Black Hammer with WF Thomas

and a reality is more or less occult. Um. The reason we're talking about them is that someone is now dead connected with them. The story is interesting and messy and says a lot about the way social media works today and the way that the United States is essentially like forty different cults in a trench coat. Um. So Uh, today I'm here with James Stout and we are talking with journalist W. F. Thomas. H Thomas. What do you? What do you? What do you? What do you? How?

How are you doing today? Uh? Today is a day, Um. This story is stuff is still coming out. About an hour ago, charges were finally posted um for the cult leader. Um. But that's further along. Yeah, the story. If you hear chirping in the background, those are for live chickens. So my apologies all little babies. I just got rabbits that I have now living in my my chicken facility, and

they seem to be thriving. It's nice. I like having little animals around all Right, So who are Black Hammer and how did how did they get to the present position? So I think we should probably start of like nineteen right, is kind of when these these folks sort of start to come on the scene. Yeah, Um, you know you could take this story back a lot further. Okay, let's do that. Um. So, sometime in the late eighties, Um Augustus Romaine Jr. Was born. Um, this is the person

we're commonly known as Gazikazo. Um they used they then pronouns who would go on to be the leader of this group. Um. Cazo grew up in Stone Mountain outside of Atlanta, UM and in the early had kind of a lifestyle blogger YouTube thing going on. Um was a self professed Cosmos biggest fan and generally seemed like they were trying to get famous, Yeah, like in fluencers style famous. Right. This was not at all political at this period. Yeah, And UM, that's gonna be kind of the red thread

through this story is Caso. I'm gonna refer to them as CASO. I guess this remained junior. Um. Wanting to be famous is kind of, unfortunately the main thing that drives most of what has happened. UM. At some point, you know, in the mid um Cardso took this turn and started making more incendiary videos. UM. I don't have them directly in front of me, so I don't want

to misquote them. UM, but kind of like going out pushing this concept like white people are evil, going for this very specific type of leftism, and um Ghazi Carso gets taken taken under the wing of and I'm gonna mispronounce this name uh O'Malley yesh hella UM. And this is a person who is leading a group in St. Petersburg, Florida called the African People's Socialist Party UM and Africans People Socialist Party. It was part of this larger thing

called the Huru Solidarity movement. I don't know if they're still around, but you know their their ideology was their world communism, African internationalism, that type of thing. And what is let's talk a little bit about the word of Huru, because that's something if you if you've ever been in and around Proud Boys. First off, I'm sorry, it's not a fun experience generally, but they like to shout at huru UM, and I understand that that's kind of related

one way or they outed the other to this. Yeah, so, UM, I don't have it directly in front of me what or huru means. But you know the reason probably say that is because of Gazi Cadzo. There are times several times when Codso spoke made appearances with Gavin Mcinness, founder of the Proud Boys, and Carso generally became and still is treated as a loll cow UM kind of this target for derision to poke at to see what is this person doing which is still happening right now. Unfortunately, UM.

You know, Carzo rose through the ranks of this group UM and then eventually found out that this is basically a cult. The African People's Socialist Party UM had a specific focus on membership from colonized people, people of color, UM. But it turns out this was being steered entirely by

a group of white people. So it's out of the ashes of this experience, this abusive experience UM, this Coli group, cause, along with some other people leave this group and they go onto for a Black Hammer in February of two thousand nineteen, which the originally was the Black Hammer Organization UM. And there's some really good write ups, especially read Voice definitely recommend that and there are I think you broke out for a second. So the title of that article

is the Devil Wears a Dashiki. It's like six seven parts, but it's really good conference and that gets into a lot of what's wry to get a lot of this

information from UM. And there were additionally, what would happen to some of these people who founded this group Black Hammer Organization who are also parts of the African People's Socialist Party UM would disavow ghazi kads that would disabout Black Hammer and have kind of their own statement about here's what happened, you know, and which they say, Hey, we never recovered from this experience in this traumatic group, in this cult like group, and instead went on to

found this new one, and we're very you know, it was kind of failed from the start to become this other cult like group. So just to clarify on the hurry thing that it comes from the African People's Socialist Party, right, and then he's they have taken it and run with it in the Black Hammer organization. So the African People's Socialist Party was part of this umbrella or group called

