Soldier of Fortune: The Deadliest Magazine Ever (with Billy Wayne Davis)

doctor Robert Evans. So I let it go to my head a little bit, Jesus, do you like me to hold You got so much going on and plan for after coming in with the cape, just for coming in with you. Just you look like one of those people that like you're going to battle, but then you get the battle and you're wearing things and battles just through. How are you doing to that, Billy man, I'm fucking good. I wanted to thank you, Billy for this, the wonderful

gift of this machete. I got a new one. Billy just gave it some And you know, I'm I'm a little bit of a connoisseur. And what I love about this machete is that in order to draw it. You have to bring it day juriously close to your throat, and that's the real mark of a quality weapon, Like look at that. You do that drunk, you could really damage yourself. That's probably why they had it for sale

on Craigslist. About that, the guy walked out of an alley, handed me that through my car, just handed it to my car, and I gave him twenty five. This is like a real story, you guys, we're laughing. It's not a bit. No. That's when you see a machete for sale on Craigslist, you're like, I'm gonna go try to buy this. You know, you know one thing immediately, and it's the person you're buying that machete from did not themselves come by it least no, God, that is a

stolen machete, but it was in a package. That's He walked off before I could ask him any follow up questions, where I was like, how many do you have? It's a fascinating for me to get to the head of somebody that goes to an ARII and of all of the different high dollar items you could steal from an r I picks like the worst price price to size ratio,

but I think that's just opportunity presented itself. And now you have fourteen machetes that happened to me, but all they did start a podcast, So Billy, you don't know the subject today that we're going with. That's good, that's good. I have a question i'd like to to ask you before I kind of lead into things, um, and I hope it's okay to ask this in front of an intimate group of our friends. Have you ever killed a man on purpose? No? No, I have not, but you've

you've thought about it? Like we all like like that's the thing, right, Yeah, I'm not fuck off with that question. That is you can't answer that and we're recording this. I think it was like witness with all their names, have you ever thought about kill in someone? If we're honest with ourselves, if we're if we're really if we're really being truthful tonight, I think most most men, particularly you know, you're in the line at the bank and

you're like, would have ninja came out? Right? You're at the McDonald's and you just like if something happened, if the ship went down, Like could I could I be a badass? And like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, never, like, if they weren't on this planet, this would help me out. Never never think that way. You said McDonald's. I thought you were going Trump there because how much you love

him some McDonald's, but he ain't step McDonald's. Yeah. So I think it's a pretty normal thing to like wonder how you would react if, like a situation required you to be a giant badass. Um. But that fantasy isn't enough for everybody. Some people need to really commit to the fantasy that, despite all evidence to the contrary, they're huge badasses. And over the last twenty years or so, there's a whole industry that's grown up of tactical gear

and tactical content and tactical magazine. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we like there's a bit of that. And I mean I walked on the stage. Yeah it's fine, um, and I'm gonna go yeah, I don't dive. So we're all familiar with kind of where the story has ended up in and today we're going to talk about the birth of this industry as embodied by a single periodical soldier of fortunes. Yeah, yes, man, I was so hoping you're gonna say that. Yeah, you might want to hold onto

that I know I don't mean good. I think is to entertaining as fuck, entertaining as fun. I think Reddit is a magazine. You might be surprised by how many people this magazine got killed, because it is a lot even better. So our story starts with a single man, Robert Brown. He was born on November two, nineteen thirty two, in Monroe, Michigan, and I've been able to find vanishingly little about his early life, and everything you just said

is boring his head. But he entered college in nineteen fifty and at the time there was a draft on and Brown saw some sort of military service as inevitable. He decided he'd rather be a fighter pilot than anything else, and he joined the Air Force r OTC to make that happen. So far, it all scans um. He wound up not being doing well in college and was forced to transfer in nineteen fifty three to another university because, in his words, the dean and I agreed it was

best I leave Michigan State. I've been on some of those discussions. So, due to a mix of his new colleges policies and his bad eyesight, Brown gradually accepted that his career as a that a career as a fighter pilot was not in the cards, and instead he joined the Marine Corps Reserve. But then, uh, a military recruiter he calls a snake oil salesman convinced him to join the Army instead, saying that he would become a special

agent in the counter Intelligence Corps. You got what you deserve? Yeah, um, so this was obviously a bald faced lie, as our most things that military recruiters tell young men. Uh, but fantasizing of platinum blondes and Catillac convertibles. Brown agreed and he signed on the dotted line. Yeah he did he ever watch like even the movies don't make it look great. No, No, he really thought that he was going to join the Army and become James Bond. But he was young and dumb.

He gets smarter, so he enters the Army on October and he loves it. He's particularly taken with arms training and getting to shoot guns a lot, and the whole experience of basic training convinces him that the draft is an awesome idea and should never have been discontinued. He's he's very, very prone to brainwashing. It was very clear, Like by the end of basic training, he's like, this is the best. Everyone should have to do this, like even the even the drill sergeant, like, we gotta watch him.

We did too good. So once he graduates training, he has informed that this job as special agent uh is not going to work out because it doesn't exist. Who told you it was? Oh, I know who told you that he's funny. Instead, he's told that his job is actually going to be clerk analyst, which is essentially secretarial work. So it's yeah, it's lateral, not a change in money. So Robert was profoundly bad at this job and he failed the training course for it four times. You're really

terrible at hitting at that desk. Yeah, keep stand up, And he just failed down. So he uh. He's admitted since that he uh found the idea of doing secretarial work hateful, and this is what convinced him to drop out of that career track and go to officer candidate school as a way to escape the tedium of office work. He graduates, I just want to tell people what to do. I can't handle this desk. I think I should be

in charge of a lot of people's lives instead. Yeah, So he graduates, and he would later brag of two accomplishments. At Officer Candidate School number one, he received more demerits than any other member of his class. At number two, he was the best shot with a heavy machine gun. I was the angriest and the best at machine guns. And that checks out. You can be a dick when you're good at the machine gun. Really, all that matters is good at machine guns. It's wild that we haven't

had a presidential candidate run on that platform. We got some months. Yeah, that's how Bloomberg could have come in. And he's still so. Brown's dreams of daring do in the army were initially cut short by his father's untimely deaf death. He opted for a state side job in Wisconsin, working what he calls a cushy desk job. He left active service in nineteen fifty seven and spent the next few years in the Army reserves, mostly participating in marksmanship competitions.

He managed to say some to say some of his desire for action whene Fidel Castro launched his rebellion against the dictatorial rule of Fugencio Batista. So this happens right as he gets out of the army and for a few months Brown improbably became a pro cast stro activist, even purchasing and hiding at a legal machine gun with the goal of running weapons to Cuban rebels in Wisconsin. From Wisconsin, you know, the classic Wisconsin to Cuba flight path.

