Listener Q&A
Molly answers questions submitted by listeners. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Apr 24, 2025•43 min
Weird Little Guys
Weird Little Guys is a weekly show about the worst people you’ve never heard of, taking you beyond the headlines to get to know the race warriors and aspiring terrorists trying to unravel the fabric of our society. Weaving together the origin stories of modern American white supremacist groups and the crimes that land their members in court, independent journalist Molly Conger exposes the monsters for what they really are - some weird guy. Whether they’re conspiring to build bombs or serving swastika shaped cookies at a dinner party, the weird little guys trying to destroy America are a little less scary with their masks off.
Episodes
Blood River
In 2002, a terrorist group failed to assassinate Nelson Mandela. In 2012, a plot to assassinate Jacob Zuma was foiled. Both plots were attempts to fulfill a prophecy and renew a bloody covenant with God. Sources: Thompson, Leonard L. The Political Mythology of Apartheid. Yale University Press, 1986. FA Mouton (1995) F A van Jaarsveld (1922–1995) — a flawed genius?, , 27:1, 5-11, DOI: 10.1080/00232089585310011 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00232089585310011 Stephn...
Apr 17, 2025•53 min
The Jamboree in Jamba
This is the very strange story of the time Dolph Lundgren starred in a piece of apartheid propaganda. Sources: Bellant, Russ. Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party. South End Press, 1991. Abramoff, Jack. Capitol Punishment: The Hard Truth about Washington Corruption from America’s Most Notorious Lobbyist. WND Books, 2011. Easton, Nina. Gang of Five: Leaders at the Center of the Conservative Crusade. Simon & Schuster, 2000. Ivon, David. “Touting for South Africa: Inte...
Apr 10, 2025•58 min
The Whites' Last Stand
In the final days of apartheid, white extremists were getting desperate. That desperation contributed to one of the strangest political crises of the late 20th century: Sources: https://dcist.com/story/12/09/24/aryan-nations/ https://archive.idavox.com/index.php/2012/09/24/the-aryan-nations-show-of-farce-in-dc/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naRGivc7Ong Guelke, Adrian. “Political Violence and the South African Transition.” Irish Studies in International Affairs, vol. 4, 1993, pp. 59...
Apr 03, 2025•52 min
White Guns for Hire
In 1994, a second group of mercenaries arrived at the airport in Johannesburg... but no one was there to pick them up. Their host had been arrested days earlier, after the last group of mercenaries she'd hosted got into a deadly shootout with the South African police. But how did all these Germans end up in South Africa in the first place? https://www.propublica.org/article/vasilios-pistolis-imprisoned-marine-hate-groups Sources: Simonelli, F. J. (1999). American Führer: George Lincoln Rock...
Mar 27, 2025•45 min
The White Wolf
In 1989, four Afrikaner nationalists and one German mercenary killed a security guard at a United Nations outpost in Namibia. After escaping from custody, they fled home to South Africa. A possibly non-existent group called The White Wolves took credit for the wave of bombings that followed. Sources: Du Preez, M. (2010). Pale native: Memories of a Renegade reporter. Zebra Press. Rotberg, Robert (1988). The Founder: Cecil Rhodes and the Enigma of Power. Oxford University Press. ...
Mar 20, 2025•56 min
Apartheid International
In the last episode, we looked at a strange series of rallies held in cities across the United States in 2012 - American neo-nazis were rallying in support of white South African Farmers. But how did they get that idea in their heads? The rallies were put on by a group called The South Africa Project, run by a woman I'd never heard of. Digging into this mysterious South African, I found a lot more than I bargained for - bombings and mercenaries and an international network of fascist terror. Sou...
Mar 13, 2025•48 min
Update On: A Short-Lived Pardon
This is a rerun of the episode that originally ran on February 6, 2025 with a newly recorded introduction with new information about the traffic stop that led to Matthew Huttle's death. Sources: https://www.indystar.com/story/news/crime/2025/02/27/body-cam-footage-jan-6-defendants-traffic-stop-shooting-death-released-matthew-huttle-jasper-county/80731312007/ https://www.in.gov/sheriffs/jasper/files/Jasper-County-OIS-Final-Report.pdf See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Mar 06, 2025•58 min
The White House Weighs in on White Genocide
In February of 2012, racist skinheads in California rallied at the capitol building in Sacramento. They were trying to raise awareness for an imaginary problem - an ongoing genocide against white South African farmers. In February of 2025, the President of the United States signed an executive order stripping foreign aid from South Africa as punishment for that same imaginary problem. Sources: Falkof, Nicky. (2022). Worrier state: Risk, anxiety and moral panic in South Africa. Manchester Univers...
Feb 27, 2025•47 min
They Got What They Wanted
"They got what they wanted." Those were the words of Don Logan after a February 11, 2025 meeting of the Scottsdale, Arizona city council. Twenty-one years after Dennis Mahon tried to murder Logan with a package bomb, the city of Scottsdale finished what the klansman started: they closed the city's diversity office. Sources: https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/scottsdale-to-gut-diversity-office-trump-anti-dei-fervor-21197066 https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/arizona-strip-club-owners-tr...
