Exposing Neo-Nazi Lies About Migrants, with Kate Ross

[00:00:00] Cayden Mak: Welcome to Block and Build, a podcast from Convergence magazine. I’m your host and the publisher of Convergence, Cayden Mak. On this show, we’re building a roadmap for the movement that’s working to block the ascent of authoritarianism while building the influence of a genuinely progressive trend in the broad front that we need to win.

[00:00:27] Before we get started, I want to invite you to join our subscriber program. Thanks Convergence Magazine is an independent publication that relies on the generosity of our readers and listeners to create the rigorous, thoughtful takes you’ve come to expect from us week in and week out. You can become a subscriber at convergencemag.

[00:00:42] com slash donate. Any amount helps, either as a one time donation or a recurring monthly or annual subscription. On the show this week, I’m joined by security expert Kate Ross, whose research on anti government and racially motivated violent extremists has led her to study the activities of extremist groups in Springfield, Ohio, for the past several months.

[00:01:02] Their activities have culminated in this week’s viral racist lies about Haitian migrants, which Donald Trump amplified to millions of viewers in this week’s presidential debate. But first, these headlines.

[00:01:18] A funeral was held this week in Nablus for 26 year old Aysanur Ezgi Ege, the U. S. Turkish dual citizen who was shot and killed in the West Bank at a protest against illegal Israeli settlements. The IOF admitted that it was quote, highly likely its troops were responsible for her death. Considering they were the ones with the guns, that seems obvious, but this admission finally prompted Secretary of State Antony Blinken to speak out against the IOF, calling the attack on protesters, quote, unprovoked and unjustified.

[00:01:49] It is absolutely heartbreaking that it took the murder of a US citizen to get Blinken to speak out. It’s unconscionable that our government continues to arm a military that kills unarmed protesters with impunity, regardless of their citizenship. I think I speak for all of us at Convergence when I say that we extend our love and condolences to Eggie’s family and friends.

[00:02:08] In better news, I am pleased to congratulate CWA 1180, the Audubon Society’s new staff union, on their first tentative agreement with management, which headed off a potential strike at the National Environmental Organization. As a former CWA District 1 steward and certified bird guy, nice work, bird union.

[00:02:27] Meanwhile, 33, 000 aircraft assembly workers at Boeing walked off the job this morning after overwhelmingly voting to reject a contract offer, citing inadequate raises that are incommensurate with the skyrocketing cost of living in the Pacific Northwest. And of course, most of our listeners are familiar with the racist lies about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio that were amplified by vice presidential candidate J.

[00:02:50] D. Vance all week and repeated by Donald Trump on the debate stage on Tuesday night. As other commentators have noted, it’s not a coincidence that these lies are being told about Haitian migrants in particular. I’d like to shout out the Haitian Times for their coverage of this. We’ll put a link to their story in the show notes, and the Haitian Bridge Alliance, who are doing the critical frontline work of supporting Haitian migrants in the U.

[00:03:12] S., including in Springfield. We’ll be spending the rest of this show exploring how and why far right extremists infiltrate small communities like Springfield to help amplify hateful rumors and messaging amongst the community, and then celebrate when they break into the mainstream and become GOP talking points.

[00:03:33] I’m joined today by Kate Ross, a security consultant on anti government and racially motivated violent extremists, who’s been tracking the national activity of a right wing extremist group known as Bloodtribe. Kate continued to track their activity in Springfield, Ohio over the past several months since racist rumors began to spread in local private Facebook groups.

[00:03:53] This activity included a march Bloodtribe held on August 7th wearing their trademark red and black uniforms and carrying swastika flags. This was then followed by an appearance by Bloodtribe member Drake Behrens speaking at a city commission meeting August 27th in which He was removed after threatening that quote, crime and savagery will increase with every Haitian you bring in.

[00:04:16] Kate has tracked and documented this activity publicly on her Twitter account, which we’ll link in the show notes. Kate, thank you so much for joining me today. Thanks for having me. Briefly, what brought you to the work of tracking and documenting this kind of far right extremism? 

