American Fart Party

he enrolled in a class called Introduction to Macintosh. Through the university, he had unlimited access to the World Wide Web, accessible twenty four to seven at the school's on campus computer center. By day, he learned the basics of computer programming, but at night, alone in the computer lab, he browsed the web. It was there that he first discovered websites devoted to white nationalism. He devoured the writings of doctor William Luther Pierce, the leader of the neo Nazi group

National Alliance. He created an account on a forum for followers of the World Church of the Creator, and within months he was invited to meet in person with the leadership of the local chapters of both organizations. Ralph Brandt enrolled in computer classes looking for a third act, and I guess he got one. I don't know how proficient he ever got at computer programming, but in the thirty years since he first stumbled upon an online forum for racists,

he's found purpose. Now, at nearly seventy six years old, he's the chairman of white nationalist group angling for a Comeback. I'm Molly Conger, and this is weird, Little guys. This week, more than ever, I have felt overwhelmed by the realization that this show doesn't really have individual episodes. There are no self contained stories with beginnings, middles, and ends. This has all just been one really long story that I'm

telling out of order. The last two main Feed episodes, I told you a story about Merlin Miller, a failed filmmaker who fell down a rabbit hole after nine to eleven, became obsessed with conspiracy theories, and ran for president in twenty twelve on the ticket of an openly white supremacist, fascist eugenicis political party called the American Third Position Party. And in that second episode, I hinted that the group behind his candidacy hasn't really gone away. In the aftermath

of Merlin Miller's disastrous run for president, the party rebranded. Remember, the group originally formed out of the collapse of a California group called the Golden State Party, so named because it was mostly made up of members of the neo Nazi skinhead group, the Golden State Skinheads. So the Golden State Party collapsed in two thousand and nine, and they regrouped as the American Third Position Party in twenty ten, and then the group rebranded again as the American Freedom

Party in December of twenty twelve. And my plan for the next episode, this one, the one you're listening to now, was just to speed run through the party's activities over the decade that followed, bringing us all the way back up to the present day, and then be done with it. But I think we're going to have to revisit some parts of this story in more depth some other time,

maybe not next week. As I was scrounging around and compiling my notes and collecting filings from failed campaigns, and watching grainy old videos of speeches at White Nationalists summits held in hotel conference rooms, and listening to Nazi podcasts at double speed, just wishing that they would get to the point, I started to feel a little bit crazed. I mean that's not unusual, to be honest, that happens a lot. It's maddening work for a variety of reasons.

But I kept coming across familiar names, familiar organizations, people and places and things that I didn't expect to see in this story, finding connections to past episodes and to stories I haven't written yet. There's a psychological phenomenon called apophenia. It's a tendency to see patterns where they don't exist, to find connections between unrelated things, to see meaning in

random stimuli. In its most extreme, it can be a symptom of mental illnesses like schizophrenia or obsessive compulsive disorder. But you also see it on display in the writings of conspiracy theorists, and you've definitely seen it at work if you know someone with a gambling problem. But it's a cognitive bias we all experience from time to time, seeing shapes in the clouds, seeing a man in the moon, finding meaning, and coincidentally looking at your watch at eleven eleven.

We all get a little apophenia now and then, and it's something I try to be really vigilant about. Am I seeing connections in my research because they're real, or am I just getting that rush of recognition because at this point I have at least a few pages of notes on almost every prominent white supremacist active in the United States for the last five decades, and everything just feels a little familiar. And theirs really is a small world.

Sometimes the same guy pops up in a few seemingly unrelated places, because there's only so many places for that guy to be if he's been active in the movement over the course of many years. I try to keep that pretty front of mind so I don't drive myself completely mad, you know, But sometimes sometimes it feels like everything is connected because it is. It's not a coincidence. It's not apophenia, it's not conspiratorial thinking. It's not my

mind finally buckling under the weight of the horrors. Sometimes if you dig down deep enough, it's the same guy's name on all the paperwork. Remember earlier this year when I accidentally spent three months writing about white supremacist terrorism and apartheid South Africa, if you can remember back that far. Those episodes started with vignette about this series of rallies held in twenty twelve, organized by Monica Huggett Stone's South Africa Project. But the main rally, the big one, the

one in Sacramento, Monica wasn't actually there. The actual on the ground organizers in Sacramento were the Golden State Skinheads, the same group that originally approached William Daniel Johnson to remake their Golden State Party into the American Third Position Party. And here's Mike Myers, the leader of the Golden State Skinheads, whose name is actually Michael SESAMs, taking credit for that pro apartheid rally when he gave a speech at the American Freedom Party conference a year later.