Feb 20, 2025•56 min
An Accidental Nazi Rally
In 2017, an anti-Muslim nonprofit crowd-sourced the organization of a nationwide series of rallies. Many of the people who stepped up to help turned out to be well known white supremacists. Sources: https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2017/05/portland_suspect_in_2_slayings.html https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/27/portland-double-murder-white-supremacist-muslim-hate-speech https://islamophobia.org/special-reports/the-hate-that-act-for-america-wrought/ https://islamophobia.org/islamoph...
Feb 13, 2025•56 min
(Maybe Don't) Read Siege - (It Could Happen Here Bonus)
Molly talks to Spencer Sunshine about his book, Neo-Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism: The Origins and Afterlife of James Mason’s Siege. Sunshine's book explores the history of Siege, the book that is today's nazi terrorist's bible. https://www.routledge.com/Neo-Nazi-Terrorism-and-Countercultural-Fascism-The-Origins-and-Afterlife-of-James-Masons-Siege/Sunshine/p/book/9780367190606 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
Feb 07, 2025•48 min
A Short-Lived Pardon
In January of 2025, Matthew Huttle was one of nearly 1600 people to receive a pardon from Donald Trump for his participation in the January 6, 2021 riot. Less than a week later, he was dead - shot and killed in an altercation with a sheriff's deputy during a traffic stop in Indiana. Sources: https://www.npr.org/2021/02/09/965472049/the-capitol-siege-the-arrested-and-their-stories https://www.shu.edu/news/a-demographic-and-legal-profile-of-january-6-prosecutions.html https://data.mendeley.c...
Feb 06, 2025•48 min
Revisionist History Riverboat Cruise: Curtis Maynard, Pt .1
In 2010, a rising star in the small world of holocaust denial blogging murdered his ex-wife and then took his own life. This first chapter of his story follows his path from a troubled career as a registered nurse to his growing fame as a white supremacist blogger. Sources: https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Lawyer-Lake-Jackson-murder-suicide-followed-1710794.php http://www.thenation.com/article/arrows-war https://www.splcenter.org/resources/extremist-files/americas-promise-ministr...
Jan 23, 2025•50 min
The Co-Conspirators: Dennis Mahon, Pt. 5
This is the end of Dennis Mahon's story. In 2012, he was convicted for building the bomb that went off in the hands of Scottsdale, Arizona's director of Diversity & Dialogue in 2004. In the eyes of the law, Dennis and Dennis alone is guilty in that case... but the investigation leaves a lot of unanswered questions about his co-conspirators. Sources: https://jeffmaysh.substack.com/p/how-an-undercover-exotic-dancer-captured https://www.upi.com/Archives/1992/08/31/Charges-against-Geraldo-...
Jan 16, 2025•1 hr 9 min
The Debutante at Elohim City: Dennis Mahon, Pt. 4
In 1994, a former debutante named Carol Howe became an informant for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. For six months, she and Dennis Mahon made weekend trips to a white supremacist compound called Elohim City. Carol reported back to the government that Dennis Mahon was stockpiling weapons and talking about blowing up federal buildings. In April of 1995, someone did blow up a federal building. Had her handlers ignored credible information about the plot? Sources: Jones, Steven. ...
Jan 09, 2025•47 min
The Klansman's Twin: Dennis Mahon, Pt. 3
Before we finish the story of Dennis Mahon, let's take a little side quest to learn about his identical twin brother, Daniel. In 1999, Daniel Mahon was fired from his job as an aircraft mechanic at American Airlines. The company felt he was creating a racially hostile work environment. According to the lawsuit he filed, Daniel Mahon felt it was anti-white racism. His deposition in that case gives us an unreliable narrator's view of his brother's life. Sources: Ellis, Charles. Joe Wilson and the ...
Jan 02, 2025•1 hr 5 min
CZM Rewind: White Terror
A teenager who murdered two people outside of a gay bar in Slovakia, a teenager who stabbed five men at a mosque in Turkey, and a teenager who planned to destroy infrastructure in New Jersey had one thing in common: they'd all been reading terrorism manuals produced by a group of neonazi propagandists. A new indictment alleges two Americans are responsible for inciting acts of white supremacist terror all over the world. Original Air Date: 9.19.24 Sources: https://leftcoastrightwatch.org/article...
Dec 26, 2024•1 hr 1 min
A Klansman in Berlin: Dennis Mahon, Pt. 2
After winning his battle with a Kansas City cable company over the right to air his Klan public access television show, Dennis Mahon never made a second episode of Klansas City Kable. He was too busy organizing nazi punks in Tulsa and getting Klan chapters started in Germany. Sources: Ronson, Jon. “The Debutante.” Audible Originals, 2023 Ronson, Jon. Them: Adventures with Extremists. Picador, 2001 Forbes, Robert and Stampton, Eddie. The White Nationalist Skinhead Movement 1979-...
Dec 19, 2024•44 min
Klansas City Kable: Dennis Mahon, Pt. 1
In 1990, a single episode of a public access show called "Klansas City Kable" aired in Kansas City, Missouri. The klansman who fought city council for his right to produce it was never prosecuted for the bombing campaign he claims to have carried out in the decade prior, but his long career as a professional racist took him all over the world before a years-long undercover operation finally put him away. Sources: Kennard, Matt. Irregular Army: How the US Military Recruited Neo-Nazis, Gang Member...