the who Solidarity Movement. This group is still around if you look at like the Channel five with Andrew Callahan has a video where they go to this march for reparations and that group is the WHU Solidarity Movement. Got it? Okay if you're familiar with that. Yeah, yeah, so we get this organization founded and kind of from what my perusal of because I've also you can go to their website. Black Hammer has like a news site. Um, they are kind of building huh oh yeah, yeah, they're they're kind

of for now. Yeah. They bill themselves as like an anti colonial organization that is specifically like, um, like one of the things they do is they have like a white people's auxiliary that like is for the purpose of people paying reparations. Um. They have you know, they carried out a couple of actual direct actions during including like handing out masks and whatnot. Um. But for the most part, they seem to exist primarily to drive attention to themselves

and thus donations via social media. And yeah, that that's that's I think if you've, if you've personally interacted with Blackhammer propaganda at all, it is probably because you've seen someone on the internet talking about how Anne Frank Uh is a Karen or something like that. Yeah, let's talk

about that. Yeah yeah. So, so I want to touch on something real quick that you mentioned, you know, in these comments from the people who found the organization, left the organization, these were these are still true believers who believe in this cause of de colonialization of African internationalism and who do want to build a better world and

do good things. Um. You know, in talking with people have survived the cold, it sounds like Causo probably never was a true believer, but there weren't true believers around

Causo who believed in this cause. Um. And because about we're able to be abused, to be profoundly abused by Carso and the people working directly under Canso Casos behest um So April twenty in a tweet I believe Uh, Caso calls and Frank Becky follows up by how she's a Karen, which one is a ridiculous statement, two is entirely meant to cause this kind of uproar around that you know, um, back at this time there was acceptance of the Black Hammer organization in leftist circles, in that

kind of online communist community. Um, and there were people who came out kind of like, oh no, let's hear what they're saying about this, you know, talking about how victims. You know, the term genocide was invented to describe the Holocaust, but that term wasn't used to describe slavery that kind of thing, which, to be clear, is not the conversation that Caso was trying to have. That was not No, and that is a worthwhile conversation to have, is like why,

you know, like why is that not? Why is the the enslavement and like mass murder of a huge number of African people not seen as an act of genocide? Certainly a valid conversation to have, but also should not at all intersect with Anne Frank or how we think about the Holocaust. Yeah, and because we're living in health Yeah, this fake you know, kind of propped up, not a real discussion. It's meant to just piss people off. Is

back again? Oh good, what a great time. Yeah. Based on documents that have come out that are purported to

be from internal Black Hammer documents. This is part of their operations Storm of White Tears UM, which was seemingly this and again I don't know for sure if these documents are from them, but these documents that are purported to be from Black Hammer UM lay out this strategy to cause division too, kind of bring other groups down, to elevate Black Hammer's own status by putting themselves as the center of attention in all of this that is

happening UM, in this online fiasco UM. Because again, the ideology is not the point. The attention is the point. The control is the point. Along this way, there's there's you know, there are a lot of allegations out there. There are you know, for example, allegations that false, false allegations of pedophilia and sexual assault were used against people who left the group, people who spoke about against the group, that they were recruiting people on tinder. Um. Yeah. So

along the way, some more chapters form. UM. There's one believe near Aurora, Colorado, or at least in Colorado. There's a New York City one, and kind of the group continues to rise as almost you know, you know, your typical revolutionary communist cell that we have wait a few of in the United States going on right now. Um, they structure, they purport to structure themselves around the tenets

of democratic centralism as some of these other groups do. Um, which to dump things down a lot, and there's probably gonna be left is screaming at me right now. Um. Was this idea from lenin where a group takes a vote and then if that vote passes, they all agree to go along with that platform with usually about fium so that there's not kind of the splitting off of faction. So it can lead to this very centralized and hierarchical

control structure. That's certainly what happened in Black Hammer. Um. There are other democratic centrals groups that have been in the news lately who use a similar strategy. UM. But you know what this meant is it allowed God cause it allowed Codso to run this group with an iron fist. Um. You know, on paper, there were there was a group of people leading the group. Um, someone else was in control of the money, but in fact it was Carso

controlling all of this. Um. They also had you know, shared living spaces where members of different chapters of Black Hammer lived Hammer houses. UM. And that's always going to end, well, yeah, don't. Generally, it's a good rule not to go live with the revolutionary cell you just joined. Yeah. If if you are joining a political party and they want everyone to live in the same space that is controlled by that political organization,

