, we'll just structure our fields a little bit better, and then the girls will have two pastures, which is kind of we can rotate them into. We can start actual perma culture or is it perma culture? I said, I mean it's regeneration in this context, it's like regenerative agriculture. Thank you, That's what I was like. You know, you can also like perma culture. People do it too, you know. Yeah, but but what we're doing

is that's both. Really we'll be doing both. Okay, yeah, so you can use either our experts. There's definitely an industry like, oh, regenerative agriculture is the new thing, and but it's still capitalism and it's still exploitative, but there are also people doing real regenerative talking with j it's very evident just how passionate they are about these topics and how things like biodiversity and regenerative and permaculture processes tie you into many aspects of the ranch itself. The

you know, capitalist project is homogenization and simplification. The entire goal is things like mono crops. The entire goal is you know, you know, the gender binary and controlling the reproduction of labor, controlling sis, women and queer gender expression is a big part of that. Like you can't have those things and have a capitalist, white supremacist environment where

you can extract from the earth and from labor. That is such a key component of this whole, like you know, m Western project or whatever you want to call it. And nature doesn't care. Nature is queer nature, like nature

is just exists. Fungi have thousands of sex as engenders and that's fine, in fact, that's in fact, like the part of the point of nature is biodiversity because that is the most effective method for actually iterating and testing what works and sing and surviving and and we're biomodal by the way not binary like, and you know, if you need to look that up, you can go ahead

and do that. And in Perman culture in particular, you know some one big problem with Perman culture is there's a lot of white people who uh use the practices and don't acknowledge that it all comes from indigenous cultures. It all comes from indigenous life ways, and they make a lot of money by not saying that not. You know, so that's important to address. Uh. Perma culture has its

you know, value. But if you're not learning from indigenous people and giving back to Indigenous people, you're doing wrong. Just because the immediate threat of armed men breaking into the ranch has gone away doesn't mean that they still don't have to be careful. In April one, after the siege was over, the then sheriff Shannon Byerley claimed that one of his deputies went to the ranch to ask questions about a road traffic accident that one of the

ranchers had been involved in. He claimed the deputy was met by armed and uncooperative ranchers who barred the deputy from entering. Bodycam video obtained by Reuter's thanks to a Public Records Act request, shows nothing of the sorts, the deputy met a single person, not visibly armed, who was polite and courteous. In subsequent interviews, Bierley acknowledged that he had been mistaken in his account, but we'll let you hear Jay's account of the events that day. So, my

Chevy Blazer had been sitting over the winner. Um, it had a bad alternator, and I've finally like we finally got you know, the money together, fixed to replace the alternator. UM, looked it over. Everything seemed fine. Um, And I was going back to Texas to grab some stuff and bring it back. Um. And I went around apparently Black Ice Corner, and I'm pretty sure what happened was my tire popped around Like I was only going like thirty because you know,

black there's ice. It's still went Yeah it was. It was like four or five o'clock in the morning or something like that, and I'm pretty sure what happened was my tire popped and then my Blazer proceeded to tumble, uh you know, roll over, yeah, into the Luckily not a ditch or anything, just on the left of the south left side of the road. And so I called Penny and got picked up. Yeah, we take care of them when we're not going to call the cops. It

was it only was you there no reason. And then I was like, okay, let me look at towing around the area. Let me see and the towing the local towing company which is just like a small family owned one guy basically. Um, they on their Facebook like business page they said they opened at like nine or ten or something like that. So I was like, okay, So I'm it's gonna be on the side of the road

until then. That's fine, I'll call and I'm going to go to sleep until then because I was just in a rollover actually probably can cuss, like yeah, probably whiplashed at least. And then so I was in my trailer and I suddenly in my pj's and suddenly get a call from dispatch and they're like, there's a deputy at your gate. Uh you know, can you go blah blah blah. So I was like, okay, take took a vehicle downs.

I didn't. I didn't have a pistol in the car around me, and um, I basically just you know, as you do with cops, as any sane human does, answer to the extent that you're legally required to be polite, but also like I'm not going to invite you on. I'm not gonna be your friends. You're not my friend, um he he he. You know, he did the usual, like you know, where you were you drinking, and I was like, it's like five o'clock in the morning. It's like six o'clock right now, Like I was going back.