Dec 12, 2024•41 min
Ku Klux Kable Access TV
For over a decade, neo-Nazis and Klansmen were hand-delivering VHS tapes of a California-based public access TV show to local television stations in cities across the country. The stations had no choice but to run the show on local public access channels. The show's host, Tom Metzger, received a gift of $300,000 in 1984 that gave him the financial freedom to pursue his dream of delivering his racist message to as many Americans as possible, right through their television screens. Sources: Belew,...
Dec 05, 2024•54 min
CZM Rewind: Barry Black Pt. 1 & 2
The Fire Will Not Consume Us: Barry Black, Part 1 In 2003, the Supreme Court ruled that the mere act of burning a cross, absent evidence of specific intent to intimidate, is protected by the first amendment. But who was the klansman who got his case all the way to the highest court in the land? This is the first half of the story of Barry Black, a Pennsylvania Ku Klux Klan leader who won two write-in campaigns for constable, waged war on a rural gay bar, and spent decades fighting for his right ...
Nov 28, 2024•2 hr 37 min
Arrested Democracy, Pt. 2
When Oath Keeper Darren Huff returned to Madisonville, Tennessee on April 20, 2010, he was planning to take control of the courthouse. It didn't quite work out that way. He didn't even see the inside of a courthouse until his own arrest a week later. Sources: https://www.politico.com/story/2010/04/army-birther-under-investigation-035823 https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/army-birther-lakin-released-from-leavenworth/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1995/04/26/gordon-liddy-on-s...
Nov 21, 2024•1 hr 4 min
Arrested Democracy, Pt .1
In 2010, conspiracy theorists around the country were convinced that Barack Obama was not the rightful president. Some of them filed lawsuits. Some of them tried to have the President indicted. And when none of that worked, some of them took matters into their own hands and tried to arrest the county court employees they thought were standing in their way. In the first half of this story, Walter Fitzpatrick unsuccessfully storms the courtroom in Madisonville, Tennessee. The outcry over his arres...
Nov 14, 2024•53 min
A Deal With the Devil: Ethan Melzer, Pt. 2
In 2022, Ethan Melzer pleaded guilty to plotting to help al Qaeda ambush and kill his entire unit while on a sensitive mission in Turkey. But Melzer's co-conspirators turned out to be a Canadian teenager and a government informant, not members of al Qaeda. And the satanic cult that drew him down this nazi rabbit hole turned out to have been run by a man on the FBI payroll. Sources https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/17286246/united-states-v-melzer https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69307006/u...
Nov 07, 2024•1 hr
The Devil's Chat Room: Ethan Melzer, Pt. 1
In June of 2020, US Army Private Ethan Melzer was arrested for leaking information about his unit's deployment to Turkey with the intention of causing a mass casualty incident. The plot was hatched in a Telegram chat room for a group calling itself Rapewaffen, an Atomwaffen splinter cell that was committed to the beliefs of a neonazi satanic cult called the Order of Nine Angles. This episode follows the rise of satanism within Atomwaffen and the chaos that influence caused. Sources: https://unic...
Oct 31, 2024•54 min
Weird Little Check-in
There's no new weird little guy this week, but I wanted to check in with you about how the show is going so far and squeeze in a few weird little facts that got left on the cutting room floor of past episodes. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Oct 24, 2024•44 min
Burning Hate: Tyler Dykes
Tyler Bradley Dykes entered a guilty plea last year on the charge of burning an object with the intent to intimidate for his participation in the 2017 Nazi torch march in Charlottesville, Virginia. He was sentenced to just six months and was probably expecting to see his parents waiting for him outside the jail on his scheduled release date... but it was the FBI who picked him up. Sources: https://atlantaantifa.org/2023/04/19/inside-southern-sons-active-club-part-i/ https://atlantaantifa.org/202...
Oct 17, 2024•45 min
Freedom to Burn: Barry Black, Pt. 2
In part two of the story of Barry Black, we finally get to the landmark supreme court case that won the klansman the right to burn crosses. Barry's Keystone Knights faded into relative obscurity after the high profile case and Virginia passed a new law aimed to prevent men like Barry from using fire as a tool of intimidation. Sources: https://law.duke.edu/voices/virginia https://www.oyez.org/cases/2002/01-1107 https://unprecedented.substack.com/p/transcript-bodily-harm-is-coming https://time.com...
Oct 10, 2024•47 min
The Fire Will Not Consume Us: Barry Black, Pt. 1
In 2003, the Supreme Court ruled that the mere act of burning a cross, absent evidence of specific intent to intimidate, is protected by the first amendment. But who was the klansman who got his case all the way to the highest court in the land? This is the first half of the story of Barry Black, a Pennsylvania Ku Klux Klan leader who won two write-in campaigns for constable, waged war on a rural gay bar, and spent decades fighting for his right to intimidate. Sources: https://www.salon.com/2009...
Oct 03, 2024•48 min