you may in fact be joining a cult. Yeah, And you know, there's there continues to be kind of trying to get more attention. At one point, you know, Caso starts beef with a local anti fascist crew in Colorado. You know, another thing to mention about this group is it's a lot of queer people in the group. You know, Gauzi identifies as non binary. There are you know, several

many members who love people of the same sex. And you know, one of the things that happens as Gauzi is beefing with the local anti fascist crew is something that people are probably thinking of when they hear the

name Gazzi Kozo. Is this bizarre video of Cazo running around in joker makeup talking about white anarchists and anti fascists, which the background is actually even more funked up than you would I think, having just heard that, UM as outline Red Voice goes into this specifically, UM there were members of the group who were you know, practitioners of

Yoruba um, an African religion. Um. And one of them was a trained Um I don't know the correct term, so I'm just gonna say practitioner of this religion had gone through an education process in that that took some time. Um. And this video of Gazi running around and joker makeup was Gazie's idea too. Channel the ddsume and my apologies

on mispronounced now which is a Guroba deity you know. Um. And before this happened, apparently Gazi had brought this up to the person and the person said that is extremely disrespectful of my religion. Don't do that, and Gazi did it anyway. Um. And this is you know, another one of the things where this gets sent around all the time, as you know, treating Black Hammer as a loll cow.

But you know, even as this was going on, there was this abuse that was going on as well and people being preyed upon by this group in black Ham announces that they are planning to build Hammer City, which is supposed to be this utopian settlement in the rockies. Um, you look like you have something you want to say, Well, I mean look there. It's a perfectly normal dream to want to build a utopian settlement and the Rockies. There's

some downsides to that. One of them is that the Rockies is actually a terrible place for a large number of people to live. Um. And it this is why repeatedly, I don't know, there's been a lot of utopian settlements out in that part of the world, and they don't tend to last very long or they turn into normal towns.

But it's it's it's always interesting when folks try, when folks want to do a commune type situation, and then they immediately go for a place like that, because like the mountains is the hardest place to do it if you want to have a self sufficient commune, like fucking Kansas, you know, Arkansas, like somewhere where the soil is good for growing stuff and you can get like a flat track tract of land that can grow food as opposed

to high alpine elevations where very little is gone. Anyway, whatever, this is compound talk, um. So yeah, there's there's If there's one thing you take away from this episode, don't build your compound in the Rockies. Don't build a compound in the rockies. Look, Okay, that's all I got. Yeah, that's a that's a message this podcast unless you have

the tenaceous unicorn ranch, which case go right ahead. But yeah, and then you gotta think you know what they're doing, which is raising alpaca as opposed to relying on like growing crops, which makes a lot of sense. Yeah. I didn't actually see any advanced I was just looking at

their at the Hammer City website. If they just told they just say sustainable farming, I can't see advanced plans for press went any they did raise a hundred and twelve thousand dollars so yeah, according to their website, they raised dred and twelve thousand dollars so far. Okay, yeah, educated, that's more on this project. Yeah, really interested to know how much money they actually raised. Um, maybe it was

that much. The point is we don't really know because there's no there was no kind of an open record keeping within this group. Um. And it was Cazo who was in control of the money. So the group found land to buy, and they actually began the process of a land deal in early they and and this is some information now coming from a fantastic Colorado Sun article about the whole Hammer City thing um that I also

recommend if someone wants to read more in depth about this. So, as the land deal was in the process of going through, a portion of the group moved out there. So about two dozen people. This was. This wasn't you know, it was remote, but it was it on top of a mountain. This was in a subdivision that had parcels for sale, which leads to some problems. And this this is a subdivision with the homeowners association and strict limits on land

use as well. So they didn't have water rights for one thing, Yeah, exactly, they didn't have water rights to land um which I have not started compound, but I imagine water rice is something you want to have figured out if you if you just want to live on a plot of land in the middle of nowhere, it can be fine. If you want to grow crops, then yeah, having the ability to irrigate said crops is kind of important. Yeah. So another thing at this time is black Hammer tends

to be a pretty heavily armed group. You know, the group moved out to this land, they were camping out there, basically squatting on the land that they did not own, and brought their you know, armed security along with them. UM. And we're also like blocking road access for residents of the subdivision. UM. So they they had neighbors, you know and UM. At one point this leads to an altercation with a neighbor UM with three armed Black Hammer members UM.

