Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to rounding the earth.
My name is Liam Sturgis and I am very excited today because we are introducing a new series,
a new theme of discussion.
We have a number of really interesting weekly shows here we do at rounding the earth.
We have our weekly Tuesday roundtable discussions.
We have our RTE discussions that Matthew Crawford does one on one with a variety of guests.
We have our weekly local supporters exclusives and we have our Friday rounding the news shows.
Now what's wound up happening is I've had a lot of very positive influences on me in
the realm of research and in the realm of connecting the dots so to speak, but more
than anything in the realm of learning and understanding the people, the organizations
that make up our society essentially for better and for worse.
And having been positively influenced, for example, by Mark Kulak, Huesutonic Live, by
people like JJ Cooey and people like our guest today, I thought it would be really valuable
to set up a specific space, to hold space for discussions a little more focused on the
research side of things.
And so that's what I've decided to do here is start a new series called the Campfire
Sessions, which is in reference to our Campfire Wiki, which I'm going to pull up and show
for those who have not yet had the opportunity to go and explore it.
And as usual, I have so many tabs open, it's going to take me a long time to actually find
it.
And here it is.
This is our Campfire Wiki.
For those who are not familiar with it, you can go at any time, campfire.wiki.
And it is a repository primarily for information, for research and resources related to the
COVID-19 era, event, plandemonium, whatever you want to call it.
But of course, as most people are starting to understand the people and organizations
and movements and ideologies behind a lot of the COVID response have ties to a lot of other
really interesting areas of life.
And that leads us into, well, our topic of discussion for today.
So what I'd like to do is introduce a guest who members of the Rounding the Earth community
should now be rather familiar with and someone who has done a tremendous amount of research
and good community development work into understanding how grassroots movements and earnest people
with genuine causes can be perhaps manipulated, influenced or otherwise intercepted.
So please allow me to introduce one of my favorite people in the world, Kristin Elizabeth.
How are you, Kristin?
It's hard not to be excellent after that nice introduction.
Nice to see you, Liam.
It's really nice to see you as well, Kristin.
You have now become, you're rapidly becoming a repeat guest on the show and in a variety
of different contexts.
I want to just really quickly summarize what you've brought to us already.
I'm going to share my screen again.
And I want to also say this.
I can be very, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this.
And there can be scripts and there can be all this planning.
And that's great.
Part of me wants this show to be a little more relaxed.
Is that something that you feel would be appropriate?
Sure.
That sounds great.
Excellent.
So with that said, if it takes me a minute to pull up my tabs, I hope everybody will
forgive me.
So let's do this.
Share screen, upper tab.
The Thymus Report.
So first things first.
This is what I'll put the most emphasis on because this is how you came to my attention
first and then to the attention of the Rounding the Earth audience.
You were the author of The Thymus Report, Anatomy of Infiltration in the Grassroots
Health Freedom Movement.
Now can you just give a very brief overview of what The Thymus Report was and how then
it may relate to other areas than just specifically the Health Freedom Movement?
Sure.
So this was the first operation, I'll call it, that I discovered and then researched
and documented and with some support from other people put this report together primarily
as a tool for other activists and organizers to be able to identify certain tactics or
patterns that were taking place in the organizing communities across the country at the time,
just specifically worldwide demonstration and the anti-lockdown rallies and medical freedom
rallies that were being organized.
So that's what it is.
It's a documentation of one operation that was used as an example to present to people
like beware of these patterns.
And I think that's the key part because there are specific individuals named in the report
and that's good and that's fine.
But what you just said, the pointing out of larger patterns of larger techniques which
can maybe be identified in other movements or in the behavior of other individuals.
So then to bring us up to speed, you then launched this fantastic sub stack beyond the
maze where you have talked about, well, a bunch of really interesting things.
There's our baleful Miss Benita who is mentioned in the FEMIS report and then also covering
the US convoy movement, your wonderful interview with Brian Braze and I recommend people if
you haven't listened to not just the summary or the highlight video, which itself is wonderful,
but listen to the whole, I think, two hour podcast version and you'll get a lot of really
human really interesting insight into what Brian went through and the larger situation
there.
So let's take the US convoy movement, put it up in the corner as well as yet another
one of these events, movements, organizations, so on.
You also covered the wonderful film.
Well, not wonderful film.
You wonderfully covered the tremendously interesting and concerning film, White Noise and its
connection or apparent similarity to real life events in East Palestine.
So I'm not sure if that would be something else to put on a shelf as another event type
thing related to this, but at a minimum, it's tremendously interesting and demonstrative
of your good work.
Finally, you've done tremendous work on the America's Frontline Doctors situation and
that is what you and Renette came on to discuss with Matthew just over a week ago now.