[00:04:31] Kate Ross: I come from a background of mathematics and economics.

[00:04:37] And then I became an accountant and then Proud Boys started coming to my city. I live close to the, this hotel that the Proud Boys would stay at every time they came to visit in 2020 and they would also rent Airbnbs near where I lived. In fact, I don’t know if it was Proud Boys, but it was one group.

[00:04:58] They, Hung a Nazi flag from their Airbnb, which happened to be the African American, like the first African American firehouse that was turned into an Airbnb. 

[00:05:08] Cayden Mak: Oh, wow. 

[00:05:09] Kate Ross: I started getting more curious, and leading up to January 6th, I, started poking around the internet. I’m like, where are these people hanging out on the internet?

[00:05:19] And slowly started finding things, and learning how to research where these people organize and get together. Was wa I was reading like the Donald Win, I think it was it was like a part of Reddit. . It was like, this bus is leaving New Jersey at this time, and then we’re gonna drop off at this metro station at this time if you wanna sign up to come like email this person and I, and then there were other people that were discussing like what kind of like weapons they could bring according to DC’s, like weapon laws.

[00:05:52] You can’t wave into D. C. with a gun permit from another place. It’s pretty strict gun regulations. I’m just like, they’re just talking about this in the open? And leaving their phone numbers and emails? There was even a website that was a carpool website set up specifically for January 6th.

[00:06:13] A whole nother website. It was just like, and then people were surprised it happened, 

[00:06:17] Cayden Mak: sure. 

[00:06:18] Kate Ross: I don’t think anybody in DC was surprised. So that was what started me getting into tracking these type of groups, the violent groups. 

[00:06:28] Cayden Mak: It’s interesting. It sounds like if you, if it’s just if you know where to look there’s plenty of stuff to find.

[00:06:34] On the other hand, it does seem like it is hard to triangulate the points of origin of things that are like this really racist, sensationalist story about Haitian migrants. And I think that probably what most, like relatively savvy media consumers know at this point is that J.

[00:06:52] D. Vance kind of repeated this meme on the internet that He mentioned it like on the floor of Congress on Monday Which accelerated this online discussion and then Donald Trump obviously brought it up really loudly at the presidential debate on Tuesday you’ve been following some of this right wing activity around specifically Springfield, Ohio and the members of the extremist group Blood Tribe who are celebrating the fact now online that Trump has spread this meme into kind of mainstream consciousness.

[00:07:28] Can you walk us through what Blood Tribe is and how they ended up in Springfield, Ohio? 

[00:07:34] Kate Ross: Absolutely. So Blood Tribe is a neo Nazi pagan, half pagan. They did a poll once in their group group. They, have swastika tattoos. They march usually in red and black, red tops, black pants with Nazi flags.

[00:07:52] So a black flag sometimes with the white swastika and sometimes with the red swastika, they’re, those are their beliefs. It’s. White power and lots of hate and a lot of these groups There’s a lot of these types of groups and they share membership between groups. Some people will be in multiple groups and they have Chapters like regions like they have a new england region.

[00:08:16] They have ohio region They’re at ohio chat now they were really active in wisconsin last year they You know, they’ll go out to south dakota, they travel everywhere But Their appearance of being everywhere is dependent on the fact that they have members everywhere or affiliated members everywhere with other groups.

[00:08:40] So they’re able to mobilize more usually up until a couple of months ago, like for the summer, you really would only see groups mobilize like maybe once a month, and that would usually happen on this terrible day, which is called White Lives Matter Day of Action, which is an explicit. Neo Nazi group, Great Replacement Theory there’s chapters in every single state.

[00:09:04] They’ve done a really great job of producing propaganda that’s, you can easily adapt to your state and reproduce and they have days of, what they call days of action where people will flyer or sticker These racist things and this happens every second Saturday of the month. So those days to me are like work days I’m like who’s going out and when but in the past couple months more on the ground action Patriot Front’s mobilizing more blood charge mobilizing more Goyim Defense League was in Nashville for an entire week terrorizing that community.