I was driving back to Texas to pick up stuff. I was starting a road trip. That's not when you like get blitzed, like yeah, and uh so he gave me his card and left, and I was like, Okay, that's you know, that's fine. That was weird, but and it was weird to me too that like they apparently have some kind of relationship with this toeing guy where because they didn't even ask me, like, hey, do you they just to this place? Yeah, they just towed it

before they even contacted me. And so either you bring the title over to sign it over to the towing person, or you pay him like four or five out here to bring it back here. So that's what actually happened. But then for some reason, the local sheriff started telling a very different account of what took place outside the unicorns driveway. So that was the that was the actual incident.

Then Byerley, the sheriff started getting interviewed, and in those interviews he would say they there were six of them. They met us at the gate, armed, were extremely hostile, to the point where my my sheriff felt definitely felt fear for his life and had to retreat back and fear for his life. But he also said we don't go there anymore. He said on record, we don't go there anymore because it's too scary. And so that is setting us up to be killed. That is setting us

up to be marked by the place. It's like, you know, this is Kiwie Farm, says this all the time, this is trany Waco. Yeah, And that is the setup for it to become that. And so because then now all of his deputies are just ready to shoot us on site because we're dangerous. A reporter from Reuters was looking into the incident and heard the conflicting stories from the sheriff and the unicorns, but she thought of an easy

fix to definitively know what happened. She just boy the body cam footage, which proved unequivocally that they were lying there fucking ass off and we were telling the truth. And Byerley retired this year. I don't know if well, and she when she oh, yet it she went back, oh god, yeah, And Byerley was like, can I remove my comments from because she asked she she like, I don't know if it was a follow up, do you

have any additional comments? And his additional comments were, can you please remove my my previous statements from the record, she said, And she emphatically said no and then published it internationally. This wasn't the first suspect incident regarding the local sheriffs. When Paul was at the ranch and the immediate aftermath of the original siege, he witnessed cops hanging out with a group of people who were actively harassing

the ranch. I was here for a week and at one point they always like fifteen to twenty cars at shud Ranch. Which it's up to you to release that location, right, we just call the ranch. You can you can visit. You can see it from the you can you can see it from here. And um, there were two sheriffs deputies sitting at the curb the entire time as those

cars pulled in there, and they were protecting our assets. Yeah. Well, they were sitting there side by side talk to each other while the cars told them that you probably said have said this before and I just don't didn't remember. Yeah, I mean it must them. So the other end of that is then when it got publicized, the sheriff then said, oh, we don't, we don't know anything about it, Like they didn't contact us. We didn't, They couldn't verify the statements

made in the media about threats against the ranch. Were just hanging out at the fascist and they were super stooty about it. They made it sound like, well, ranch clearly doesn't want to be part of our community, so I would help them. That seemed to be the implication. Sheriff Byerley, who spoke at aft Oathkeepers rally, has since resigned as a sheriff, but for understandable reasons, the Unicorns

still don't dial when they feel in danger. Instead, they reach out to Paul to Aldo and a network of community members who helped with their security both online and on the ground. They also routine train with firearms and have added a much more serious fence to the property than the one that the intruders climbed over. Right after James and I's most recent visit this past summer, Kiwi Farms started being in the news a lot more due

to a campaign attempting to take it down. But as the hate Forum entered the discourse again, the Unicorns had started noticing cars driving past the ranch repeatedly, something that Paul Aldo and James observed during the siege, and now in just the past few weeks, trans people have been killed in a nightclub just an hour away from their house, just a few miles away from the bar where we

met them this past summer. To celebrate at Jay's birthday tomorrow, we'll talk about what those threats mean for the ranch and where they are now. On our drive down from Denver to Westcliff. We were first going to meet up with the Unicorns in Colorado Springs for a little birthday dinner. James and I arrived a few hours early, so I had the bright idea to stop at the headquarters of

the evangelical media organization focus on the Family. I hadn't been there since I was a little Christian kid, so I was curious what it would be like for me to walk through. Now, what was it like walking through their little headquarters and welcome center. What were the general vibes? That was fucking bonkers? Um, so we went in Initially, We've gone into the bookshop and I found a book that told me the holding hands is for play. That