So that's the summary.
That's catching us up, putting some context into what we're going to talk about today,
which is this tremendous article that you put out called Stoking White Nationalism.
So Kristin, I'd love it if you introduced us to this article in whatever way you think
is appropriate, the historical leading up to it or simply the premise of the article
itself, whatever you think is best.
What is this?
Wow.
Yeah, this is a doozy.
Well I was introduced to the theme specifically because the town of Chatham, New York, which
is where the article begins and ends, is in my county.
And there were these bizarre things taking place around where I live that the media was
picking up on and claiming represented an amplification of racist white supremacist
groups in the area and specifically ones that by their name would cause a media frenzy like
Patriot Front and not just stickers, but then there were actually a couple very bizarre
little demonstrations or there was one demonstration and a couple banner drops, which I can go
into more later, just the tactics of these groups.
But so this event, the photo that you have up is from this in-person event that happened
in the town of Chatham and it was very bizarre and very suspicious to me.
I've lived in this county pretty much my entire life.
I was born here and it felt totally out of place and it did to a lot of other locals.
And the really interesting thing about it was the banner itself because you can see
it says White Lives Matter, New York, and then almost in exactly the same size font
below it is a link to a telegram channel and that's already suspicious because what they're
doing is they're trying to get you into this telegram channel.
There's no other reason and apparently I wasn't there, but apparently they kind of rolled
up in a vehicle, barreled out of the vehicle.
You can't really tell, but the one guy in the middle has got this like kind of classic
skull mask.
They're all, you know, they're, yeah, just wearing like almost militarized looking a
little bit and they unfurl this banner and they stand there for just a couple minutes
and documentation is taken.
So it looks like it's staged for the purposes of creating media content, right?
And then I went into the telegram channel and that's where this, to check it out, because
I already was doing research primarily in telegram.
So I was like, ah, this is a gold mine and went in there and that's what led me down
this rabbit hole.
So to be clear, it wasn't coming through the lens of exploring the issue around racial
tensions in our country and the ways that those can be productive and unproductive
to further, you know, the government's agenda.
It was actually because I primarily do my research through the lens of propaganda on
social media and I was able to explore what this group in particular was up to because
those are the tools I already use.
And you already use them because that's exactly what you were looking at for the FEMIS report
and for other related investigations, it was the same kind of language and same kind of,
almost as if it was the same, it could be the same people running this thing, cutting
right to it, right?
Yeah, it's, go ahead.
Oh, there's a picture in particular I'm trying to find.
Maybe I've already skipped past it on this article, but where it shows side by side,
the taking or Operation Take Back America.
It's further down.
It's further down?
Okay.
Yeah.
So while I find it, could you elaborate on that, on how it's like the same thing you
were already looking at and boom, here it is in another context?
Sure.
I mean, maybe I should write like FEMIS report 2.0 because there's some additional signs
of a problem group that I've identified that could be articulated for people.
One, and it's in this article, is the way that the group is structured.
And whenever you see on Telegram a situation where a supposed movement has a national channel,
a main national channel, and then a subgroup for every single state, every single state
in the country, likely additionally groups for other countries, there's, I mean, I have
yet to see that form and see any indication at all that it's actually organic.
So if you go back to the beginning, which you can do on Telegram pretty easily, if you,
I'll just quickly mention this for anyone who wants to learn this research trick, if
you go to search on Telegram, it gives you the option to search people, a query, or a
calendar.
And if you click on the calendar, you can just literally flip back four years and it's
going to automatically bring you to the date that that group was formed.
And what you want to do is you want to go back to see when the group was formed and
look at the first three or four posts in the group.
Because in the case of White Lives Matter, when I did that, what I saw was that there
was like a video all in a matter of a few days, there was a video of something, and
then there was like an announcement from whomever created this group that they were looking
for trustworthy admins for different states.
And once they had them and had them vetted, they would open groups in other states.
But then like two days later, boom, you just have this list of links.
I think it's 45 altogether that was produced, one for every state in the nation, and then
like a bunch, yeah, there it is, a bunch of countries around the world.
So there's no way.
There's just no logical way that this resulted from something organic when within a handful
of days, they have a structure set up across the country and the world.
It's not possible.
Oh, sorry.
Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.
I was just going to say this is classic.
The fake worldwide demonstration group, Worldwide USA, had this form.
Marilena Bonita's group, Operation Take Back America has this form.
There's a number of other ones.
And so the only way this could possibly result from something organic is over time.
Yeah.
Well, and so point of clarification, does the original worldwide demonstration group
have this format?
That's a good question.
I don't think that they have a list of links that's packaged like this.
I would have to like go back and verify that because a big part of what the original worldwide
demonstration did was promote the various groups from around the world.