The foundation raised the money for the series of lawsuits that Bristow filed against colleges and universities in twenty seventeen to force them to allow Richard Spencer to speak on campus. When that foundation fell apart, one of its other board members, a man whose name you've heard before, Augustus solen Victus, tried to start something similar, and he called it the

Conservative Legal Defense Fund. That too, is now defunct, But the incorporation paperwork for that group shows that American Freedom Party board members Jamie Kelso and William Daniel Johnson were not only involved, but they were using Johnson's law office as the mailing address. And it's no coincidence that Nathan Dimigo was invited to speak at the party's conference earlier this year. He actually got his start in organized racism a decade ago as a member of the American Freedom Party.

Before he founded Identity Europa in twenty sixteen, he was leading the American Freedom Party's short lived youth division, a group called National Youth Front. Identity Europa didn't publicly maintain ties to the American Freedom Party, but it does appear to have originally just been a rebranding of National Youth Front after a similarly named but not racist group threatened

to sue over the use of the name. And here's Nathan Dimigo in December of twenty fifteen talking to Richard Spencer about the upcoming launch of a renamed National Youth Front. This is just three months before he re emerged as the leader of Identity Europa.

dischargeable in his bankruptcy case. He is currently appealing that decision with the help of movement lawyer Glen Allen. Glen Allen, you may recall from the last episode, was the Nazi lawyer who helped Merlin Miller start his American Eagle Party after he left the American Freedom Party. And Nathan Dimigo isn't the only Identity Europa member to resurface in connection with the American Freedom Party. After Identity Europa collapsed for good in twenty twenty, some former members were turned to

the group that spawneded, joining the American Freedom Party. Notably, the party's current executive director is a former Identity Europa member who calls himself John Fassbender. So there are a lot of threads to pull here, and there's no way to unravel the whole ball of yarn today. So I suppose we should start with what the American Freedom Party even is, or rather what it is not.

Here he is boasting about it to Macedonian nationalist podcaster Nick Gilvie in late twenty twenty three.

finances and so on, I'm pretty pretty much ignorant. That being said, as far as you know sending in donations and how it is to register as a political party, first of all, it is there.

This one is both very specific and extremely recent. Fassbender was interviewed by a Canadian white nationalist and aspiring musician, Steve Hansen, just a few weeks ago. There's no wiggle room here, Fassbender clearly says, the organization is a federally recognized political party.

There are certain activities and fundraising thresholds where a state level party committee may have to register with the Federal Election Commission, but honestly I don't care enough to find out more about that. And of course, to be a political party at the national level, well, you've got a file paperwork with the Federal Election Commission and they did try. I mean, anyone can fill out a form and send in a piece of paper. That doesn't mean it worked.

Someone filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission last month to form the American Fart Party, along with paperwork for a Fart Party candidate committee running for Senate in Iowa. That doesn't mean that the Fart Party is real. It just means technically somebody committed a federal crime, although it's extremely unlikely to be prosecuted. The Fart Party was obviously someone's idea of a joke that's actually really common. The

FEC receives mountains of prank filings every year. They revised the rules in twenty sixteen just to make it a little bit easier to throw away the ones that were obviously and intentionally fictitious. They're a wreck high number of

fake filings that election cycle. A teenager in Iowa who filed a statement of candidacy for D's Nuts told ABC News in twenty sixteen, one of the main reasons that I ultimately filed was because I found out they had little staff, resources or authority, and we're supposed to trust these guys with our elections. I have made it public that I've withdrawn from the race, but I do not

apologize for what I did. The FEC is vastly underfunded, and while it seems like I have a burning hatred of the FEC, I actually support the FAC getting additional funding. Thank you, dse Nuts. And like I said, it is technically against the law to knowingly file paperwork with the Federal Election Commission that contains false or fictitious information, but

enforcement is vanishingly rare. Investigations tend to be limited to high profile incidents involving real people, like fake paperwork filed in twenty twenty claiming to be authorized by Kanye West. So, whether it's an obvious joke like the Fart Party, or someone who just honestly doesn't know what they're doing, like the American Freedom Party. Someone at the Federal Election Commission is reading every piece of paperwork that gets filed. They're understaffed, underfunded,