Everybody French connection. They call Wisconsin Big Cuba. So eventually he tricked his college's student newspaper into issuing him press credentials, and he spent a brief period of time and Havana, but failed to see any action. He was repeatedly invited by contexts he'd met in Havana to participate as a war correspondent a number of revolutions throughout South America, but never quite managed to make it work out, mostly because he was afraid he'd get killed. Man, now he really

gets in the way of the secret agent work. It does. That would that would be a bummer if you had to like go alone into a situation. I'm not gonna do this. I keep missing matings. It's a lot of anxiety. So he manages to get hired by the AP to interview a refugee Spanish general promising to overthrow Francisco Franco, Spain's dictator. What do you mean? He may like, I mean some there's some places like there's just refugee General's

left and right. Man, you just gotta He sounds like mean, he's just stumbling into all this stuff that is kind of his life. He's like I was in Westconsin and I was like, I'm gonna go Cuba for a minute, and people are like, okay, Robert. So he writes an article based on his his conversation with this general and it did well, and Brown struck up a friendly acquaintance ship with the general who had helped to train Castro's guerrillas.

So this guy gives Brown a copy of a book called A hundred Fifty Questions for a Guerrilla and it's the militant kind, not the Yeah, it's a manual for like so funny. I just picked up Males book on guerrilla warfare, and the first thing I thought was like, woll I was reading. I was like, so he talked, guerrilla is to fun This is the dumbest joker. But it made me laugh for a good fifteen minutes. And I haven't been able to start that book because there's time I do right. Uh. So it's a manual for

like how to wage an insurgent war? Right? Um. So he gets a copy of this book from this general and he instantly sees dollar signs, and he opens a publishing company to translate the book into English and sell it in the United States. So that's his his first business. That's where the most guerillas are. Ye. So Robert worked as a reporter for a little while, writing articles for Guns Magazine and similar publications. But as the Vietnam War kicked off for the US in the nineteen sixties, are

simpler then what you gonna make a magazine? What's about goods? I got a dirty one is called jugs? They really should emerged. I feel like the gas station. So the Vietnam War kicks off and Robert Brown finds himself drawn back to his dream of experience in combat. He rejoined active duty and became a Green Beret, serving from nineteen sixty eight to nineteen sixty nine. It was easier. They're just saying stuff. It's like a weird mad lib of like this dude's life because he was like, he's bad

at desk work, couldn't be a fire pilot. Then he's like, then he west went to Wisconsin, got really good at desk work. And then he's like, funk this, I'm going to Cuba and doing some weird lights spying. That's our show again. With all of these guys, it's an ability to pivot that makes them great. It's impressive, and he's a pivot. So he pivots all the way to Vietnam and gets horribly wounded at nineteen sixty nine in a mortar attack. He pivot. So he was pretty good at

a soldier up until getting wounded. Um, but he would and it would eventually retire from the service as a lieutenant colonel. But sadly for him at least, the Vietnam War did not end well for the United States. I'm sorry if that's a spoiler to anybody. Um. He returned home to a nation that widely considered the war he'd nearly died in to have been a colossal waste of money.

Many protesters called soldiers like him baby killers, and Brown quickly recognized that he was part of a new generation of retired warrior who felt increasingly isolated from mainstream American society.

See World War two had been this like widely celebrated collective endeavor, but Korea and Vietnam weren't, and that left hundreds of thousands of veterans feeling like their service was neither appreciated nor understood, and a big chunk of those men in including Robert Brown, still found themselves drawn to stories of combat and daring do. In nineteen seventy five, the same year that Vietnam War ended, Robert Brown found himself traveling around Africa and basically living as a war tourist,

visiting combat zones just to hang out somewhere exciting. You never done that, Billy, I never thought that that's the thing. Like, Hey, I'm gonna go watch a little bit war for a while. Have I Have I ever told you about Iraqi? Margharita's by the way, Look I get it, Like I used to not understand like people watching the Civil War like from a field, but now like I understand, like some people just like to fight. So you just go like, hey, we'll watch him do it. But the way he's doing

is not no cool. So while he's touring around and just hanging out in war zones, Robert Brown befriends some mercenaries on their way to Oman to put down an insurrection for the Sultan. Spirit Air spirit Air. Yeah. So meeting these guys gives Robert Brown the idea to write the Oman Ministry of Defense inquiring about taking the job himself. And they send him a contract, just like a blank contract to be a mercenary for the government of Oman.

And well, no, he he recognizes immediately anyone who's just gonna send me become a mercenary letter site unseen in the mail, probably don't want to fight for that army. Not a great idea, but he has a smarter idea for what to do with it, So go on. He takes out ads in a series of gun magazines reading want to be a mercenary in the Middle East, Send five dollars. All y'all think this through. This was not Internet where you're like click, that's hilarious. That was This

is gonna take some time. This is some errands involved. It's like four to six weeks to get the letter there. Yeah, yeah, and then you gotta wait for the money to come back. He's all this through. He's a smart man, So when people would send him five dollars, he would just xerox the contract he'd received and mail it to them. Brown later recalled, I'm not mad at him at all. No, no, no, this is kind of brilliant. Yeah. I don't get to where he's a bastard yet. So Brown later recalled, I

got scores of replies. Newsweek spotted this and did an article on my ad, and it went through the roof. I was getting replies from people in Bangladesh, Greece. I was in the army in Turkey for five years. I want to be a mercenary. I realized I was onto something. You are. Yeah, it's not a good thing. You're out too. No, and it's unlikely that any of Brown's clients wound up actually fighting froman One assumes most men who volunteered to join a war effort based on an ad in a

magazine are not particularly enticing specimens of soldiery um. But the financial the financial success of the endeavor convinces Brown that there's a lot of money to be made and playing to the dream in every man's heart, that he might, and the right circumstances, be a fucking badass. So this is the thing, he realizes, and so Robert Brown uses the ten thousand dollars he made scamming gun nuts to fund the creation of a new magazine, Soldier of Fortune.

That was the appropriate That was the right amount of applause for that. Yeah, he's like one gun fell out, just fell apart, So Brown stated, go with this magazine was to rehabilitate the image of the warrior in American society. I like him a lot. Yeah, And Soldier Fortune magazine probably would have just been a blip on the radar if it weren't for a real stroke of marketing genius

by Robert Brown. Rather than portraying or angling it as a magazine for military veterans, of which there are only a few, and even a smaller number who glorify what actually happens. In more, he fashioned Soldier of Fortune as the journal of professional adventurers, a magazine for mercenaries and people who think would be cool to be a mercenary? Do you like hiking? And pretended so well, they won't

let you get boys life anymore. So Uh then, as now, there were at most a couple of thousand English speaking works in the world who were actually mercenaries. But Brown's real target was not hard bitten mercenaries. It was aging baby boomers who thought they probably could have been hard bitten mercenaries if they hadn't gotten that girl pregnant back in sixty two. All that mud, it would stoker, I'd

have been Vietnam towards some ligaments doing fucking. Here's how Mike Royko of the Chicago Tribune described the magazine in nine. It's directed to professional mercenaries, men who will fight for pay in those who want to hire them. But since mercenaries represent only a tiny portion of the reading population, the magazine tries to broaden its appeal to include those who might be called war fans and the weapon their

work through a magazine. Yeah. So. The first ever issue of Soldier of Fortune features a glossy color picture of a soldier with a rifle behind a barbed wire fence with a red sun setting in the background. The whole image was cast in a green tent. Is it being