And a neighbor driving in his car who you know, according to this Colorado Sun article, gets out with an unloaded shotgun and there's a standoff. This could have been one of those things that went really bad. It went about as good as you can hope a situation like that can go where um, nobody got killed. UM. But while this was happening, the member of Black Hammer who was responsible for the land deal I forgot to sign

or didn't sign the paperwork on time. UM. And after information comes out about the standoff, the land deal completely falls through. There is no Hammers Toby that is going to be built. UM. And cadso was maintaining in Black Hammer as a whole, is maintaining a superactive social media presence at this time as well. So you know. One of the other things that gets brought out is like this video of them talking about, oh, we built this bridge on our land, which is kind of a bunch

of two I force across the ditch. Yeah. Are they planning to buy um in invent as like an organization or as cards? Are planning to by themselves? Just an individual between know? They? This is actually something I did some research on. UM. They did this fun thing. They created a front group, a front organization to buy the land nice which they called Hammerstone Industries Incorporated. Yeah, it's stealthy. They one of the member, one of the prominent members,

was responsible for that. So power of Google. Yeah. I also found their bitcoin what what we were talking? And it has never had any donations and remains empty. Oh my god. Yeah, that has it gone well? Ah? So after this land deal falls through, hammer City is not being built. A lot of people get really fucking piste. Also, it sounds like they shot through the real estate sign on their way out of the Stuff division. So on

the seventeenth, when the group leaves hammer City. UM. So, going back to what Robert mentioned earlier, UM, the group took a very i'll say interesting approach when the COVID nineteen started UM, which is the belief that COVID nineteen is real, that people should wear masks and be protected, but that they should not take the vaccine, and that fought Fauci was a liar, which comes out a bit later.

So we're doing for example, there's a there's a news article and with the video of them doing mutual aid distribution of masks and food in Colorado. So lots of people are really fucking pissed. UM. When Hammer City falls through, there's also been you know, these allegations that have been coming up again and again. UM. And at this point, several chapters break apart from Black Camera, UM, break away from Caso and kind of go off and do their

own thing. UM. And Caso is left with this core group of members UM kind of true believers and says, fuck it, We're moving to Atlanta. So the group does a marathon drive from Colorado to the southern suburbs of Atlanta and outside of Atlantas where cause that grew up on the east side, UM, from the northeast. UM. And they they keep going. They rent a house where everyone lives together, another one of their Hammer houses. I believe that this time there is another active chapter that is

still connected with CADSO and the Carolinas as well. UM. But you know this is a when prophecy fails moment for Causo UM, and the people that are left behind are these true believers UM and conser doesn't take this well, It doesn't take the failure of this deal well, becomes even more paranoid than they already were, more controlling and more abusive than they already were. So there's the red Voice gets into some of the really wild allegations that

come out at this time. Allegedly CAUSO has members sign over um control of the bank accounts to them at gunpoint, as people reveal personal information at gunpoint. And again these

are allegations. I'm not saying GODSA did this, UM that we get some of these classic cult techniques coming out, forcing people to sit and listen to CASO kind of preach, having people constantly working, not getting enough to eat, um, having you know, love bombing where God where Caso makes you know, deep eye contract with the person, talks about how important they are, how much they love them, and the consumption of psychedelics as well. Cool, that's good. Yeah, yeah,

you love to hear that. Um. Yeah, just a bunch of heavily armed people being cops for each other and drugging each other in support of I don't know. Charismatics seems like a weird word for Ghazi, but it must be, right, Like, clearly it works on some people. Yeah, I think they think they are charismatic, right, Like, I don't think it's necessarily they are to be good to be charismatic. But no, some people seem to be responding to their I don't know,

the way they present themselves. It's so I guess that's always the way with cults, right that, Like, to the outside, the cult leader is always an obvious cult leader, but everybody's got different things they're vulnerable to, and for some

people that's well. And I also, I said, I think a lot of it is they have like presented themselves differently in different periods and them I think from what I've been reading, it sounds like a decent chunk of the folks who were kind of most deeply wrapped up and it have been with it for a while, so

they've kind of followed along with Ghazi as they've you know. Yeah, and this is a group that preyed upon young people, preyed upon queer people, preyed upon on a housed people, preyed upon people of color who are at the intersections you know of oppression in our society, um and discreet.