was called sex in a Marriage. I've seen a book with a pink triangle on the cover it that it's about LGBTQ people, which is deeply truck and traveling. Well, it's it's it's about men struggling with their sexual identity. I see on the way to stop that struggling. Yeah, genocide queer elimination of st rhetoric hasn't just been confined to Christian bookstores or the Internet. In November, it once again became very clear how this kind of NonStop hate

speech being beamed into everyone's homes impacts them. On the eve of Transgender Day of Remembrance, as Club Q gay bar in Colorado Springs was preparing for an all ages drag show, a twenty two year old shooter walked in and killed five people, leaving twenty five more injured. The shooter was ultimately tackled and pistol whipped by a US Army veteran, Richard Fierro, and stomped in the face by

an unidentified trans woman. A few days after the club que joting on so called Thanksgiving, the Focus on the Family headquarters was defaced, leaving behind a graffiti message pointing out the organization's culpability from pioneering the kind of gay

exterminationist propaganda that the modern conservative right is embracing. The message left on the property that James and I visited just a few months prior, read quote, their blood is on your hands, five lives taken way back in I put together behind the Bastards on Focus on the Family and their founder, James Dobson, and I've covered Focus on the Family's increase in anti trans propaganda earlier this year

on this very show. After the graffiti was left on their headquarters on Thanksgiving, a statement was released by the Colorado People's Press, and I'm going to read a few parts of that quote. It is no accident that the club queue shoeoting happened in Colorado Springs, a city steeped in homophobia, transphobia, and white supremacy. It is no surprise that somebody did this in this city that is home to such a hateful organization as Focus on the Family.

If you visit their website, you will see them eagerly display their desire to rid the world of all queer people. It is important to us that you understand why Focus on the Family must be held accountable for the ramifications of their hateful theology. You have likely seen the onslaught of anti trans legislation, of which Focus on the Family is a huge proponent, both in funding and propaganda. Focus

on the Family's goal is to eradicate queerness. Unquote. Two of the five people killed in the club queue shooting were trans people, and in the days after the attack, figures on the right continued to call for attacks on trans people and drag queens, using their familiar language of groomers and grooming, while of course completely ignoring multiple figures within their own myths to have very well documented relationships

with people convicted or suspected of sex crimes. But obviously evidence or logic doesn't really make a difference in these types of situations. What's happened is that a handful of figures on the right have decided that they can gain power, influence, and money by whipping up hatred towards queer people. With this hate has come an uptick in violence, and this only makes queer havens like the Tenacious Unicorn Ranch more important.

Last month, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, after a donut shop hosted a drag queen and queer art event, a man in a maca hat smashed the windows of the store with a baseball bat and threw in a Molotov cocktail. The attacker also taped a note with Bible verses and homophobic and transphobic slurs on the window of a neighboring shop. This wasn't the time the store had been targeted, and this attack happened a day before the shop was set

to host another drag art event. On December three, a right wing activist and former US Army psychological operations officer claimed on Facebook that God had caused a power outage in Moore County, North Carolina, in an effort to shut down a drag show that was currently taking place in

a local theater. Earlier that same day, a holiday themed drag show in Columbus, Ohio, hosted by a Unitarian Universalist church was canceled due to threats and protests outside by Proud Boys, Patriot Front and a number of unidentified armed men in Cammo Patriot Front chanted blood, liberty, and victory, while the Proud Boys chanted Feds Feds Feds back at them. Despite their disagreements, the two groups seemed perfectly fine working

together to shut down the drag event. The Nazi group White Lives Matter Ohio was set up a few blocks away in their skull masks and were seek hiling two drivers passing by. After it became clear the drag show was not going to take place, the groups moved to a busier, more visible street to waive their groomer signs. A few dozen Patriot Front members stood chanting outside of a Chipotle as a Christian Diminiist flag flew behind them.