viewed through night vision goggles? Articles included You're gonna like this, billy underwater knife fighting techniques, lunge, lunge again, free and it it tells you kind of where I am on this spectrum that I get understanding, Like, yeah, I want to know what it's like to fight with a knife in the water, but I recognize that having techniques applied to it as ridiculous, right, like, do it better? So in addition to urban knife fighting techniques or underwater knife

fighting technique, sorry, urban street Survival part one. I'm gonna guess we all assume how racist that article was, right, like, I don't need to like. Yeah, and then an article titled American mercenaries in Africa. Now that last article, I'm gonna guess the person who said, huh knows where we're going with us. I don't like it. It was a feature about the conflict in Rhodesia. Yeah, we're gonna talk a lot about Rhodesia right now. I was having what

do you know about Rhodesia? I don't know much, and judging by their reaction, I wish I could leave. I was like, this is a fun one. Nothing bad has happened. It can't all be underwater knife it can't all be underwater knife fighting. But you really can only do that once. It's a general rule. So Rhodesia was a white supremacist state in modern days Zimbabwe that broke away from the British Empire in nineteen sixty five over the issue of whether or not black people should be able to vote.

The three percent of the nation that was white did not think they should be. Okay, from a logic standpoint, if you want power, I can see where they're like, we've been so shitty to you guys for so long. Shit, what if you all can't vote? Nope? Fuck, I feel like three per cents enough for us to keep a

lid on this thing, this wanting to vote thing. So just jesus, I'm gonna read a quote to you, Billy from Soldier of Fortune magazine describing the Rhodesian conflict, and they have a different take on it than I do. In nineteen sixty five, Therhodesian government got together with the British government to try to sort out a way to end the war that was smoldering and about to explode. Ian Smith was the governor of Rhodesia and leader of

the Rhodesia Front. The insurgents were on the move. The nineteen sixty five talks accomplished nothing with the Brits wanted was for the Blacks to get the vote. One man, one vote. Of course, that would mean the Blacks would get into power, So the white Rhodesian's unilaterally implemented the Universal Declaration of Independence in nineteen sixty five. So that's our soldier of Fortune magazine, the country they wanted to You can't have your country, so you're not read history.

So a lot of Rhodesia's black residents decide that we should probably overthrow the government, which is a reasonable conclusion to reach given the circumstances. Um, yeah, I bet they all came together at once. I mean, like, hey, the British Empire is all on the reasonable side of things. I think these guys might be really bad. Yeah. Before Oh so, having lived under an oppressive capitalist system their

whole lives, most of these rebels decided communism sounded pretty good. Uh. The U. S s R. In China wound up backing separate guerrilla armies, and the two fought each other sometimes, but they put enough pressure on the embattled white minority that things began to get very dire for the Rhodesian government.

This racist nation's problems were compounded by the fact that virtually the whole world, except for South Africa, slammed Rhodesia with sanctions as life in this time, why not South Africa? You know, Billy, I've never heard anyone theorize on that. Look it up later. Yeah. As life in the tiny, landlocked country grew more difficult for a large grew more difficult, a large chunk of the white population fled the country, mostly for South Africa. Stuck, you guys, I know a place.

Studying there is going to be interesting. Stuck between a rock and a hard place. The Rhodesian government decided to turn their national struggle and struggle into a cost celeb for the racist right wing worldwide. Of course, they didn't frame it as a racist crusade to stop black self determination. Instead, they build it as a fight against the encroachment of communism. Prime Minister Ian Smith called his nation the ultimate bastion against communism in the on the African continent, and this

worked pretty well. Mainstream American Republicans can tended to embrace the idea. William F. Buckley. William F. Buckley found it, organized the Friends of Rhodesian Independence campaign. He just forgot his mask. This camp pain work to spread propaganda to Americans about what a cool place Rhodesia was, but no single public William historically, motherfuckers, what's your legacy? I'm a motherfucker, and I made a lot of money being a motherfucker,

but I don't spend it like you think I would. Yeah. So, Rhodesia had a lot of support in the worldwide right wing, but no single publication did as much to popular popularize the Rhodesian cause as Soldier of Fortune magazine. Starting in nineteen seventy five, they ran a series of lurid articles

about the American volunteers already fighting in Rhodesia. Interviews with these men focused on the failures of the US to stop Communism from getting a foothold in Africa, which was heightened after congressional democrats stopped the CIA from aiding fascists and Angola against the socialist regime. One mercenary in that first Soldier of Fortune issue complained, the West isn't doing its job. The US especially isn't doing its duty. If they're too scared to fight the communists, than people like

me have to act independently. I consider it my duty to fight in Rhodesia. After Vietnam and and Goala, we can't afford to lose any more countries. I ain't allowed to kill in America. Let me go over endition killing. So while Soldier of Fortune was smart enough to not throw out any racial slurs, the racism in its Rhodesian

coverage was pretty obvious. At one point, a mercenary was quoted as saying, what we have here is an ideal core of white people who are able to raise the standard of living among the Africans without US conditions will decline rapidly. But you guys, he didn't say slurs. He didn't say slurs, didn't say slurs. I bet he has strong opinions about the fact that that's free speech, and he should be able to. But let me communicate my idea. After Vietnam, the US had probably the highest population of

unemployed combat veterans in the world. A few of these men joined the Rhodesian fighting effort and rose to high levels and its military establishment, but most volunteers were far from hardened operators. Instead, there were folks who had missed out on their chance to fight in Vietnam but wanted desperately to experience combat. Oh wish we had videos. Yeah, you guys to do right, Yes, it's like a truth.

So for these men, Soldier of Fortune published a series of articles written by major Nick Lamprett, the chief recruiting officer for the Rhodesian Army. He provided step by step advice for how they could apply to join and be flown out to the country to be inducted into the army as conscripts. Lamp Preck promised that the work would be difficult but rewarding. Sometimes there's a delay when I have to switch pieces of paper that normally gets edited

out by Daniels, So let's give a shout out to him. Yeah, that's right, and by Chris, who's not here tonight. But it's also great. Yeah, let's give it up for Chris too. So Chris, Okay, this is Nick Lamprect. Rhodesia has many things to offer, good Rhodesian beer, friendly, populous and what I wanted to stop, motherfucker goddamnit, and what I would describe as a free and easy, unhurry ways of life,

of wide open spaces. And they're filled with some of those friendly locals with sniper rifles shooting at us for unexplicable reasons. They hate these cans, Yeah, they hate these cans of good Rhodesian beer. For years, Soldier of Fortune, rand glossy recruiting articles with full page spreads featuring the elite Rhodesian Light Infantry and sell US scouts locked in

glorious combat. Some four hundred men were eventually induced to join the fight by soldier of Fortune magazine, and as you might expect, they were not very good at it. Most Rhodesian it's hot. Yeah. Most Rhodesian volunteers were people whose lives in the US were going badly enough that they opted to join the army based on whatever I'm doing. Feels worse than joining the army based on a magazine ad. Yeah,