Like most cults, it offered them a cause, a purpose, something to fight for, thing to do, friends roof over their head even you know, um yep, which is a huge part of it, right because if you if this, if this place is not just your social circle but also your safety net and like how you keep roof over your head and how you stay fed and you don't have close ties to family, or maybe your family

aren't people that you can trust. Like I mean again, it's not a different story than you get in a bunch of other cults, but like this is yeah, it's it's it's a very frightening situation for those people to

wind up in. And of course one of the things that is unfortunate is that so much of the stuff that the Blackham Organization said and did is so absurd that like it leads to this kind of mockery of anybody who gets wrapped up in it and the people who are very much victims of it, which I think is also one of the things that makes it harder to leave, right, is that siege mentel and inside that's where the term collegnitive dissonance comes from specifically people, right,

you know, when when things that go according to plan stick with this group and you know have already given always so much of their time, so much of their lifesy, of their connections, that they just roll with them. Yeah.

And then there's I'm just thinking back to a story I wrote years ago where fortunate enough to interview someone who's like an expert on these small cults, and they had actually been a survivor of I think it was a trotsky Ast cult, so they were very familiar and they like, this group exhibits all those patterns, right, like the charismatic leader that you mentioned, the use of their own language, the control of their relationships and their contacts

inside and outside the group. Yeah, and then they mirror this like very positive it's into like just look at their aesthetics after you mentioned it that they're definitely sort of seeking to mirror that Black Panther Party aesthetic, right, which is obviously something that has, for good reasons, very positive associations for a lot of people. So I can see they've constructed this very appealing package that. Yeah, and now there's a body right now, a person has died. Connected,

let's get to the station. So yeah, let's talk about this. So in Atlanta is where things get really wacky. Basically, as is often the case with Atlanta, has is often the case with this beautiful, beautiful city owned by Coca Cola and home depot with with I have to admit it as a Texan the best barbecue in the South, that's true. Excellent Ethiopian food as well. I was sad this weekend. Yeah, yeah, fucking amazing, fucking amazing ethiopen Ethiopian food. Yeah.

Big refugee population, that's besides the point. M So you know, Causo has found themselves in this city without a ton of money, um, and so needs to get more attention, needs to appeal to more people. So this is when Causo announces that Black Hammer is forming a coalition with the Proud Boys, which is one of those things that comes out and really since nationalized headlines, but doesn't actually happen.

What happens is cause of goes on a podcast with Gavin McGinness and they talked about we have so much in common and there's you know, a little toast evidence of actual organizing or work together between the two groups. But with this group like this, no, especially because Vin doesn't organizing anymore, vol problems anymore? What was the podcast they went on instead of interest? Daniel cut that and add in the entire audio from b movie condensed into

a two second blast like we talked about. You know, the group gets more attention to that. UM. They start talking about how rate Trump is, how much do they love Trump, how Fauci is evil, um. Because again, ideology is not the point. The attention is. And this is how you continue get attention by acting ridiculous, UM, by asking Trump voters to donate money to you. UM. And at this time they also begin an extremely aggressive fundraising

campaign in the city of Atlanta. So there's a park in downtown Atlantic call Woodroff Park that has a huge on housed population. Because our city is about at being a city and it's it's just back but black Hammer there there are other groups. There are other leftist groups that do mutual aid that help people out in the park. Black Hammer says, we're going to do this too, you know.

So they'll go there and have these sessions where they're screaming into a megaphone about whatever, um, and you know, handing out clothes and some food to unhoused people. UM, and they also start setting there. The members of their group pretty much every day of the week, two go out into the city of Atlanta and ask people for money on the streets UH in their matching branded Black Hammer shirts and masks. A site to see and yeah.