[00:09:41] They went to a a city council meeting This is like not a new thing and in Aurora, Colorado on Monday a guy called into the city council, you know meeting Blaming Venezuelan migrants on Jewish landlords. I mean it is These people are getting very emboldened. 

[00:10:01] Cayden Mak: Yeah, 

[00:10:03] Kate Ross: so When the culture wars over the past couple years like these targeting of small, very small groups like trans people.

[00:10:14] And so they took that out on drag story hour. So you would see WLM, Proud Boys, Patriot Front, Blood Tribe, all these people showing up and protesting drag story hour. In fact, Blood Tribe posted. Drag story hour twice in Ohio once in Columbus and once in Wadsworth and they bring guns and they say yeah Heil Hitler and they say Weimer Problems Weimer solutions like there’s no They’re very 

[00:10:45] Cayden Mak: explicit.

[00:10:45] Yeah, there’s no guessing 

[00:10:46] Kate Ross: what they’re about 

[00:10:48] Cayden Mak: Right. 

[00:10:49] Kate Ross: It seems that they will latch on to whatever a lot of these groups whatever like the top of the culture war that everyone’s talking about. It’s like you can almost predict it if you watch whatever lives with TikTok is started on next. 

[00:11:02] Cayden Mak: Sure. 

[00:11:03] Kate Ross: Is they’re going to latch on to.

[00:11:05] And the whole quote unquote migrant crisis, we’re listening to talking heads paraphrase great replacement theory on TV as well as politicians. It’s absolutely disgusting. 

[00:11:18] Cayden Mak: It’s like a, it’s like a closed meme loop a little bit with them. It seems that they’re like, Accelerating a thing and get excited about that.

[00:11:28] Kate Ross: Yeah. Often I’ll read things that like politicians or pundits like will write or say, and I’m like, those that want to raise war aren’t having to do as much as the acceleration anymore. These are the people who are doing it for them. It’s scary. And I can’t even imagine being, like we’re targeting these small groups.

[00:11:54] It’s, the migrant crisis, but as lately, the media has grabbed on to Haitians and Venezuelans. If you noticed cheering, picking crimes that have happened and using that as some kind of catalyst to, a moral panic that the states this is not new to create a moral panic that becomes a political stage, 

[00:12:22] Cayden Mak: yeah, I’m curious about Springfield in particular, cause Springfield is not, I mean it’s a small town. It’s what, like 60, 000 people? It’s not, it’s like big enough to have a city government and city services, but like not very much bigger than that. I’m curious. Why you think Springfield has become the flashpoint for this, and what what Bloodtribe has been up to there and how they’ve been able to spin what’s going on there.

[00:12:52] Kate Ross: A lot of these rumors about people eating pets started on this anti migrant Facebook group called Stop the Influx back in June, which is a private Facebook group that locals are using. There’s also like the spread of messaging on telegram. So like the guy with the holding the goose who was hunting out of season in Columbus, Ohio, which is not Springfield, Ohio reporter Steven Monselli actually did an interview with him and you can get it on Twitter.

[00:13:28] But. It’s a lot easier for these groups these hate groups, these white nationalists, to show up in a small town that isn’t expecting them to march through with their long guns and bulletproof vests on and to not get any resistance. A lot of times, I know it’s the illness in a way, it’s like a flash mob, they’ll do it at a certain time of day, people won’t know they’re coming, so they won’t be prepared.

[00:13:58] People are just scared. If you see a bunch of people with Nazi flags with guns, you’re probably not going to go up and confront them. You go to a big city the epic time that Patriot Front showed up in the middle of the night in Philly, and they were just chased out by, right back into their trucks by locals who just happened to be there at the time.

[00:14:21] Who are like snapchatting the incident, making fun of them 

[00:14:25] Cayden Mak: yeah, 

[00:14:25] Kate Ross: it’s a lot easier to, a town of 60, 60, 000 people like to, grab their attention and make them fearful, especially if they haven’t, dealt with these kind of groups in the past. 