But I can tell you from working on the national and international level with those people,
the intensive amount of vetting that goes on and internal conversation and everything
else, that's totally not present.
Yeah.
So it did grow over time.
Countries were added and over time the list, if there even is a list, grew.
Yeah.
Because one might say, well, you look at this and, well, this is the intended result.
If you have a movement of any kind, you want to be able to have, as you say, grassroots
representation and local leaders.
This is the kind of thing Matthew talks about, for example.
Matthew Crawford, the decentralized movement of leaders within different regions.
So it's not to say that the premise of having something like this would be an ideal way
in theory of managing a large movement.
However, it's impossible for this to have happened virtually overnight within the span
of a couple of days.
Is that what you're saying?
It's simply not possible?
Yes.
That is what I'm saying.
It is simply not possible to have absolutely every state.
That's complete nonsense.
How did they find an individual and vet them who wanted to admin a White Lives Matter group
in absolutely every state across Alaska, Vermont, Hawaii?
I mean, it's just utter nonsense within five days.
And in Albania, Austria, Bosnia.
I mean.
So but then there's the thing of saying, well, so Kristin, you're saying there's not white
supremacy groups in all these states in all these countries, or there's not perhaps a
spectrum of racial, as you say, racial tension that could be useful or not for government
actors.
But what about the earnest race relations issues?
Whether or not they evolve or elevate into nationalism or supremacy type movements.
There are genuine issues of race in culture.
And as you go place to place, they're slightly different.
But surely they are there, yes?
Well, I mean, I think that's probably a better question to kind of move toward at the end
of this conversation, because I think it's important just to make the distinction between
that important question.
And the fact that what I'm trying to do in this article is point out that through the
way these groups are structured and the propaganda, there's a question around their authenticity.
And those are two separate questions, because then you have to also ask, like, well, what's
the agenda?
Right?
And that's related to the question that you're asking.
Fantastic.
I love it.
Okay.
So, so to clarify, we've been talking about so far one specific apparent group, apparent
organization called White Lives Matter.
Now I just want to point of clarification again, before we kind of expand the scope
a little bit, because I as I finished reading the article and was reviewing, I was going
in to try to find further information on White Lives Matter.
And it looked to me as though there was no formal organization.
For example, Black Lives Matter is it's a slogan.
It's a broad movement, but it is also a 501 C whatever nonprofit that accepts funds and,
you know, apparently has done some questionable things with it.
But at least there is a legitimate organization at the center of it, or not legitimate.
That's not what I mean.
But a formal organization.
Am I right?
Or could you expand on if White Lives Matter is that or is this something even more fluid?
It's not robust, and it's not well organized, and it's not large.
And I know of no formal organization.
It appears to be a very small handful of individuals in especially a handful of states across the
country.
So even though there's a White Lives Matter, Vermont, for example, I'm just going to assume,
although I don't know that I've been in that specific group, that if you go there, what
you'll see in the feed is simply content that's been forwarded from the states that actually
do have activity.
And the majority of the states across the country, I don't think do.
So the groups have been set up in the hopes that some activity will materialize.
And so there are certain states that have activity.
But even within those states, it's like a handful of people.
And it's the same content of like, it's a lot of really short video clips of just hands
putting stickers on things, White Lives Matter stickers on things, and stuff like that.
These really short clips, posts with some pictures, different media content, but that's
repeatedly put into the feed.
So they just repurpose the same media to give the illusion, in my opinion, of a lot more
activity than there actually is.
So I don't think that it's catching on really very well at all, which is another pattern
with these operations is that they actually don't tend to do well.
Which is probably a good sign.
It's probably a good sign.
And I don't want to impose my opinions on anybody.
I would say to me, it's a good sign if pseudo-militaristic white nationalists or any kind of nationalist
organization is taken off.
Although even that statement is nuanced, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
Okay.
So I want to allow you to flow through this in the way that you think is most natural.
It seems to me it's worthwhile establishing.
We're talking about white lives matter.
But as we go through and as you start to look in, you start to see connections to other
organizations with similar stated intentions, but that aren't clearly related at first.
Is that the case or what's the most important thing to look at there as we expand the scope
out?
Sure.
I guess I would just like to mention a couple other notable elements of the white lives
matter network of telegram groups before moving on.
Because I think it's really important.
And one is I am of the very, very firm opinion that the main administrators of this network
of groups do not speak English as a primary language, which is also a pattern.
I've talked about that in relationship to other things on this program already.
We saw that a lot with the convoy.
So you can get a sense for that with spam bots and bot accounts.
It's not that hard to familiarize yourself with someone who's using really busted English.
And it has improved over the year and a half or so.