So this is what they call their robin Hood campaign. UM. They specifically target college campuses at Georgia State University and Georgia Tech especially UM with the idea that college kids have a lot of money to give away. It's not a great idea, UM, but they do this aggressive fundraising where they you know, follow people and if they don't take no franswips. Oh, you don't care about homeless people, you don't care about unhoused people. UM. You know, you

just have so much white privilege and really attacking people. UM. Which is great when you're coming home, you're riding your bike home and then you keep passing Black Hammer members m outside of UH you know, on your commute home. Not fun. Yeah, And they appear, you know, on the belt Line, which is this kind of public green space and shared walking space in Atlanta. UM. They do this outside of concert venues. You know, I went to see the Dead Kennedy's and as I was walking in the venue,

a Black Hammer guy asked me for money. I have to explain to the guy in front of me handing them five dollars, this is an anti Semitic cult. You don't want to do that. And they they're also taking in unhoused people. Um. You know, there's this video of of one of the lieutenants saying, you know, we want to get you, the unhoused people, to come fundraise for us.

You know, if you come fundraise for us, you can keep half of it split and whoever fundraises the most in this week gets to come live with us at the Hammer House. So it's pretty funked up, you know. Um there's a case where a professor at Georgia State University, because the people the Black cant Remembers are out there every day all day. Um, this is what they do, this is their job, this is how the group makes money, you know, calls them out and says, hey, stop asking

for money here. I know you're a cult. And a member follows the professor in films her you know, and specifically films her license plate and says, we got you. For example, members are arrested for having a megaphone in Woodruff Park and get some of their guns taken away when the rest because they're in the park with a

bunch of guns, you just have guns out. Yeah. Yeah, it's Georgia, which sometimes is cool when the Proud Boys show up and anti fascists have guns, but it's not not great when definitely, tracking following people who criticize you and taking pictures of their license plate to try to

docks them online is not at all cult behavior. They attack X members, They leak the addresses of the family of X members and their social Security numbers as well because they had them give them all this information at gunpoint. They seem to get very close to encouraging people to shoot cops. In a couple of pieces on their website as well, they talked about killing white people a lot.

Eventually in Yeah, in two they have this rally outside of the CNN Center and solidarity with the January six political prisoners, um along going in Gauzy claims to find have found Jesus and Black Camera will become a religious group, you know. They they turned their Mutual Aid distribution into what they're calling the Revolutionary Church, which of course is filmed and live streamed. They have several live streams that they do regularly throughout the week that are mandatory for

members to attend. UM. You know, there there is corporal punishment going on within the group of people living at the house. UM. And and the people that they're picking up off the street. It's not just adults, it's kids as well, UM, cause of claims to have the sixteen year old that they have adopted. UM and you know, cause of post these videos of them giving the sixteen year old guns and money and clothes to where um,

the kid gets taken into state custody. Um. Before the current thing that we're talking about, UM, and this is going to be important later on in the story. UM. Yeah. So there are also these stories from members who have escaped, who have to do these elaborate escape attempts to get out because they're not allowed to leave, who have to kind of run away in the middle of the night with none of their stuff through a thunderstorm to get out.

So this is what we're dealing with. All right, everyone, it's James here, and I just wanted to correct a couple of things from the episode or add to them. One of them was the date of that shooting, be it murder or definitely suicide. That was the nine of July, note of February, and so it happened about a week ago at the time that you will hear this if you hear this on the day that we put out. Secondly, I also just wanted to give some context to the

word huru. It's Swahili word means freedom or independence. It was used as part of a a backronym, which is when and a group has a name with them, they create an acronym that fits to that name. And the word Huru was part of a backronym for a group called the Mau Mau revolutionary anti colonial group who existed in Kenya, and the word of Huru was used a decent amoutneatic colonial struggles in Kenya. In the backronym. The backronym is Mazoomdifrica Party or Huru let the foreigners go home,

Africa should be independent, will be independent. I suppose I just wanted to give that context. And obviously it's been appropriated now by by the Proud Boys, but that is part of the etymology of the word. And then we get to um what happened on February two. UM. You know, this is an ongoing story, so the fact what we know might be changing. But early in the morning, someone calls and talks about being hell hostage by an organization,

by a group. They don't give the address, but the police are the authorities are able to track the number to this house in Fayetteville suburb south of Atlanta. UM and show up and they see someone is outside walking a dog who runs away. That person gets arrested. UM, that's a member of Black Hammer. They see someone kind of waving from the garage seemingly in distress. UM, and the police are able to get that person out. They asked that the rest of people in the house come

out as well. UM. About ten people come out and one person remains inside. Now by about two pm, with the use of an explosives ordinance, with the use of an EO D a bomb robot UM, the police enter the building. UM. The SWAT team goes in and they find one person dead of a gunshot wound to the head, which we at this current time we don't know the full details on that might not ever, hopefully something comes out.