I've been there. Yeah, I've been what's in the back of magazine the guys that were that's a glossy magazine ad and it said beer, we're not great fighters. No, no, not not ideal soldiers. No so uh. In nine, one reporter noted the majority found the routine too leugh to, too rough to last more than a few months. The desertion rate among American citizens who have joined the Rhodesian Army over the past two years has estimated to run about a Yeah, that's pretty great, but I don't want

to meet this. No, no, no, they like this is there's some legitimately scary guys among yeah, and of course a good number of the American volunteers did not survive their time in Rhodesia. John allan Coe, Yeah, that's fine. To clap a lot of claps for dead Rhodesians. That's what I like to hear. No, Yeah, I don't know. John allan Coe, a medic from Cleveland, Ohio, joint based on a Soldier of Fortune article and died in combat almost as soon as he arrived in the country. Soldier

Dangerous Overthing. Soldier of Fortune published a hagiographic article quoting him as saying this. Since coming to Rhodesia, I've often heard people remark that it's inevitable for the country and all of Southern Africa to follow the winds of change and go the same way as other former allan ease to the north. This is rubbish and only indicates a lack of fighting spirit, guts and the will to rule a civilization built by better men. Would that last part

meaning he was being vague? I don't know that. They couldn't ask him a follow up question because, you know, yeah, because a better man got him. Better man got him so. Soldier of Fortune articles on Rhodesia regular rarely made blatant lies. It was a lot easier to just ignore facts that didn't reinforce their narrative. And one piece they noted, it's

a lot easier. It makes everything easier. The young rivaled Sella Scouts, the covert elite special force regiment of a thousand that consisted of black and white, with a majority of blacks, were credited with gathering spot on intelligence for the regular army. And it is true that the Rhodesian armed forces were mostly black, but Soldier of Fortune neglected to mention that on the white men were allowed to be officers. Yeah, like nobo, are y'all shocked about this

is consistent by ignoring the uncomfortable reality of Rhodesia. Soldier of Fortune succeeded in painting a picture of a gallant lost cause fight. And it's not wildly different from this. The from the lost Cause narrative of the Confederacy. Actual articles from real journalists who visited Rhodesia, like this nineteen seventy nine Washington Post article made the reality clear. Quote.

The first impressions are of the rural South I knew as a boy in the nineteen thirties, Black maids and houseboys earning twenty to sixty dollars a month, fetching boo, saying master and boss. Black labors working for twelve to twenty dollars a month plus rations, cluster and grass grasshots on the white farmer's land, like the Mississippi sharecroppers of the remembered past past. They are like children. A housewife says, you have to do everything for them. You have to

stand over them to get anything done. It's more trouble than it's worth sometimes, but they are very happy people. It's not like South Africa. A young woman asks if we have a dishwash, a clothes washer, and a dryer. She laughs, you know what we call them here, and then she says what is essentially the N word, thank you for coming to the comedy show. The only part of history that's like this. Yeah, No, everything else is

actually pretty great. Yeah. The Rhodesian Bush War ended in nineteen seventy nine, when rebel succeeded in blowing up the nation's entire strategic fuel reserve. Probably shouldn't have kept it all in the one place. Not a great call, especially on beer. Not Yeah. A final toll more than eleven hundred Rhodesian soldiers died, along with roughly ten thousand rebels

and more than twenty thousand civilians. It is unlikely that the few hundred mercenary Soldier of Fortune induced to join had a measurable impact on the confliction, but they did an awful lot to influence how Rhodes has gone on to be remembered by racists around the world. Remember that Soldier of Fortune article I quoted from earlier that aked about how weird it was that the Blacks wanted to vote unfortunately. Now, when would you guess that article was written, Billy?

Probably like the seventies, right, probably, No, it was two thousand twelve. You guys, I've been following the news. Yeah, somebody, I'll need to go home and google the news. You're gonna be like, what we should do, something we should we need to do? Maybe find us a strategic well written No, I'm not gonna probably shouldn't make statements like

that here. Yeah, so I should note before we get onto the more fun wacky stuff that three years after that article was published, in two thousand and fifteen, Dylan Ruth walked into a black church in Charleston and shot nine people to death. His ated goal was to provoke a race war, and he left behind a manifesto titled The Last Rhodesian. Yep, cool, Yep, there's a whole road easier chunk at YouTube two. You do not want to read the comments? No, No, you don't. So did you?

Did you read the comment? Yeah? It's not good? Yeah? I figured you did. Yeah, so um. Most of Soldier of Fortune's argument in favor of the Rhodesian government came from the fact that the government it replaced was ruled by Robert Mugabe, hitler loving monster who killed a lot of people. Mugabe was absolutely terrible, and there's no arguing

with that. But the argument Robert Brown would make that the Rhodesian government was the only thing that held Zimbabwe back from tyranny was nonsense because the reality is that Mugabi didn't take control of the guerrilla forces fighting Rhodesian's government until the previous commander was assassinated by Rhodesian forces in the late seventies. Mugabi rose to power because there was a civil war and he was good at fighting it.

Rides had transitioned into a democracy in nineteen six five, Mugabi wouldn't have come to Power War s o f S articles also ignored the brutal realities of the Rhodesian regime, which jailed peaceful black political leaders and moss and employed a torture technique on them known as skull bashing, which probably shouldn't be referred to as a technique. It's not a technique if it's just in the name. It's just what you're doing to them. That's not a technique that

that's not that you need to learn. That's just human instinct. While the Rhodesian Bush War was a disaster for humanity, it was a great time for Robert Brown and the

writers of Soldier of Fortune magazine. They got to take all sorts of little trips to the country and bring in guns and take part in gunfights because like they were helping bring in soldiers, so it's like, sure, you can go, you can go shoot at strangers in the middle of the savannah with us, like absolutely, So it was like a really fun time for them, and it

was a perfect situation for Brown. He got to play soldier whenever he wanted and then head home when things got really scary and you didn't have to hang around for strategic oil reserves blowing up in the light. It's like a rich guy hunter. Yeah, yeah, that's what it is. It's like those dudes that go up and like my friend does it in Alaska. He tracks bears and they get the thing and then he's like, literally just do everything and they come over and they pull the trigger.