under resourced in every way imaginable. But they process the paperwork and when the paperwork is inadequate, they send back something called a Request for Additional Information an RFAI. It's a form letter. It's not really personalized, but there's a little bit of text in there explaining exactly what was in SIFIA about your filing. Maybe the committee treasurer forgot to sign it. Maybe the number at the bottom of

a column of dollar amounts isn't the correct sum. Maybe they just don't think your name is really Jesus Christ or Forrest Gump, whatever it is. You'll get the RFAI and then you have a chance to file a corrected form. Back in twenty twelve, when Merlin Miller was running for president on the party's ticket, they did file some paperwork. In April of that year, party chairman William Daniel Johnson filled out FEC Form one, the form for a statement

of organization for a committee. Now remember back then they were called the American Third Position Party, So he's filling out this form as the American third position National Committee, things started to go arrived. By page two, there are checkboxes for different types of committees. Is this a party committee, a candidate committee. If it's a candidate committee, is it the candidate's principal fundraising committee? Is it a political action committee.

You have to choose, and you can only choose one. Johnson checked too many boxes. It took the FEC about two months to get back to him, but the letter offered some helpful clarification about which boxes you might check in different circumstances and explain that you can't check all of them, and it also referred him to the relevant federal regulations. Johnson then filed a corrected form indicating that yes, he was trying to form a national party committee. So

that's it, right, he did it. He filled it out right, not quite. Now that the form is properly filled out, it can actually be evaluated on the merits. And it turns out you can't just get a party started by filling out a form. The fart party's paperwork was filed,

but it's going to get thrown out. Filling out a form isn't a golden ticket to party recognition, and the Federal Election Commission makes the final call on whether an organization has done enough political party stuff to be considered a political party, things like do they engage in voter registration drives? Do they have a national headquarters and state

party committees? Do they hold a national convention? Are they actively seeking and successfully getting ballot access in multiple states for multiple candidates for office other than just the presidency. There's no room for any of that on the form, obviously, So in order to be recognized as a national party committee, you have to formally request something called an advisory opinion

from the Federal Election Commission. According to the FEC, quote, advisory opinions are official commission responses to questions about how federal campaign finance law applies to specific factual situations. From the web page about the advisory opinion process quote. Anyone may request an advisory opinion as long as the request is affected by the question he or she presents a requestor cannot ask for an advisory opinion about someone else's activities,

hypothetical situations, or general questions of law. Advisory opinion requests must be in writing. The request must include a complete description of all facts relevant to the specific transaction or activity, and they're all a public record. The FEC's website has a searchable database of every advisory opinion since nineteen seventy five.

The Commission informed the American Free and Party in July of twenty twelve that they would need to get an advisory opinion before calling themselves a national party committee, and William Daniel Johnson wrote back in September of twenty twelve that he had requested one and he was just waiting for a decision. But there's no official record that any opinion was ever sought by anyone involved. I searched every combination of words and names. I downloaded a spreadsheet that

almost crashed my computer. I looked at every request filed since twenty ten, just to be safe. It's not there. It's possible Johnson made some kind of attempt, like maybe he did write a letter saying make me a party. But again, the request must include a complete description of all facts relevant to the specific transaction or activity, and the database doesn't include requests that were insufficient for consideration.

So maybe he thinks he asked for an advisory opinion, but according to the official record, no, he did not. But like I said, the FEC doesn't really have the resources to chase down every piece of non compliant paperwork. The American Freedom Party continued to file as though they were a national party committee, but they weren't actually raising

any money at least not that they really reported. And they were kind of halfheartedly running candidates for president in twenty sixteen, but their paperwork was a mess, and they weren't doing the work to actually get those candidates on ballots. I mean, forget trying to convince the voters. The party couldn't even convince their own candidates to stay in the race or the party. Their initial nominee was a man named Ken Givedden, but he dropped out in July of

twenty fifteen, just a few months after being nominated. The man they'd picked as his VP, Bob Whittaker, stepped up to take the presidential nomination, but he quit too in April of twenty sixteen. He was mad that the party was pouring money into a political action committee to pay for racist robocalls supporting Donald Trump. Bob Whitaker also died at age seventy six not long after this, so maybe he just didn't have the stamina. The next candidate on

the list was Tom Bowie. You might actually remember him from some viral YouTube videos a few years back in which he proudly accepts the title of most racist man

in America. There's no evidence that his campaign ever raised or spent any money at all, so as far as expending their limited enforcement resources, it was probably just not worthwhile for the Federal Election Commission to follow up unless and until there was any actual possibility of this party being meaningfully engaged in anything you could consider actual electoral activity, So they just kept filling out their paperwork wrong and filing it. In twenty nineteen, the party was gearing up