On December seven, someone fired a gun through the window of a bar in rent in Washington after threats against the bar were posted online for hosting a drag queen story time Just a few days ago. On December the FBI designated extremist militia group named This Is Texas Freedom Force showed up armed with guns outside of a Christmas themed drag show in San Antonio, Texas. Other right wing groups like the San Antonio Family Association and the Fascist

Patriot Front also had numbers present. By the end, the crowd protesting the drag show was greatly outnumbered by people showing up to support and defend the queer event, some of whom also showed up armed. What do we do? Something that was mentioned across the multiple interviews we did while visiting the ranch is the idea of microcosm and macrocosm.

The Tenacious Unicorn Ranch story and the threats of violence that they have faced really does embody a microcosm version of the transphobic and queer eliminationist rhetoric and genocide campaign that the country as a whole is experiencing. It's just that this local manifestation of it happened to be on an alpaca farm. As odd as that may be, apparently kind of funny. And and then put the way they run with their head all the way down to the ground,

and just yeah that impracticalities. Yeah, little camels, animals straight out of you know what they really are. They have the same amount of magic. Yeah, just driving up here seeing them, I was like, wow, Yeah, they are like unicorns are like a mythical and it's just kind of like, wow, is this real? It's like a fucking tont on what's on. They just looks so snuggleble. I want to snuggle them. And the way they walked like that, like that like

Crew you're ocome. Yeah, when they do a trot like Americana. This is clown. He's an asshole, but he's a really good dad. Yeah. For this last episode of the series, we want to give you a sense of what regular life is like at the ranch now that it's been almost two years since the siege and people have had time to process, grow and adapt. One thing that's growing is the number of alpacas, something like that. With the recent crea is born, we are a hundred so about

an alpaca. Um, let's talk a little bit about alpacas. I think they're interesting, right, And you came into both your alpaca as rescues. Yeah, yeah, were so. At the original ranch, we purchased ten alpaca, but it was like a rescue purchase. The only way that we could get them to give them up as if we paid money for them. But they were like they needed new homes. That was all from really lovely people. It was just

like these weren't alpaca. They wanted um. And then we learned really quickly that there is a that there's a problem in America with alpaca ranchers aging out of being able to take care of these really massive herds that they've built and either euthanizing or splitting up herds, which is both things are not great for the health of

the alpaca. Yeah. Um, that ends that story. But so we found really quickly that there is a as a rescue, we were able to help more animals and afford animals, you know, like uh because and because we were on the acres that were on we could take in entire

herds and not break them up, which is a big deal. Um. And so our first intake of rescues was seventies six alpaca from a really great couple in horse Tooth that was retiring really great animals, hardy, really quality fiber um and we just kind of have been with that model ever since as a rescue. And the way you you like sustainable as the run cheese, in addition to working outside,

is selling the fiber, right, the fiber from the animals. Yeah, both sheep and the alpaca provide fiber that we then turned into Really what we do is turn it into yarn. And then sell the yarn. We've never needed to go beyond that because we've always sold out of our yarn almost immediately. Speaking of sheep, here's a nice little clip of James fawning over some of the door sets. There's a dead nice looking sheep. There's some of them that are mixed with the remember what the black face Scotch

black face? Yeah, um, and they're they're a really lovely mix. Yeah, that's a nice combination. Actually pretty rugged, big and just rugged like they put up with everything. Yeah. You can see their coats are just like bread, like they're just a doughey. Yeah. Yeah. The dorsets have like a nice thick fleece and they were like well fleas on the head and the night. Yeah, they make really good We mixed it with our alpacking yard this year. It's a

wonderful yarn. It's really rough thinking that there's people that are just like fucking out pack of farmers. What's going wrong in your life? The US so angry at someone for looking after these fleefy animals. Yeah, Like the big thing was there was that moment where like they have the Nazi barid in town and that's what really like we called them out on it, and that's what started

the animosity. But like it was a great of Nazis, Like, like, I don't feel bad, Like it's weird that they took it to the level of oh, yeah, well we're going to burn down your house and kill you all. That will show you, Yeah, it'll show us that your Nazis.