It's like it's good for conservation. He like explained it to me. He's like, but funk does motherfucker's forever also, And I was like, I was like, I'm so conflicted. I don't know how to tell you. He's scary hunt bears, you know what I mean. It's like it's like volunteerism, but with war. Yeah, yeah, it's yeah, So that that's what the Soldier of Fortune writers get up to. Well, this is all going on, and the whole performance did

great things for Soldier of Fortune subscription numbers. By the end of the war, more than a hundred thousand people were signed up for the magazine. So it turns out this is a good business. Hyeah, don't worry. Nothing like this ever happened again. Repeatedly fixed it. Yeah, we learned our lessons. A brief FBI investigation into whether or not the magazine was breaking the law by soliciting mercenaries. Also,

how drum up interest in Soldier of Fortune? Okay, that is a good question I've been had in the back. I was like, Yo, can you do that? Yes, you can. And here's why. See, the men who joined the Rhodesian military were conscripted, so they became regular soldiers, so they weren't mercenaries. So it wasn't illegal to induce people to do this. That makes sense, right, everybody's on board. I love a loophole, you know what I mean? No, I go,

I'm not a mercenary by loophole. Yeah. And so, as the nineteen seventies rolled to an end, Robert Brown continued to send his writers off to little wars around the world. He focused primarily on struggles between communist and anti communist forces, like the fighting in Angola. Brown was canny enough not to solicit mercenaries directly this time, but he did allow his readers to place classified ads in the magazines with no restrictions whatsoever. Those are good. Yeah, you guys ever

been on the internet, That's what that is. One of these ads caught the eye of a con artist or the fact that soldier forts had this classified section caught the eye of a con artist named David Buffkin, a former I know, right, like what's in a name? You know? David Buffkin as a man who's started Soldier of Fortune. I got a idea well prior to finding that he was a crop duster um, and he decided that crop dusting had gotten old and he would rather be a

mercenary recruiter. So he started putting up ads in local newspapers and Soldier of Fortune magazine, trying to raise a hundred mercenaries to fight against the communists in Angola. To make his case seem more legit, he lied and claimed that he'd been given an eighty thousand dollar contract by the CIA for this. Yeah let checks out, yeah yeah yeah. So a few dozen would be warriors reached out to Buffkin, but, as one actual mercenary later recalled, Buffkin obviously had no

funds available. He operated out of motels, He had no office. Potential recruits had to pay their own travel expenses. It was definitely a shoester operation. Now, if I'm gonna go fight for your country, you gotta pay for me to fly out there. That's how he said. Motels, Yeah, we're gonna give you a lot of exposure, though it's gonna really help your career. So a few very dumb men

did agree to join. Former CIA officer George Bacon read this ad on Soldier of Fortune magazine, enjoyed the war effort, which the CIA does a lot of shady ship. But let's not pretend they're smarter than they are. Okay, see that's someone they got. He programmed and it's not right. And then he thought he was done, and he's like, no, I read the thing. It still happened. I'm in the sag and right, oh we baking up. Yeah, we did some damage to Bacon. He might have been one of

the ones they gave too much acid to. Uh So, like many Rhodesian volunteers, Bacon was basically immediately since he and his fellow antique communist fighters were vastly outnumbered by tens of thousands of Cuban soldiers. I think there was like a last second thing where he was like, this is the yeah, you know what, this doesn't feel like

the c I oh no, it's up dead. I don't know, you know, the Bay of Pigs wasn't that long ago, So this kind of does feel like the c Yeah, yeah, written all over yea, who's yeah, there's thirty of us in a lot of Cuban Army guys. Yeah, this kind of feels like the CIA. I'm dead. Daniel Gearhardt, a thirty four year old Vietnam veteran and financial distress, also replied.

His wife told him this was a terrible idea, but Buffkin managed to convince him, and soon he found himself over and come to He was capt it instantly, without ever getting into common. His wife and family begged President gerald Ford to do something. But if you know one thing about gerald Ford, no, no, no, not unless you're Richard Nixon. So the government of Angolas they made that dirty.

That's a weird reaction. So the government of Angola sentenced him to death and executed him with a handful of other mercenaries in nineteen seventy six. He and George we're not the first soldier of Fortune readers to die as a result of the magazine's classic classified ads section, and they would not be the last. We have a legacy to ophold here now. Billy I found a copy of the magazine from the Year of Our Lord nineteen eighty and I'd like to read you a handful of the

different ads in it. Are you you want to? Yeah? This is this is don't worry no more depressing racism, some depressing murder, and some depressing racism, but entertaining murder. Probably at the entertaining murder for something. I noticed that and then like somebody else does, and you guys like, yeah, it's a bit of a whip lash episode. We're all over the place tonight. So add number one male years old, five ft nine pounds, desire security position any location, excellent

marksman and speaks fair German. I'm anti social and prefer working alone. That's like the Vegas like, just let me kiel a German. Du you need a German kield, I'll do it. I'm quiet. Oh we speak? Ohh I was? I read something else and speaks German and likes to shoot. But and anti social. Oh there's a lot of bad people in this magazine. Yeah. The next ads shrying to help you. I get it. That's bad. It took me

a minute and I'm glad it did. So. The next ad x C I A attach a seeks area in us to it actually does, but like like proud boy kind of racist, so it seeks area in US to fulfill purpose of pro Western ideals and their success. Tradecrafts many cut out, sanitization, sanctification, playback, disinformation, bag jobs, false flag legends, peeps and sounds, sneak ease, and sisters available. I don't know what sisters means in this context. I bet he'd use the same thing on his dating profile up.

Oh yeah, thirty years later and this is just an okay Cupid Yeah, Snakey's Oh this ad billy former agent in place, qualified in counter ops, SERAI brief Debrief, War Planning interrogator to to three and three oh eight arms dead, serious inquiries only contact micro Data Systems of Huntington's Beach, California.

That's awesome. I don't worry bullshit the next ad. I'll live an orange Gammy's Madman's Book of Formulas, how to make step by step goodies like knockout drops, explosives, silencer's poisons, letter bomb, and many others you need to know to make a letter bomb. Knockout drops. I bet they're good. I bet they work. I bet that's where Cosby got his.

I'm just kidding. It was probably a real doctor. You guys goome off and the last little lad we're gonna read Billy wanted Patriots, especially veterans who see the coming national crises and desire to be prepared right to for free information to Christian Patriots Defense League. Yeah yeah, we've moved on to Christian mingles. What you're saying, Yeah, yeah, farmers only I do whenever I see Farmers Only, I can't imagine someone saying the name of that service without

holding a gun. Yeah, no, no, I think the people that came up, but that we're like, yeah, now, the slogan for Soldier of Fortune magazine, displayed displayed in vibrant color on a poster in their Boulder, Colorado office, was killing is our business, and business is good. Actually, our business is a magazine and we most get just you know, we do a lot of ink writing. They're all fat.

And I have to say, though, like the fact that their business is killing and it's good was not as untrue as you'd think, because throughout the early nineteen eighties, Soldier of Fortune did a brisk business and selling ads to contract killers. Yeah yeah, yeah, it's wild because like they kind of invented the dark web before the dark but while all of them, the hitman on the dark web are just FBI agents. Like this, this actually happened,

like real people did murders through these. Yeah, I'm gonna quote now from a media I'll be getting people in trouble here. I'm gonna quote now from a media matters right up one of them. Knoxville, Tennessee one of them, and Knoxville, Tennessee. Nightclub operator and former prison guard named Richard Michael Savage said that he received thirty to forty calls a week after he placed this ad in the

June issue of the magazine Gun for Higher. Thirty seven year old professional mercenary desires jobs Vietnam veteran, discreet and very private bodyguard, courier, and other special skills all jobs considered. Which is a nice way of saying, I'll kill people. I'll kill him. Yeah, I'm from Tennessee. I'll kill somebody. That was one of the ads. I'm from Tennessee. Some

people don't understand, like the volunteers, they think that's our nickname. No, that's because whenever there was a kid like war or anything, every Tennessee and his wit it's okay to go kill people. There I'll be there. I don't give a ship. Which side is just something I'm good at. And the Tennessee Mercenaries doesn't have the ring to it, the volume, because you gotta sail that ship. You know, we're learning, you

know what I mean. So uh. One of the people who called Richard Savage wanted to recruit a small army to rate a gold mine in Alaska. He's go to a bar in Alaska. It's it's really it is not hard to find army man looking for work there. Who's got a gun? Oh? You brought him? Follow me, That's it.