for the twenty twenty presidential election. The candidate they chose this time around was a Christian identity pastor in Tennessee named Rick Tyler. Tyler had run for office a handful of times before, never receiving more than a few thousand votes, but hope springs eternal, I guess. He announced his candidacy in May of twenty nineteen in a speech at the University of Tennessee. The university was very clear with the press at the time that no one invited Rick Tyler

to speak on campus. He had simply rented out the alumni hall, which is something any member of the public can do, and the university had no legal avenue to refuse to rent it to him. Shortly before Rick Tyler's poorly attended and heavily protested announcement in Tennessee, William Daniel Johnson wrote a letter to the Federal Election Commission kind of. He filed an amended statement of organization for the party that FEC Form one, but stapled to the front of

the form, he attached a letter. I don't think that's an accepted form of communication with the Federal Election Commission. I don't think they'll reply to your letter if you just staple it to a form, But he tried, and the letter reads as follows. Gentlemen, the requests of this correspondence are made in conformity with the Freedom of Information Act USC Paragraph five to five to two, in accordance

with which obligation of response is twenty days. The American Freedom Party will be applying for FEC certification as a political party for the United States of America. In order for the party to meet FEC legal requirements for certification, we require the FEC to forward to US post haste within the twenty days as allocated by statute the exact requirements necessary to comply for FEC full certification for the

twenty twenty election cycle. We request that the provided FEC requirements as provided by the FEC be irrevocable and be used and applied to all applying or already approved political parties equally for the twenty twenty presidential election cycle. That's definitely not how it works. The Federal Election Commission doesn't do that. You can't just write to them and ask them open ended questions about how you should be doing election stuff. Besides, why didn't he just google it or

hire a political consultant and didn't he already know the answer? Remember, back in twenty twelve, seven years before this, they sent him a letter about the requirements he needs to get an advisory opinion, and he claimed he was working on it.

The rules had not changed in those seven years. I'm not sure the FEC replied to his letter, though they did, however a few months later send another request for Additional information letter, again informing the organization that what they need to do is get an advisory opinion before they can be considered a national party committee and Johnson again used the Federal Election Commission electronic filing system to send them a letter, so his letter is preserved in the committee's filings,

and he wrote, I don't understand what you request. We only take in under ten thousand dollars per year. Do we need to petition the Commission for an advisory opinion? Should we check a different box on our forms or use different forms we file Form three X. Your letter threatens enforcement action if our response is not adequate. I don't want that, but I don't understand what the issue is.

And then shortly after he filed that letter, they just stopped filing entirely, probably in part because they were feeling discouraged by their paperwork problems and they weren't actually raising any money to report. But also their candidate got arrested for tax evasion, so maybe their hearts just weren't in it anymore. But I just can't wrap my head around Johnson's confusion here. The guidance available on the FEC's website

is clear enough. He had been personally and directly notified about the need to request an advisory opinion back in twenty twelve. He even claimed to have done it so obviously he knew he needed to do it. But the most galling thing about this feigned ignorance is he knows someone who knows how to do this. This isn't foreign territory.

When I was looking through the database of advisory opinions, I looked specifically for any opinion on this particular subject, some kind of third party group trying to get recognition as a national political party. I wanted to see what those requests look like, how often this is happening, and how the federal allow commissions evaluating them. The Green Party's request was initially denied in nineteen ninety six, but when they reapplied in two thousand and one, they were granted

national party status. The Reform Party went through the process in nineteen ninety eight. The Constitution Party, which was originally called the US Taxpayers Party, was denied in nineteen ninety two, but tried again in nineteen ninety five and gained party status.

So I'm flipping through these opinions and these applications, and it's clear that the American Freedom Party wouldn't qualify even if they had tried, But they could have at least looked to these past applications to see how they were supposed to structure this and what kinds of party activities they should be aiming for if they wanted to qualify. But maybe William Daniel Johnson didn't think to search the database for inspiration. But why didn't he just ask the

party's executive director, Not John Fasspender. He's still thinking high school at this point. But from twenty ten to twenty fourteen, the American Freedom Party's executive director was a man named Don Wassell, and from nineteen eighty seven until nineteen ninety five, Don Wassell was the executive director of another party, the Populist Party. When the Populist Party ran David Duke for president in nineteen eighty eight, Don Wassell submitted the party's