[00:14:41] Cayden Mak: Yeah, that make, it makes a lot of sense as like a, like for them, a strategic target.

[00:14:45] Kate Ross: Yeah. And also that can help in a smaller environment or a smaller community, it can help them make, draw more attention to them. It’s like something that was becoming a national news story. It’s a small town. They’re a small group. So it gives them, a way to make themselves a main character in the story.

[00:15:06] Cayden Mak: For sure. 

[00:15:07] Kate Ross: And get the attention that they want, and Also find a town where there might be people that are sympathetic to their views. 

[00:15:17] Cayden Mak: And it seems like that was definitely the case with Springfield as like their particular focal point, right? That there was already some sort of like tensions happening in the town.

[00:15:28] Kate Ross: Yeah. This stuff people were saying, like in the Facebook group and at city council meetings, it’s talking about migration has given people an excuse to just pretty much be explicitly racist against certain group, like anti black, race, like racism against like where they start separating migrants into categories, like which ones are better than others.

[00:15:55] Cayden Mak: Yeah, it seems not a coincidence that we’re talking about Haitian migrants in particular. What has been the response from from Blood Tribe, from far right groups since Trump repeated these lies in the debate, like on national TV on Tuesday? What’s been the vibe? 

[00:16:14] Kate Ross: While I was watching the debate I You know, and I’m in a ton of telegram groups, most of which are on mute, but I keep a couple of them on notification, like, where I get notifications, and When I got the hammer, that’s Chris poolhouse, the leader of blood tribe goes by hammer.

[00:16:31] Small men have to have big names. This makes me laugh. It, when he was posted the, it was like a clip of Trump repeating the lie. He’s his statement was blood tribe brought Springfield, Ohio into the public consciousness. It wasn’t just blood tribe. It was. Hate coming out of that town being amplified by a series of right wing and alt right media and anonymous Twitter accounts and being recycled by people with millions of followers like Elon Musk or Charlie Kirk or, people repeating these lies.

[00:17:14] It’s like where you live in a world where facts don’t matter. Everybody wants to have the breaking news story. I always tell people to wait for the slow news before you make any decisions about what happened. I understand like wanting to know what happened, like, When something scary happens with something unex, we can’t explain or can’t fathom happens.

[00:17:39] We want to know why, but, waiting for all the details, it can take a couple of weeks, a couple of months before we really find out what happened. And I, one of the things that’s really frustrated me is I had posted a local actually reached out to me the day after that council meeting where Drake Brent spoke at using a very racist.

[00:18:00] pseudonym. And I had posted it that next day on top of when I ID’d him in February. And he’s the only member other than Chris Poolhouse that marches without a mask. So I guess they looked up his racist pseudonym and found my thread and they were like, that person was at our council meeting. Here’s the video.

[00:18:23] And so I had posted it. On the 28th and that didn’t really get picked up. And then finally somebody else saw it and posted it to Twitter and it started going viral without context. But what was really fresh in me is I don’t think people are even like listening to like his two minutes of talking on that video because he doesn’t once mention the lot, he says a lot of hateful, racist stuff, but he doesn’t once mentioned the lie about the pets.

[00:18:50] And people. Lefties and liberals and resist Twitter and you know All these people are like using the thread. It’s oh No, this started with the neo nazis and I think that’s also a problem That maybe people don’t want to confront is that a lot more people are racist than they think 

[00:19:08] Cayden Mak: Yeah, and it also seems like this is part of a larger the larger shift in discourse both In both parties about immigration right now, where it seems like the, like things that, for instance, Kamala Harris has said about migrants and immigration, and what the Biden administration has done to basically not change federal policy on the border, for instance.

[00:19:35] We’re limiting asylum seekers, aren’t 

[00:19:37] Kate Ross: we? 

[00:19:37] Cayden Mak: Yeah, and we’re limiting asylum seekers. It feels like part of a larger cultural shift against immigration, against People’s legal right to asylum in this country that is, is very, it should be worrying to all of us. It’s pretty undemocratic. It is, deeply.