CASO is being held. You know. The group is kind of like sitting around outside, not in handcuffs but being held by the group. Um and Caso does what Caso does and starts to live stream. So here's a clip from this thirty minute live stream Facebook Live that Caso does. Look because a lot of media girls. So this is just going to build me up at the end of the day. So thank you. So I think that no I am and anything like that, you're out of your mind. M At the end of the day, they're still breaking

my body. I still run an amazing revolutionary party. Our community is epping with us, and now all these news channels are going to want to interview us, and we're going to get to communicate about all the great work that we are doing here. So this is great at the end of the day. So my chickens coming home to roost is more more media, more followers, more you know, advancement of work, more movement, more greatness, and so be it, sweetheart.

Things like this have non stops. Movements are readers before, so not even overcome. This is a great moment, right, comrade. This is a great moment, a moment where no voices will be amplified and our mission cards will be informed. Well that's cool. I like that he clearly understands the gravity of the loss of a human life. So I will say this is probably before someone was dead. But the point is that this is exactly what cards have wanted.

Was this attention. Yeah, they seem pumped. They seem pumped and also like deranged. Yeah yeah yeah, that wasn't how I envisioned them speaking at all. It's sort of very calming, and they seem very very calm in that turn of voice. Yeah, I mean calm, but like, I don't know, I see an edge to him, but maybe that's a reading. Um, So do we know more detail about like what happened with that person who died. I don't want to mention the name of the person. Um this place, this is

a minor too, right. This is so the person who is killed, who's dead now, was not was not the sixteen year old. The sixteen year old was already in state custody weeks ago. I believe, Um, this is an eight According to the what the group has said and other survivors that I have spoken with, this is an eighteen year old the group took in off of the street. Um, there's a kid, you know who wanted to be a

rapper who had dreams, um who you know. According to Black Cameras own media, they made this person their minister of defense. That's a good job for an eighteen year old who's dead now because of this group, potentially from a self inflicted gunshot wound, which that is the case came about because of Cooso putting that eighteen year old in this situation. Yeah, so Dirty South Right Watch broke the news. They have a really good thread that I

also recommend about this happening. It seems like the local news they started covering the story and the a M when it was happening, but didn't quite make the connection. There's there's one article it's out there from a local news site that just interviews Gazzi Kozo, homeowner of the house. Yeah, so that happens, one of the members of the group is immediately charged and booked. It's a really fucked up situation,

you know. There there's like an unhoused individual who that who who other good activists were in touch with, who are at the house when this happened, because this person had no other choice but it was live outside or go with black Hammer, who went through all of this happening, Um, and then it was still on how it was still on housed. After all this happened, Canso was arrested and booked Um. The charges didn't come out until about an

hour before we started recording. The charges are two accounts of participation in streaking activity, two accounts of aggravated assault, two accounts of kidnapping, two accounts of false imprisonment, two accounts of conspiracy to commit a crime, and I want to talk about this one one account of sodomy, which in Georgia the sodomy law refers to non consensual oral or anal sex or oral and anal sex performed with the minor got you so one way or the other

that they're being accused of sexual assault. Yes, the other person arrested UM was charged with the same crimes, except not sodomy, officer obstruction instead, presumably because they fled. And that's where we're at. That's where we're at right now. Cool. Well, that's rough. Yeah, it's it's a pretty bleak story. But

I don't know at this point. We will probably be hearing more as this case blows up, and there's always the chance that you know, the rights going to wind up adopting it to try to, you know, make it into a left wing bad kind of deal. So when we have yeah, yeah, I mean, we'll see what kind of legs it gets. But it's important to understand both what's happening here because a person is dead and a lot of people have been hurt, and also kind of

broadly the trends that are at play here. The way like cult dynamics can intersect with radical politics, I think is important for people to be aware of because this kind of thing isn't going to get less common as ship continues to unravel. Yeah, and if there's some takeaways, if someone can leave this with, you know, a few points that the people who were in this group, they are victims in the situation. They were preyed upon by