request for an advisory opinion. So in twenty twelve when the party got that letter, why was it a shock? I mean, the Populist Party didn't get national party status. So I'm not saying Wassall would have been good at it, or that he would have succeeded, but it does at least appear as though he successfully stated the party's case to the degree that was possible. In nineteen eighty eight, and that's something Johnson doesn't seem to have even tried

to do. By the end of the summer of twenty twenty, the American Freedom Party had voluntarily terminated their committee with the Federal Election Commission, and they've never refiled. There is no currently active committee associated with that name, nor any committee I can find associated with the names of any current or former member of their Board of directors. They never successfully gained federal recognition as a national party, but at least until twenty twenty, they could point to those

forms and pretend now they're not even trying. I guess it is possible that Fassbender is telling the truth about gaining ballot access or party recognition in individual states, although I can find no evidence of it, and he never says which states. Every state has its own rules, and they don't all have good websites. But I dug around on the Board of Election site for a dozen or so states that I believe they have some connection to,

and I couldn't find anything recent. In California, the only state that has easily searchable records of all requests file with the state for party status, they only ever tried once in twenty fifteen, in California, a party attempting to qualify for recognition has to submit signed affidavits from zero point thirty three percent of the total number of registered voters in the state. So in twenty sixteen that would have meant around fifty seven thousand signatures. They submitted five,

not five thousand, not five hundred. Literally one two three four five they got five signatures. So even though I don't have numbers that detailed from other states, there's no state whose rules would reward that level of effort. Every state requires at least some thousands of signatures, even the Dakotas. The American Freedom Party doesn't even have a corporate entity

behind it anymore. The party incorporated in North Dakota in twenty seventeen, but board member Jamie Kelso stopped filing the paperwork in twenty nineteen, and the state dissolved the corporation in twenty twenty one. The California brand that Johnson incorporated in twenty nineteen was forfeited in twenty twenty for a

failure to file reports. They very recently updated their membership application page, removing any clear reference to how much it costs or how you can make that payment, but until June of twenty twenty five, the website instructed applicants to mail a check for fifty do to a UPS store mailbox in New York City. They don't sell shirts or stickers or hats. You can't pay online, you can't make a donation. They aren't even asking for money, which seems

hard to believe. But I looked everywhere. Aside from that recently removed page on the website with instructions to make checks out to the American Freedom Party, there's no publicly visible information about how you could give them money, even if you wanted to, And that seems like it would be a pretty big problem. How can you expect to recruit younger members if the only way to get involved is to mail a paper check. That's a real barrier

to entry in the twenty first century. But maybe the logistics aren't a big deal because there aren't very many members even trying to pay those dues. They don't hold public events, so there's there's no way to even guess how many members they might have. The group's channel on the messaging app Telegram has about three thousand members, but that has almost no correlation to actual group membership. Patriot Front, for example, has seventeen thousand followers on Telegram and probably

just a few hundred members nationwide. In twenty twenty two, John Fassbender claimed that membership was growing at quote an alarming rate, but he wouldn't give a number. Charles Lincoln II, a disbarred attorney who's occasionally listed on the party's FEC filings as their treasurer, said in a live stream last year that he'd been involved with the party since its founding, and he'd actually just come from a board meeting earlier that day, but he had no idea how many members the group might have.

of the party aside from the board of directors. In another one of Lincoln's streams that same month, he had party chairman William Daniel Johnson on and he characterized the number of members only as quote, not a whole lot. So they're not really running candidates, they're not really registered as a political party. They don't want your money. And their own chairman said last year that there aren't very

many members, So what are they doing. I listened to every crumb of audio I could find from the last four years. There's not a ton, but it's still more than I would have preferred to listen to. The party went sort of dormant in twenty twenty after they terminated their committee with the FEC, their presidential candidate got arrested, and their corporate entity was involuntarily dissolved. They didn't do

much for a while. In the fall of twenty twenty one, they were ready to announce to the world that they were back from their hiatus.

any sense. From the fall of twenty twenty one through interviews recorded this year in twenty twenty five, they seem to be just constantly announcing that they're it's happening any day now. We're just about to announce something new and exciting. We're back from our hiatus. You haven't seen us in years, and we're back now, and it never happens. In two interviews given over a year apart, Fastbender boasts that the party is just about to launch a nationwide campus organization,

a wing of the party for college students. The plan was so close to being implemented three years ago. The website hasn't had a new article at almost a year They sometimes have a Twitter account, but it keeps getting banned for hate speech. They hid information about their national convention behind a password on the website and never publicly posted any information about how an interested prospective member might

inquire about attending. That's not how political parties behave, but it isn't out of step with the standard mo of a group whose members don't want to be publicly associated with it. Their executive director isn't even using his real name. Jonathan Magnano started using the name Johann Fassbender in twenty

eighteen in private chats for Identity Europa members. And aside from that smattering of candidates in the twenty tens, you know Merlin Miller in twenty twelve, Harry Bertram for some state level offices in West Virginia twenty eleven, twenty twelve, that disastrous revolving door of candidates for president in twenty sixteen.