I'll be there in May. Another caller pitched him on a plot to steal an army payroll in South America, and based on its interview with a friend of Chard Savage who was in contact with him during this whole period, People magazine reported this in quote. Yet another wanted to rate Nicaragua and promised to supply guns, camouflage, clothing, rubber boats, and fifty dollars for each mercenary when the raid was completed. Savage was enthusiastic about every hair braids. It's a good deal.

I do it. Yeah, sure, why not? You don't have to complete the mission, no, you get the money gets. Savage was enthusiastic about every hairbrain scheme he heard, but ultimately was persuaded to concentrate on murder. So if the caller sounded discreet, Savage would ask for a round trip for a round trip airline ticket and a thousand dollars, the two would meet face to face, then feel each other out until each was certain of the other's credentials.

It's a good business to being getting paid thousand dollars just to talk about killing a guy that's not against the law. Probably anyway, I got a new business idea, Billy. I think d C is the place for that. Yeah, in a way, Robert, Yeah, sorry, I just gave that out a little early there. So, um, I know, I know, I'm fucking hacking a fraud. So Savage took on a job to kill Richard Brown, an Atlanta man he and to triggerman also recruited through soldier of Fortune magazine, ambushed

Brown and his teenage son with AMAC eleven. They killed Brown and wounded his boy. Four months after this, Savage was hired to kill Anita Spearman of Palm Beach, Florida. He subcontracted the head out he had. Another Soldier of Fortune reader. Yeah, listen, I got a lot going on. A guy named and at Fast in my work for me. So Savage and the guy that he subcontracted were paid twenty dollars for the hit by Spearman's husband, himself a big fan of Soldier of Fortune magazine. Another hit man

I'm a huge fan of Would you murderous? I've always wanted to do this. Sorry, I'm a little starstruck. Gets here's the money. Horror she dried here? Should not bring her in? I don't know. Another hitman was Texas trucker John Hearno. He ran an ad in four issues of the magazine looking for high risk assignments USKR overs u S or overseas. So many people called hern that he had to hire an answering service to handle all the demand.

He estimated that of his callers wanted him to commit some sort of crime, ranging from bombings to jail breakings. Too simple. Assault. He received, he says, three to five contract murder offers every single day, which says a lot about the readers of Soldier Fortune magazine. Finally, Yeah, in February five, Herne took on the job of murdering Sandra Black. Her husband paid him ten thousand dollars to shoot his wife the first one. If you're getting that many, you know,

that's a very good question. I would love to asked him that. Same with the other dude, you're getting like, I'm like, he was, like, listen, they were all great offers, but I got in this today murder. Um. You know, Billy, A big part of success when you do what you want for a living is figuring out how to say no. You know, it's a struggle, it is, so Richard said,

oh yeah, um. So Hearne was eventually caught and tried um, and he has insisted that he never would have gotten start as a hitman if started as a hitman, if it weren't for Soldier of Fortune Magazine. What a sentence. Richard Savage was also caught by the law. He too, squealed on Soldier of Fortune magazine, and suddenly a deluge of news coverage hit the magazine. Robert Brown denied any

responsibility for the deaths. He ordered his executive editor to make this statement, We're as cupable as any newspaper which accepts an ad from a used car salesman, and doesn't go out to check the condition of the brakes. Same thing, tied Jesus, It's amazing. You think they had a meeting like we'ing go with this one. Yeah. Oh, they must have workshop the ship out of that. So we're gonna go to use karthin. I'm glad we all got guns. Still. Brown was wise enough to stop running ads for murderers

in nineteen eighty six. If he felt any guilt over all the deaths, he did not show it, writing in a nineteen eighty six editorial, for the last decade, I have hunted terrorists with the Rhodesian African rifles and fired up a Russian fort in Afghanistan with the Mujahideen. Between firefights, takeovers and insurgencies, I managed to put out a magazine Kick him in the balls. Yeah. He also managed to get sued by Richard Brown's sons for his role in

their father's murder. They were awarded four point three million dollars in civil judgments judgments, which was upheld by the U. S. Court of Appeals in nineteen two. The New York Times wrote this about the case. The Eleventh Circuit Panel said, however, that while the advertisement in the Texas case was facially innocuous and ambiguous in its message. Mr Savages advertisement clearly conveyed that he was ready, willing and able to use his gun to commit crimes. Yeah, I got that. I

got a couple other people got that too, Billy. Yeah, I'm not good at codes either. Brown wound up settling with the bron family for two dred thousand dollars. When he was interviewed about this later in two thousand sixteen, he said this, they really tried the magazine, not the cases. Two guys meet through the magazine, They have a friendly relationship for six months, they don't talk about anything illegal, but then six months later they agree to commit this

horrendous crime. I'm a dick. Well, if they meet up in a bar six months later they say, let's rob a bank, should the bartender be held liable? It was total crap. Well, like the bar was like a bartend, like a bar for people that rob banks. Yeah, if it was the bartender, probould be like the police would be like yo, I feel like the booze was just a you got me. Yeah, if instead of checking I d S, the bar required you to plan to murder someone's wife, in order to enter like then we then

the comparison would be valid. I will say that and that's an Applebach just that is an apple BEEAs and some waffle houses not a good one. So from that point on, the Soldier of Fortune classified ad section turned to slightly more licit fair. They sold Mail Order Brides Bounty Hunter treating all of a sudden, I got real serious, you guys, that's how you treated that one. They sold Male Order Bride's Bounty Hunter training manuals, Secrets of the

Ninja Lessons, old Nazi equipment, functional machine. What does that mean? I think you know what it means. It means as well as silencers and sniper rifles, they send you a potato. Soldier of Fortune also did a brisk business and selling the kind of T shirts that are all too common in randomly generated Facebook counts today. I do not want to know what the shirts with slogans like no happiness

is a confirmed kill. There are a few social programs that cannot be solved by the proper application of high explosives, and the ever popular kill them all and let God sort them, saying yes, we have Robert Brown to thank for launching the bafflingly violent t shirt industry, which, by my rough count, provides roughly six of Facebook's operating revenue today. So so belly. Soldier of Fortune also contributed to the birth of the needlessly aggressive sticker industry, selling door stickers

labor is their life after death. Trespass here and find out and never mind the dog, be aware of owner, and of course bumper stickers. Like the only way they'll get my gun is to pry it from my cold dead hands, and the irony of that one. So Robert Robert Milch wrote Red Dawn classic movie. There's very famous scene in the beginning when the Soviets are invading were like, you see a guy with a they get my gun when they pried for my cold dead hands, lying dead

behind his truck with at five. Robert Milch was the subject of like a tin page spread like article in Soldier of Fortune magazine. It's just fun, it's just a good time. It's good time. Boulder is a nice place. It is a nice place. He went for college and likes it. He went to college and behold, I went to the University of Colorado. How do you go there?