[00:19:54] And it’s also just like inhumane. 

[00:19:56] Kate Ross: Yeah, it’s a shame. It’s funny because I remember when Kamala was first announced, to be running, an RNC research Twitter account was like trying to find bad things about her and they’re like posting videos of her laughing and they’re like, Oh, she wants to abolish ICE.

[00:20:12] Don’t get me excited. You guys keep telling me great things. But she does not want to abolish ICE. She might want to rework the program. But even for people who come here on work visas, like high skilled workers, the In non asylum cases the whole immigration process is expensive and long and a lot of waiting and a lot of paperwork.

[00:20:36] Highly educated PhDs have a hard time, moving themselves around this process. It’s not easy. 

[00:20:44] Yeah. 

[00:20:45] Cayden Mak: I think this is also interesting because I think What, for me, this conversation is highlighting is really the interplay between, what the main people in what we would consider the political mainstream are thinking about and talking about, and then what these kinds of far right groups are able to capitalize on to In a lot of ways, mainstream their message.

[00:21:07] And recruit. Yeah. And recruit people. For sure. That I can totally see the ways in which this ecology like media ecology basically is like creating on ramps for the far right. I’m curious also if you’ve heard anything from folks in Springfield about what the sort of fallout has been in the past week for people who are living there for the way in which Trump platformed this lie, and now that it’s like part of national discourse.

[00:21:34] Kate Ross: The Haitian Times has done a great job reporting on how Haitians are feeling there. They didn’t even know this lie existed about them until recently. They don’t want to let their kids leave the house. The bomb threats and death threats are getting called in every day. Blood tribe is boxing anybody who comes out against them.

[00:21:53] They’re posting on their gab, like address, full addresses, pictures of houses and people. And, that creates a nightmare for law enforcement, bomb threats and bomb squads elementary schools were evacuated today. So, when you’re living in an environment like that’s not just going to be stressful for.

[00:22:13] The Asian population is stressful for everybody and it being brought to the national stage like this I don’t see that harassment ending anytime soon. And there, and like any of these, like lies, come at ping pong in DC, for example, like there’s sex trafficking kids through the basement. There is no basement by the way been to a lot of concerts there.

[00:22:37] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s, a man from 4chan showed up with a shotgun and then a bunch of pizza parlor workers are in danger. That these conspiracies create real life danger for people, that, bad people from outside the community could come in and hurt people. Right now, I’ve been working some locals just putting together like a hostile press list and no neo nazi list.

[00:23:06] Um, A lot of people, right wing alternative media, try just to capitalize on this lie and this terror that these people are reliving from. And they all the streamers start showing up and interviewing people and making up other lies or under unsubstantiated claims and just create more of a nightmare.

[00:23:32] Allowing locals to know who those people that call themselves press are. are to help protect them and their community. Um, those are things that we can do. 

[00:23:45] Cayden Mak: Yeah, super important work. Because I think otherwise it’s hard to tell if people are not paying deep attention to this kind of stuff and that said i’m curious also if you could talk a little bit in general about like Why it’s been important to continue tracking these kinds of groups activities And why it’s critical that we expose them to daylight a little bit and report on what they’re up to.

[00:24:09] And yeah, I imagine that you are doing a lot of this work at fairly considerable risk to yourself. Yeah, if you could talk a little bit about why you think it’s so critical that our movements are aware of what’s going on. 

[00:24:20] Kate Ross: I’ll send you the article that Rick Perlstein interviewed David Newart, who has been reporting on the far right for his entire life.

[00:24:28] And he far like literal anti government and racially motivated hate groups. And at first they thought it was best to ignore them. But when you ignore them, they grow. It’s like anything, like any problem. If you just ignore it, it’s not going to go away. You have to confront it. And.

[00:24:52] January 6, I think a lot of people were like, Oh, they’re going to go to jail and that’ll fix them. And most of them have come out more radicalized, committed like some very serious crimes in between when they did January 6 and when they were arrested for January 6. Like two of them committed murder.