The party doesn't really run candidates. Most of the campaigns publicly associated with the party aren't even on the ballot as American Freedom Party candidates, if they got on the ballot at all. Current party chairman Ralph Brandt tried to run for city Council in Mesa, Arizona, and twenty tive twelve, but he failed to collect the two hundred and thirty three signatures required to get his name on the ballot.

When Harry Bertram ran for office in West Virginia, he was usually just listed on the ballot as an independent candidate and instead of receiving funds labeled as being from his party. One significant cash and fusion related to Bertram's twenty eleven campaign came in as an independent expenditure from the party's chairman in his personal capacity, which, again, I don't know a lot about elections, but that doesn't seem entirely in line with my understanding of campaign finance law.

I can't actually find anyone publicly claiming to be running as a member of the American Freedom Party at any time in any place in the last five years since their big relaunch and recommitment, but Fastpender is constantly claiming it's happening. He just can't tell you who the candidates are, or where they live, or what they're running for. So

the party is fielding candidates, but only secretly. When he was asked last month how many candidates the party ran in the most recent election cycle, he finally gave a number.

But they aren't asking for money. I don't get it. The party does seem to be making another attempt to move forward a national convention in March of this year, again because they can't convince their own members to publicly associate with the party. Even the very limited number of carefully curated photos of the event have all of the attendee's faces blurret out. On social media. They posted videos of just four speakers, and none of those speakers are

in the party leadership, at least not publicly. There's no indication that they're current chairman Ralph Brandt even attended. It's not who was missing that really intrigued me, though, it's who was there. The keynote speaker at the party's convention wasn't a member of the board of directors. It wasn't a past or current candidate for office on the party's ticket.

It was Thomas Rousseau, the leader of Patriot Front. I couldn't tell you how many members of the American Free Edom Party attended the convention, but photos show a contingent of about a dozen members of Patriot Front. In December of twenty twenty four, just a few months before that convention, in March, the American Freedom Party issued an official statement endorsing Patriot Front, declaring their values to be in seamless harmony and pledging to stand shoulder to shoulder united by

their shared vision. This is perhaps a return to their roots. The party originally grew out of a group of skinheads trying to find a way to look legitimate. The white power movement has always had suits and boots. That is your respectable intellectual types, your Richard Spencer, dapper Nazi kind of guys, your hotel conference rooms full of middle aged men watching a PowerPoint about the genetic superiority of the

Aryan race. Then it has their counterparts, the street fighters, the black shirts, the men who hide their faces and wrap their knuckles. The two groups often find themselves at odds, disagreeing about tactics and optics, but they need each other and they know it all the way Back in twenty thirteen at the American Freedom Party conference, board member Tom Sunich stood up to say something after the leader of the Golden State Skinheads finished his remarks.

We'll do the paperwork and give speeches, and you will march in the streets. The American Freedom Party has never once succeeded in any of its endeavors, and it's unclear what their future plans are at this point, but it does look a little bit like there are some groups out there trying to once again unite the right. Hopefully this isn't a story we have to come back to, at least not with a new ending. I do hope to circle back on some of those intriguing loosens in

the middle eventually. For now, though, I'll leave you with this inspiring statement made by one of the speakers at that convention in March. Sam Dixon has long since retired from his career as a lawyer for the Klan. These days, he makes the rounds speaking at white nationalist events all over the country, and he runs a lucrative real estate business, purchasing property tax debt and forcing old people out of

their homes for pennies on the dollar. He gave a rambling thirty minute speech, managing to impart absolutely no wisdom gleaned from his sixty years in the movement, but he had one very important message for the white nationalists attending that Ethno State Party conference at a mysterious castle in West Virginia.

It's nothing personal. You can exchange conspiracy theories about the show with other listeners on the weird Little Guys subredd. It just don't post anything that's gonna make you one of my word Little Guys