In our conversation with Jordan's from The Tribune, as somebody who was born and raised in this area, he gave us his perspective on why people may have thought they could get away with attacking the ranch and how there has been this cultural shift in recent years to allow this kind of reactionary militancy. You know, again, I don't think it was anything super organized other than a bunch of these individuals that had already been sort of organized

deciding to do something really stupid. Yeah, and knowing that the sheriff and will at other people wouldn't take it that seriously. That's what I wondered. Yeah, they thought they could get away with it, and they've been a history of that, Like if they've done as that sort of thing happened in the valley in the past, and there's been plenty of just as I said, but you know, but usually that stuff wasn't condoned, so eventually they get

caught in terms of like like pressuring or minorities. You know, in the past, there was there was always some of those types of things, but it also wasn't condoned or even excused even against most If it came out, then those people were chunned and shamed even by Republicans. But these days it's much more like, well, we'll look the other way, you know. Now it's tipped the other direction, thankfully.

So far, the efforts of these few individuals to harm or pressure the Unicorns out of the community have unequivocally failed, and in some ways just made stronger bonds. Yeah. They wanted you to leave, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean all of it was designed to make you so afraid you would go away. Yeah, like yeah, terrorism, and that hasn't happened, right, So you await a year and change, year and a half all nice? Yeah, two years in two years and change and a year plus since since racist And how

are things now? I think at this point people legitimately love us like locals, like, yeah, people call us the Unicorns, and they everybody knows who we are. And it's and not in a bad way, like it's really we feel at home here. Because of the timing of their initial move over to West Cliff, it made local community building kind of challenging and little did they know that they would crucially need community and support in the month to come.

So because it was during the pandemic uh and everything was on lockdown, we didn't establish a lot of community we Uh. Any moved in who was somebody we knew down in birth It which was very close to us, uh, and so she moved up here at the exact same time we were moving up here. So we did have like somebody that we could like talk to and interact with. But they were just as new to the area as

we were. Um. And I mean honestly setting up a ranch and moving from one location to another when you're talking about like multiple hundreds of animals and at that point we were six people. Uh. We were very self focused for the first six months we were up here. UH. So our general sweep was they have Shakespeare in the park and it's a tourist town, so it seems great.

We moved here because we could afford this house and no other house in Colorado uh, and then and then it slowly started to become a parent that we've moved into a very red area. But again, there wasn't any overt signs upon arrival, Like everybody was cool and honestly, like people are still pretty cool of people that suck. As things have steadily stabilized and settled into a version of normal, the Unicorns have been getting more involved throughout

the local community. A little while back, they stepped up to assist with recycling for the county. We stepped up for a small period of time when the recycling company that was handling the counties recycling folded. We stepped up with our horse trailers and just collected recycling and drove it to a facility. Um. Now there's actually a facility in the Westcliffe Landfill that does recycling for the this

county and the neighboring three counties. Um. And that was a building that like we designed and the person who's running at Rocky Mountain Rocky Mountain Recycling, Joni's her name. Amazing people. They're doing great things and we're glad that we could help in whatever we could. It just became a government project and that's when we stepped out because

that's not really what we're about. But yeah, and as socialization has been able to get more possible since the pandemic, the Unicorns have developed ways to connect with the existing community of queers and weirdos in the area. Jen put together like a weekly game night, and it's it's like slowly growing and we're bringing in queer people to play

board games and stuff. Yeah, we've got, uh, four different people from in town who you know, otherwise don't really have a connection to the ranch coming in to play a board game or maybe Magic Night and I never playing Suspicion. That's going to keep growing. Uh, it might be Arkham Horror third Edition, or it might be Mysterium, or it might be Magic. Okay, magic because I would I would would love to beat everyone here in a game.

Oh my gosh, you should play with us. Yes, that fun, even little things like that, like like and it's just always to build a community. Yeah, it's important because we need to be here when like if it gets really bad on the macro cosm scale, things do seem to be getting bad. When we talked with Jordan's about how George from The Sentinel was targeting the Unicorns, the conversation.