[00:25:13] There were multiple sexual crimes. Crimes of sexual assault in between the two. I don’t think that putting them in jail is going to fix them. It’s turned them into martyrs, political prisoners, that they call themselves. 

[00:25:27] Cayden Mak: Yeah. 

[00:25:28] Kate Ross: And then, this kind of landscape that there’s a lot of grifting and money to be made going on.

[00:25:36] And it’s funny stalker. I’ll be like, You’re a criminal. He’s no, I’m a political prisoner. I was like, you wore an ankle monitor to January six for baking and entering an elementary school. He’s no, I’m a political prisoner. It’s just feels really disconnected from reality.

[00:25:55] A lot of the people at January six, that wasn’t their first time, first brush with law enforcement. And that’s not all of Trump’s base, that’s there, I’m sure there is. The VC guys and tech bros are not hanging out with the political prisoner crowd, if anything, it feels like, it feels more emboldened.

[00:26:16] Cayden Mak: Yeah. Yeah, I think that the This insight that we need to expose this to daylight so that they do not have a chance to grow seems very important and I don’t know, it’s related to a lot of the stuff that people were saying around the strategy of making fun of a lot of these right wing goons that they don’t want to be laughed at.

[00:26:37] Kate Ross: No. 

[00:26:37] Cayden Mak: Because it destroys their mystique. 

[00:26:39] Kate Ross: And, like, when you look at, Chris Poolhouse or Drake Brents that Are both former marines They bought land in springfield, maine to create a white ethno colony And springfield, maine was very good at drop at like they worked local reporters locals churches at driving them out They didn’t want that there.

[00:26:59] Um nobody wants them. He wants that there So You know, it takes a community to fight, whether it’s You know, not just blood tribe, but like the members of their community that are perpetuating these lies and creating this fear mongering that has risen to a national level. Like you have to be willing to call it out for what it is.

[00:27:24] Yeah. And that’s uncomfortable. Confrontation is uncomfortable. But you have to do it. It was like a joke. It’s like always punched a Nazi. If you see a Nazi, they always punch a Nazi. I’m not advocating for violence, there’s a reason for that is they shouldn’t feel safe.

[00:27:41] Go. Yeah. Why do they feel so safe to walk around in public, like the k k were hoods, and then it’s also the lies around that. It’s like the right is always oh, it’s a, they’re the feds. They’re the feds. And like even after they’re arrested for child porn, they’re still the feds.

[00:27:56] And then, with liberals, it’s oh, it’s a Russian op. It’s a Russian op. I’m like, oh no, these are Americans. 

[00:28:04] Cayden Mak: Yeah. And we have to take them serious. Yeah. We have to take that threat seriously. Totally. 

[00:28:08] Kate Ross: Could they have money that’s coming from a foreign country? Possibly. They might not even know it.

[00:28:15] But I think when we brush them off with broad sweeping conspiracies, it just, it doesn’t help. The best way I’ve heard it explained as those are like conversation enders. Like you don’t have to like, if you call them the feds or Russian ops. The conversation ender. You don’t have to actually confront the truth that this thing exists.

[00:28:33] Cayden Mak: And you also don’t have to confront the fact that like the place where some of this hate comes from is from like ordinary prejudice, actually, right? There’s a there’s a launching point into this like extremist universe that is about Like the biases that we have been taught.

[00:28:51] Kate Ross: Yeah, and 

[00:28:52] Cayden Mak: in a white supremacist society. 

[00:28:54] Kate Ross: Yeah, and I mean they have little towns on Roboblox like each of the different groups like they’re recruiting your kids during multiplayer games like They’ll use slurs. See how the kid reacts like it’s grooming. Yeah, and if people Aren’t educated to know or they hear that around their house like they’re not gonna go the other way 

[00:29:19] Cayden Mak: Yeah yeah, and I think you’re right, it’s like parents need tools to interrupt it educators need tools to interrupt it and it’s going to take all of us to really push them back to where they are truly marginalized again.

[00:29:32] Is there anything else that you think our listeners should know about this story or about some of the investigative work that you’ve done? 