And then like I'm gonna be a professional well different age, okay, because I don't know if you've been in the Boulder lightly, but no one has murdered anything there, and like even soap, they don't. It's just where if you rich kids go

that can't get into Ivy League schools. So in addition to all this, Soldier of Fortune continue to play host to a series of classic articles for the modern man, who's pretty sure he would have been Conan the Barbarian if a few cards had landed differently, and yeah, yeah, time cards to a lot of cards actually, And I think the single best example of this magazine's content is this classic article that I'm so excited to read you Billy Wayne Davis. Wow, that's not a good sign. Secrets

of Modern battle Acts Fighting by Jeff Cooper. This ain't everyday knowledge, and this ain't old school ship modern secret modern battle axe fighting trying to hit him in the neck. A lot of people don't know that some important ship

here week do their hands. The article opens with Jeff announcing that, for reasons that are never made clear, he has won an award that also happens to be a hand forged Norse battle axe, being the kind of man who writes for Soldier of Fortune magazine, Jeff Cooper decided he desperately needed to know how to kill people with this axe. Unfortunately, the only manuals he could find on axe fighting were archaic and not very detailed. So he

had a friend. Decided to spend the afternoon inventing am saying, I had to drink made first. So he had a friend and spent an afternoon inventing a modern science of battle axe fighting by afternoon. Yeah, now that's kung fu was written in an afternoon, A long afternoon, Yes, they let it was in like August. Yeah, so they did this by jabbing vaguely at hay bales in an empty field. Now, Billy, I'm gonna need you to take a look at a

pat I've studied how to do this. I want you to look at the picture, and I want you to notice that while he is jabbing this hay bale violently with an axe, he's wearing a gun on his hip. And we're gonna pass this around. It is this is He looks like you think you would, yeah, like you can't see his eyes, but they're beaty, you know, they're bady.

I gotta finish to pass this around because you really need to see Jeff Cooper doing the pike thrust, the straight right, the full overhead, and of course port guard for he got again. Yeah, I think he might have a cigarette in his mouth on the last of these two. He didn't even know he lit it. That's how. That's how people smoke, how to get I don't even know. So the business of writing articles like this was rather safe,

but Robert Brown was not satisfied with safe. He still found himself desperately addicted to war tourism, and the primary purpose of Soldier of Fortune magazine was to enable his habit. Throughout the mid nineteen eighties, Brown and his magazine got increasingly involved in the El Salvadoran Civil War. He visited for the first time in nineteen three and spent several happy days fighting alongside a cadre of mercenaries and paramilitary

fighters backing Roberto de Abison. Dobyson was, in the words of the U. S. Ambassador to El Salvador, a pathological killer who bragged about the need to exterminate two of the three hundred thousand people in his country. This is the guy Robert Brown's like, I don't want to be angry with you. I'm gonna I'm gonna pass these battle axe photos around because I have a moral obligation to show them to you. Yeah, you guys need to see him.

He looks like he looks like, he looks like he's gonna like if he was around today, he'd have a red hat on in those pas. No very specific brand. Oh what happened with the light, I don't know, but just these people are important, looking very nice. I was hoping it was shining on Katie Stole and Cody Johnston. It was just like a red that's like old school Vegas. We're like, hey, Dean Martin's in the Dean Martin is

in the audience. But turn a lout off. So Dabis and Round ran death squads which massacred women, children, and a huge number of priests, and Robert Brown was only too happy to help with that. He claimed to have sent more than a hundred mercenaries into Al Salvador. He also claimed that Henne came back a lot, didn't um. He also claimed that his readers had donated more than four million dollars in supplies to fight the Contra rebels

in Nicaragua. When he was criticized over the fact that his magazine was actively enabling death squads and multiple nations. Robert Brown wrote this, we are not content to just tell the story to the best of our ability. We also help equip, aid and train the world's anti communist freedom fighters. We make no apologies about this or for

our virulent, anti tyrant, anti communist editorial stance. Now, hey, hey, not only did I report what happens, I shoot people from a safe distance, from a very safe distance, and then I leave. Now tragedy, tragically, billy, And this is really gonna buy me out. Robert Brown's second plan trip to go fighting El Salvador, was canceled. I know, I know it's a bummer, right, but we all you know,

sometimes you get sick and you can't make that trip. Sometimes, as in Brown's case, one of your own mercenary shoots you in the leg and it took a long time. Well that's you want. You're gonna do some other stuff after you do that. Well, here's how the Chicago Tribune described what happened. Because this is you're gonna enjoy this. Colonel Brown and his kitchen table buddies. We're talking about a flight to El Salvador that Brown was to make

the next day. Brown, who was a captain in Vietnam, claims to be helping to train the Salvadoran army on an unofficial basis. He says he's making them tougher and more disciplined. As the evening war on official basis, I like that, Like, I'm just gonna war these people up a little bit, Just an ad hoc thing, don't you

mind me? Unofficially teach. As the evening wore on towards midnight, one of Brown's buddies, who writes for Soldier of Fortune, took out an automatic pistol he was carrying and showed it to Brown. Brown's buddy talked about his pistols, heft, the trigger action, and the other qualities that please gun lovers. He pulled the trigger. Being a gun expert, he knew it was empty. When Brown's buddy, a gun expert, pulled the trigger, there was a loud explosion. He scared. He

scared me. He stood there for a moment with his mouth wide open. Then he looked at his hand and saw a hole. He had shot a hole through his hand. Brown looked down at his leg, his leg hurt. He saw blood running out of his calf. The bullet, after blowing a hole in his buddy's hand, had blown a hole in Brown's leg. The hole the owner of the gun was right, It did pack a wallop. I tell you, I tell everyone, Yeah, I didn't look like a strong gun.

Brown looked down looking at it slowed down through his hand. That could have hurt you. I would have done some real dawn could up. Brown looked down at his bleeding leg. Then he looked at his buddy and said, you stupid son of a bit. You shot me, and now I can't go to El Salvador. That's a good story. That's a feel good moment right there. We're all nine years old. That's where we'd never get past. That's our media, just like, hey,

now I can't go to the water park. When I think about situations that scare me as like a journalist embedded with a group of people, one of them is being there for that and having to like not laugh, like because you really can't in that situation because one bullets already gone off. They're not against using another. Yeah,

we can correct who tells this story to this? A different version of this gets out As the nineteen eighties wore on and the Cold War neared its end, so too did the business of soliciting mercenary fighters to crush so to crush socialist movements. Being a far right crypto fascist, Robert Brown trans transitioned seamlessly from demonizing left wing movements around the world and towards attacking the US government. As the Cold War ended, Soldier of Fortune became one of