this abusive person because they were in a vulnerable state. Um. Anyone. This could happen to anyone who falls on hard times, who has a bad enough day and then someone comes in and offers them this that they say, yes, you know. Um. The The other thing is to know about groups that are out there before you get involved. Do your research, listen to voices that might be critical of the group, UM,

and know what you're getting yourself into. There are other sensibly leftist groups out there who will not as abuse of as Black Hammer Um have cases of abuse coming out of them that gets covered up. Yeah, it might be good for us just to just to suggested if folks, you know, find themselves in a difficult situation on someone they know is in is in one of these situations, like maybe we can link to some resources and the

notes or something. Yeah, aren't. Yep, there's not. There's not a whole lot of committed to me that I've been trying to find. It's probably Stephen Hassan's book, which um Sawan is also he's an expert in the field, but he's also the guy who talked about how Tranny hit No Mind Control porn was. He's got he's problematic. Yeah, well, I mean part of the reason that this is such a problem is that there's very little in terms of

good resources or good writing. One of the things that is, like, there's good writing analyzing cults, very little of it will give you much that's useful in terms of how to get people out of cults. For a couple of reasons, including the fact that as we talked about earlier. What

makes people vulnerable. People aren't vulnerable to cults broadly usually, I know there's there's a certain subset of people, but like, as a general rule, people who get trapped in a cult get trapped in a specific cult because it is something that they are specifically vulnerable too. And so if you don't, like, it's more or less a matter of like, if you want to get someone out of a cult, um, are you close with that person? Like, are they someone that you know? Are they someone that you have a

deep relationship with? Because if so, like that relationship and the care that you have for them is primarily the thing that is most likely to eventually help them get out, Which doesn't mean it's a magic bullet, but like there's no reliable way to get people out of cults. Yeah, I'm a I do. I do twelve step recovery stuff um for different reasons. But the closest analogy that I can think of is dealing with someone who's abusing drug and alcohol in your life. You can't force anyone to stop,

you can't make anyone. When people talk about CULTI programming, what that entails kidnapping someone and then putting them through more abuse. So there is a magic bullet. Yeah, a lot of extremity problematic ship gets offer to people who understandably concerned for their friends and family members and just want to help. The best time to get someone out of a cult is before they join, is to raise awareness about abuse in communities UM and share that information

and take these things seriously. I truly believe so much of how this was able to happen is because people we're just laughing at them and didn't take it seriously that this could get someone killed, that this was ruining lives. That's still happening. People are treating this as a joke, not Yeah, And I think that's one of the things if you're like I don't know a parent or or somebody who otherwise works with their interfaces with there is raising young people and you're trying to think about how

you can make them less vulnerable to this. It is a mix of educating them about cults in not in a way that's like laughing or mocking or talking about how silly it is, but actually discussing the very real reasons why people fall and for this stuff, because that's that's the important one of the most important things it's the same as COVID. Really, one of the most important things for protecting yourself is not thinking that you're immune,

which is a natural thing. Most people who have fallen into colts earlier in their life when they heard about colts said well, that's stupid as hell. I would never get trapped in something like that, and then they did. And that's basically a hundred percent of Coat membership. You know, um, because yeah, if there's if I can recommend some resources for parents. Shannon fully Martinez, who is on Twitter, is you know, was involved in extreme right skinhead stuff unless fitness,

committed her life to helping people leave extremist movements. The same things you know that are going to make someone easily preyed upon by a COLT and by an extremist group. Those are the same things. Um. Shannon has some good resources out there. She has a Patreon as well. The resources are available for free. Don't need to join on her patreon. Awesome, Yeah, Shannon is awesome. UM. And other than that, you know, don't ye try to avoid falling for a cult, um except for you know this podcast.

Keep listening to this podcast. Make it the center of your life. Have no friends of the US for in paras social relationships with us. Uh huh, Well we're the only We're the only people you can trust. I think that's clear. Yeah. Would you like to plug anything before we carry you off here? Thomas, Yeah, I'm at Twitter at w underscore f underscore, Thomas, don't be weird on Twitter. Um, have empathy for the people around you. Almost gonna plug

HASHTA housed people because they know what best can help them. Yeah, fucking provide people with options for housing so that they're not Yeah, having a could be the best thing they can do. But yeah, yep, I'm not a happy note. Thanks for having me. Yeah, check in on your friends, disbanding people when they're in difficult times. It could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media. Or 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.