The segued into how there's been this shift from economic conservatism to this rising brand of far right Christian vanguardism. I think if I was to classify some of the movement you see in conservative America right now, where it all starts to make sense is that in the past, conservatism was always trying to push against sort of this idea of revolution or progress or too fast. You know,

they always go back to the French Revolution. That's where the left and right kind of started saying, hey, if you move too quickly with progress, everybody gets their heads chopped off, you know. So that was kind of conservatism, which is, we don't really believe in anything necessarily, We're just going to hold the tradition and just kind of

be saying no a lot. But at the same time, that's how conservatism was here until the Soviet Union fell, and then all of a sudden something switched, which is, we have the system that one our system should spread across the world, because if every day but he did American style capitalist democracy, we would enter this weird and randy in utopia. Yeah, into history, but on a conservative side. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, That's exactly what it was. And but the problems is

two thousand one particularly here pushed it over. It went from like, okay, maybe two we're actually going to try to push this on other countries. And really what I called the right or the conservative right now they got bit by the utopian bug, which is if everybody is armed to the teeth, if everybody lives the way that they dictate they should live, which is some weird and randy in version of of life and morality, then we'll enter utopia. And so if anybody stands against you as

that prophet, you are the enemy. So that can be That's why the right now turns on themselves all the time. Is any but it stands against them is the enemy? A liberal stops utopia? Is there definite? Anybody that stops utopia? You have to go through this is liberal or communist, you know. And I think if you look at it in that lens, the world makes a lot more sense. I don't see very much utopianism at all on the

left anymore, whereas on the right it's everywhere. So it's one of those weird political things that's flopped the other direction now, just in different words, different ways. Utopianism is on the right now. They also need to have some type of conflict. They need to have a purging episode. You have to purge everybody that's on the other side to enter utopia. And that that's why Christians are really

into it. They read the Book of Revelation. We have to have the civil war, we have to purge all the leftists because on the other side we enter the Kingdom of God. It's the exactly, It's absolute millinarianism. And that's what we're facing here. If I was a summit up, that's how would say it was. It's definitely millenarism in

the local form it. If we are going to look at the Tenacious Unicorn Ranch story as a microcosm of transphobic violence, then I think it should also be seen as a case of study of the invaluable role solidarity and community have in resisting the concerted effort to harm queer people back when the siege was just starting. Simply feeling able to go to sleep because people were willing to show up for you is just one example from this story. That's a powerful display of the values many

people claim to have but seldom implement. We were exhausted and so to have people show up and be like you, like you, you will be safe tonight, lay down, gets sleep and trusted enough to sleep like because it was incredible. It was incredible. As the unicorns continue to make connections and become a known staple of the larger local community,

it's made organizing any harassment against them more difficult. I bet a bunch of those people who hate us have tested the waters with their friends, like all those unicorns, and they're like, what, they're cool, and oh, yeah that's what that's that's why I meant um. But that's been our ongoing precautions because it hasn't the animosity from that group hasn't gone away, and it does resurface every once in a while, like some people threatened to kill our

dogs a little while back and things like that. So the same people, we're not sure possibly yeah, no way confirming or denying. Nowadays, some security measures have been integrated into their everyday lives thanks to support they've gotten from strangers.

Uh we definitely we have cameras, so uh we we have to go fund me where people amazingly kind of like through a large amount of money at us, which afforded a better fence and cameras everywhere on property, so that in things like gear, yeah, better gear and upgrades and stuff like that. So um, we kind of earned an ongoing keep us safe mode. But like cameras and guns, that's how we do it. And I do, I really do think like we showed the shitty people of this

town like, don't mess with well. We showed what well. What we showed was that community matters and if you weren't a ship hell, community will show up for you. The day after the club queue shooting once again, the ranch posted a tweet asking for people to come. This time. They didn't need help, they wanted to offer it. They're only an hour or so away from Colorado Springs, and they wanted to offer their home as a place to heal, to talk, and to begin moving forward as a part

of the community struck by violence and hate. In addition to a home for the ranchers and the animals, the ranch also provides emergency housing for queer people who aren't safe wherever they currently are. There have been lots of residents at the ranch in the four years Stephen operating. Some of them come briefly and use the stability to get set up with a fresh start in some place. Some others intend to stay but find the country life isn't for them, and some like j become permanent fixtures

on the ranch. The term you've kind of used a lot to describe this place is like a queer haven. And the past year, definitely there's been a pretty volatile increase in transphobia and queer phobia, even like a resurgence of homophobia. So as this type of stuff is happening, as we're seeing more kind of rhetoric around like a queer genocide or queer exterminationism, how do you see this place and you know, possible places like it fitting into