the prime sources fueling the American American Militia movement. In April nineteen, it did a cover story on the Michigan Militia, the largest such patriot group in the country. That same month, Soldier of Fortune subscriber and former Michigan Militia member Tim McVeigh set off a truck bomb outside them Are Building in Oklahoma City, killing a hundred sixty people and injuring

seven hundred. When McVeigh was caught and his car was searched, the police found a photocopy of an underground right wing zene called The Resistor Sixty Minutes. Correspondent Steve Croft described it as a political warfare journal, describing the U s Government as a deadly enemy that needed to be crushed with lethal course, it's publisher, Stephen Barry, was a former Special Forces man who went on to work for the National Alliance, at the time the largest neo Nazi group

in the United States. Now, the FBI obviously wanted to track down how this copy of the Resistor had wound up in mcveigh's hands, and by reading the fact signature of the paper, they were able to trace it back to Soldier of Fortunes offices, because it turns out Robert Brown had sent out nine hundred free copies of this zine the Soldier of Fortune subscribers as part of a promotional offer. Yes, this is a good deal. It is

a two for one. You know he's gonna spend the money. Anyway, the Bureau wanted to know if Steven Barry Nazi head any ties to Robert Brown, so they leaked him false intel and watched as Sure enough that false intel appeared

in Soldier of Fortune magazine. No way, So Brown found himself regularly under investigation and sued, but he always managed to stay in business and just shy of getting convicted of any felonies I had committing any felonies, But he absolutely committed some felonies allegedly after the Oklahoma City bombing, the Patriot movement got too toxic for Soldier of Fortune to cover. But once the nineties ended, Soldier of Fortune was able to pivot yet again by focusing on the

dangers of immigrants and Muslim extremists. In two thousand three, Soldier of Fortune published a two part article on a group called Ranch Rescue a Border, a border vigilante group that later pistol whipped and set Rottweiler's on immigrants in Arizona and Texas. In October of two thousand nine, Soldier of Fortune to the feature on Sheriff Joe R. Pio

of Maricopa County. Yeah, you guys, a funny cartoon writing his tough stand on a legal immigration is what he's getting beat up for by liberals promoting a legal immigration. Respect you know other people. They neglected to mention that dozens of prisoners had died in our piles jails at that point, often by being illegally risk reigned and boiled to get death in a hundred and forty five degrees

cells under our pile. The Marico County Sheriff's office paid out more than a hundred and forty million dollars in wrongful death suits. We don't talk about it. We don't like to talk about that. Shockingly, Robert Brown was not an instant fan of the candidacy of Donald J. Trump. When interviewed about it in two thousand sixteen, he expressed his belief that the man was a buffoon and would hand the election to Hillary Clinton, meaning Robert Brown was

too optimistic. Um, he has kept his men. Yeah, he really is. It's amazing. He's kept his mouth mostly quiet about Trump since then, involving himself primarily and internal n r A politics. He was once the organization's vice chairman. No way soldier of fortune. No longer publishes a physical magazine. Brown had to lay off almost all of his staff and go digital a few years back. The periodical is still online and still just as racist as ever, although

it's increasing irrelevance has made it less dangerous. In late two thousand nineteen, the online edition of the magazine republished that two thousand twelve article about Rhodsha. Whatever you can say about Robert Brown, he's not a quitter, although he really should be. Is he still is he alive? Oh? Man, that's frustrating. In it. It's just one of those things you're like, I wonder what he's doing it now. It's not good. It's good. He's he's too old and sick

to do as much of the bad stuff. He said like a year or two ago that he thinks he's got one more good war in him. So that's the right reaction when anyone says ship like that, Now, yeah, I got one good war left. Things like that. Now, everybody, I know this has been an emotionally taxing episode. I know this isn't a ootionally taxing year. And on top of all of them have to not read Chldren of Fortune anymore. And that's hard. I know. That's really a

bummer to everybody. People weren't prepared for that. Walking in turning, you're killing people T shirts. It's a bummer. It's a bummer. Um. Now, we have brought, courtesy of Sophie, a truly unreasonable number of bagels, and I want to pass those out to people in the crowds. And then you're gonna take turns tossing them at Usine We'll we'll, we'll knock him out of the air. And the water boy is not gonna be excited about it, and there's already some in the

crowd already. Okay, good looking at you, Daniel, Jamie Katie could if if we hit your bagel, then you're protected. If we don't, I'm sorry. It's not a perfect science. This wouldn't be a legitimate medical practice if we claimed it was perfect. I got, hey, this all you also have to do diet and exercise with this, stay off planes, all that stuff. I have to put it back around my neck to draw it again because it doesn't feel

right unless it's day. It looks good, all right, Now what a weird This is the weirdest ship so now okay, wrong where he looks like he defends MacArthur Park every night. Now, Billy, I want to ask you to remember all of the safety precautions we talked about before. That you want to hold the machete real loose and just as hard as you can with a loose grip, just right at the crowd,

right critical Senator Buck from Colorado taught me safety. Now, yeah, you're right, I don't want to chainey the mic stand by the way, I could use your help with making cheney a verb for that specific reason, So I don't think Cheney gives them fun. No, h these are just c d s. We're not going to destroy these. Um funk we can These are just you guys can have these. These are my first CD. I bought a bunch of them. In the theme it's a CD, you guys, don't cheers,

just a heavy fucking flyer. I'm giving you all right, all right, Billy, it's time. Okay, it's time. So are you ready, Reverend doctor, I'm yeah, all right, start throwing Holy Ship. They're just coming at us. Oh yeah, I don't know what a terrible idea. It's. It's well because it just comes out of the darkness as you can't see him deep enough, then they just show up. It's like an old video game. We're not great at this, it's not don't cheer, okay, yeah, I talk all right,

you do it with a machette. So if I'm just gonna toss it out and everything, Oh shit, Oh god, don't she swum that right at the crowd, you guys? Oh holy ship? There are so many bagels on this. I don't know how to explain this to me now. I mean, I don't know if I really want to watch the first minutes of that, I'm sandwiched. He's just walking around like at a medium pace. Why are all these bagels here? I mean, I'm a bagel man, right, motherfuck?

I think you didn't need that bagel money. One thing we've learned, Oh there is still all billy billy we gotta do. We gotta do the throwing and the whole thing between it, because that's make it explode. Yeah. Here, just passed that around. This is a new machette. I'm not as used to hitting. Baby, grab as many. They're free. You can take ten. I don't give a ship. It's heavy, so you can't have that bag. I don't give a fun There we go. Ready, I'm gonna doing it vertical

for horizon, horizontal, so aggressive. Here, throw it high. I'm gonna chop it down there we'll go, oh so high, so high. This is not you just can't just sit that down. Wasn't it handy weapon? Oh oh no, stop stop hitting it toward the crowd. If you don't throw things at the crowd, then they don't know. Can you tell? I have a ten year old and everything I'm like, this is I don't want to go to the emergency, all right, you can do it. One more guys getting

sucked up. All right, all right, we have to stop doing this because this is a actually a very big problem now, so we have to we have to clean everything. But I want you all to take with you the knowledge that, through the good graces of Machettison, you are all now protected and that's legally by all right, everybody, Thank you, guys coming