[00:29:39] Kate Ross: Just that these groups exist and. We can’t be tolerant of intolerance because once that happens we will live in an intolerant society that A lot of people haven’t heard of a lot of these groups before To learn a little more.

[00:29:56] It’s really hard to like especially if you have young kids. It’s really hard to protect Your family against these things you don’t know exist. There are a lot of educators and programs out there That can, stuff you can read online. Um, and it’s also watch these groups show up at pro Palestinian protests and not get kicked out.

[00:30:18] That’s been wild to watch. Um, I saw there was a member of Rape Waffen, Adam Waffen running around the DC, running around the DMC with a Hezbollah flag that wasn’t promptly kicked out. He was promptly kicked out of the Hiawa National Guard, but not out of the protest. 

[00:30:35] Cayden Mak: Yes. It’s critical for our movements to know about this.

[00:30:38] Yes. 

[00:30:39] Kate Ross: So if you’re in, living in progressive space or progressive media, and you don’t know that these, you haven’t really studied what’s existing out there, I don’t know how you’re going to protect your space from it. Yeah. 

[00:30:53] Cayden Mak: Kate, thank you so much for your very critical work on this. I appreciate you taking the time to talk to us and let our listeners know about what’s going on like behind the headlines on this, yeah, I hope you stay safe and take care. Take care.

[00:31:12] As Kate mentioned, it’s really important for all of us to be prepared to interrupt racist, anti Semitic bigotry in all of our spaces. That includes in our families, our friend groups, our political formations, and more. There’s a real pipeline between the normalized kind of prejudice and racism that’s just ambient in our society overall and these kinds of far right groups.

[00:31:32] Folks like Kate are doing this research not to scare us, but to help us better understand our most violent opponents. They have strategies and tactics. Understanding how they operate and what their goals are helps our movement stay unified and strong in the face of their threats. Understanding their recruitment pipelines, especially targeting young people and especially online, helps interrupt recruitment before young people are taken into their ranks.

[00:31:57] As someone who has young people I care about in my life, especially young white people, I know how essential it is to talk about extremism that they may casually encounter In places like YouTube, the gaming spaces they are online, and basically everywhere they are online. Young people are looking for a place to belong.

[00:32:15] It’s incumbent on all of us, and I’ll say especially folks like me, who are not parents, but have trusting relationships with the children of our friends and family members, to give them the support and curiosity they deserve. And the space to ask questions and probe deeper about the things they’re hearing in their social environment, both online and off.

[00:32:34] Also, it’s never too late to start preparing for the possibility of political violence. If anything, Trump advance, advancing this line of thinking on a national stage should indicate just how in deep they are with this kind of anti government, racially motivated, violent extremist scene. Just like in 2020, Trump is sending some pretty obvious, barely coded signals to these groups through his comments.

[00:32:57] And as Kate mentioned, we can’t just rely on police or the judicial system to deal with them. Sending extremists to prison might actually serve to isolate and radicalize them further, escalating the threat they pose. I don’t have the answer here about how to deal with individuals, but I do think that one way that we can combat them is by making their violence backfire.

[00:33:17] If you’re keen on learning more about how we can counter political violence together, our friends at the 22nd Century Initiative and Horizons Project have launched a new training program to help everyday people prepare to make political violence backfire. You can learn more about the Harnessing Our Power to End Political Violence project at endpoliticalviolence.

[00:33:37] org. And find resources and training near you.

[00:33:43] This show is published by Convergence, a magazine for Radical Insights. I’m Caden Mock and our producer is Josh Elstro. Mac Brown supports us with social and email administration. If you have something to say, please drop me a line. You can send me an email that we’ll consider running on an upcoming mailbag episode at mailbag at convergencemag.

[00:34:01] com. And of course, if you’d like to support the work that we do at Convergence, bringing our movements together to strategize, struggle, and win in this crucial historical moment, you can become a member at convergencebag. com slash donate. Even a few bucks a month goes a long way to making sure our independent small team can continue to build a map for our movements.

[00:34:21] I hope this helps.