kind of how we how the world seems to be going. Yeah, So what we've seen, aside from people wanting to come up here and live permanently that we're we've put that on hold right now because we're just kind of, yeah, we we don't have the space to like facilitate. But what we have found is something that we are as

a haven. What the thing that we do that's most important is groups of queer people will come here for a recharge and to feel like it is recharging to spend a week up here in community with other queer people with no burden from the outside and just being yourself network. Yeah, and like kind of re igniting your fire for revolution and for your and kind of I don't know, like I don't know, like touching base and realizing that like the community is still big, it is

still growing, people are still standing strong. Being able to come up here and really in vibe that for a week or two has been from the letters I get really important to people and so that that is what we like deliver routinely. Um. We do also like emergency, like save people when we can, Like if you're just got kicked out on the street, you don't know what to do, but you can kind of like you have

somewhere to go, but you can't get there yet. We are a really good way station for people in that position. You come up, uh you know, touch grass for a week and then go back out into the world like and given you know, climate collapse and encroaching fascism, um, which if you don't get then you need to probably study your history. Listen to this podcast more often. Probably yeah,

probably there there. You know, there's gonna be rainbow railroads. Um, there's going to be a lot of bad things happening, and it's gonna happen quickly. Well, we'll still be here. We're trying to grow out of a size that like and help people more directly. Well, but also we are already still here. Yeah we didn't grow, we'd still be here and you could count on us, you know what

I mean. But the networks that are set up, um like being able to quickly get people out of the country, being able to quickly get people to safety from anywhere in the country. Uh, that's what we have been focusing on what watching, much like we started in response to the violence that was that was ratcheting because of the Trump administration. We haven't lessened that right like we are. We're setting up networks and possibilities to get people safe

from very unsafe situations in this country. And that's kind of where it's going fucking everywhere right now. So that kind of networking has we've found not only bolstered people, but is really important. The need for places like these is growing just as quickly as the any factured panic around drag shows. In response, the Unicorns have decided to expand to another property in the valley and one in

Boulder County. These properties will allow them to serve a larger community, to grow crops, have horses, and increase the amount of emergency housing they can provide. The Unicorns have launched a new go fund meat to help cover some of the starting costs to get the new locations up

and running and begin farming operations. The additions would not only be providing more housing and income, but also add the ability to offer support groups and host queer events that are safe and accessible to focus in and around Boulder County, Colorado. You know, we've had some really intimate conversations with some queer people that are like, you know, like what you're doing is kind of keeping me going.

So it's it's pretty seriously big has Uh. It's why we weigh everything so heavily, because it's like, look, we can't fail. Like people people put that much faith and like belief on what you're doing. You can't, um, you can't let them down. Like we've said from the beginning, like this project isn't about us, Oh yeah, Like this project is about the community and giving giving us a

stronghold of just fucking hope. Instead of walking away from this series thinking, oh I'm gonna go move to the ranch, because I guarantee there's not enough room for everybody listening, even with the ongoing expansion. But people should take what we've learned from the Tenacious Unicorn Ranch and apply it elsewhere wherever you are. You can apply this example, with all of its ups and downs, to perspective havens across

the continent, whether in cities or in the country. Building queer zones doesn't need to take form as a comp letely isolated, closed off commune as we've seen here. Having connections and fostering community with those around you is a crucial part of maintaining a livelihood beyond just mere survival.

While this has been a story about the Internet and how it provides both positive connections and a medium for some of the worst beginned hatred, and of story about guns, both how they have been used as a tool to protect trans people and rule Colorado, as well as being part of the original threat to translives and now a

seemingly increasing one. But if there's one thing that I hope people can take away from this story, it's how all of these positive aspects are meaningless unless people are willing to demonstrate solidarity and work towards building a community that's capable of ensuring a queer haven, like the Tenacious Unicorn Ranch, is able to con tinue despite threats from

queer exterminationists. If you want to keep up with the Ranch, you can find them at Tenacious Unicorn Ranch dot com, where you can also find their Patreon and the go fund me page for their expansion. You can find James at James Stout and you can find me at Hungry About I See you on the other side. Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the Universe. It Could Happen

Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.