I've been monitoring these groups, but that's just worth noting because there is also a
pattern of the tech side of an operation being run outside of the country, but involving
operatives within the country.
And that's important.
Do you know where is there a location that you can trace the cooperation to?
No, I have my various suspicions.
I mean, in the case of Carolina Bonita's takeover of McCullough's group, that led back to an
account in Ukrainian.
And I've seen that a few times.
I've seen Russia too.
And I had someone who's a language specialist tell me grammatically.
They thought in the case of the White Lives Matter admin, main admin, that it was German
because of the placement of the verbs and the nouns.
So I do not know.
But I do believe that they are not at home speaking English.
Which is ironic again.
It's tremendously ironic.
Right.
May I read for those listening, can I just read this paragraph at the top to maybe demonstrate
the proficiency in the English language?
Sure.
So this says, the greatest possession we have in this world is our people.
And for these people, for the sake of white people, we must struggle and we must fight.
We must never slacken, never tire, never lose courage and never lose faith.
We are here to stay.
These are our homes.
To get involved in organizing, contact at WLM contact bot.
You know, that one, there's one that's even more egregious, I found.
Can you elaborate on, they use the word our folk.
Folk.
Yeah.
White folk.
Yeah.
That was one of the things that actually tipped off some of the locals because there was this
action, if you want to call it that, where White Lives Matter activists, if you want
to call them that, drove through the town of Chatham in a vehicle throwing baggies,
Ziploc baggies with flyers, so with propaganda in them and with beans to weight them down.
And they just chucked them out the window on a drive by and they landed on people's
lawns.
And so of course it was in the news and blah, blah, blah.
And they used the our folk term.
And that was actually specifically mentioned to me by locals as like so bizarre, it led
to suspicion.
Yeah, so the example of the word salad that's in the article is kind of a better example
of the very bizarre grammar sometimes that's in the language.
But you know, my greatest challenge in what I do is, or it's the most challenging thing
for me personally, is to translate the whole experience that I'll take in, in these channels
over time, into something that's comprehensible to people in the form of an article or a report.
So it's like I've seen so many examples of this bizarre language over time.
I kind of develop a sense for the character of the person.
But then I really can only extract one example.
And so yeah, that's important.
This one here.
Let's read this one.
Can I read this one?
I love this one.
This screenshot down here?
Yeah.
Yep.
Go for it.
It says, next, each and every one of you who reads this post on Telegram and beyond must
ask themselves, am I living my life according to what I think it is right?
Can I proudly say that I was able to break free from fear and slave morality and went
against the norm, against the system?
Who wanted me dead?
Am I making my ancestors proud?
Am I a coward or a hero?
So there's just a number of shifting also subjects from me to you to them to our.
But that kind of leads into another important element, which is the, am I a coward or a
hero?
Yeah.
The theme of really baiting and shaming people is extremely intense in these groups.
I give a list of examples and that's amplified over time.
They're outrageous shaming of people trying to get them to go do something.
And it's not just that it might radicalize your mind.
It's just terribly fucking mean.
Like, are you a patriot?
Do you care about your people?
Your children are going to die.
There's a genocide taking place.
Get off the couch, stop being a keyboard warrior all the time.
Every post basically has this.
And then you have this inaction is racial treason.
You're treasonous if you don't go do something, you know, like by sitting there and simply
being in this group, you're against the good guys.
You know, if you want to say it that way and you're, you're, you've now joined the bad
guys.
And you know what I'm not seeing here is a lot of nuanced explanation of what the issues
actually are.
What are they pushing back against?
You know, in my mind, I'm thinking, okay, well, maybe they have issues with with immigration
policy.
But you know, I hear people when they when they have issues with immigration policy,
they say that.
And it's not just, you know, anybody who's not white isn't welcome here.
I have I don't think I haven't really heard anybody articulate that particular stance.
But what it seems to be like the implication here, you know, the the white genocide or
the white like the dilution of the white population.
Well, in fact, these are the I just brought these as a couple of books that I've purchased
and have been reading on the topic of, you know, the alt right and and white ethno state
type stuff.
And it's there are there are some actual identified positions that people have.
Some of them are better articulated than others, but none of them are necessarily white nationalist.
But the impression one gets from reading this is that it would be something like immigration
policy that someone has an issue with.
My point is, those are things that one could learn about, be educated about.
And if you're engaged in activism, you would think the first step would be to to genuinely
inform and educate people.
And I feel like they say that's what they're doing in here.
But I've learned nothing about their policy positions.
I've learned nothing about, you know, what does it mean to take action like this is it's
it's we were in a different context talking about a way a person can talk where it sounds
like they're saying something and it sounds like there's something important or meaningful
in there.
And then you can't really identify what it is.
And it seems to me that in this case, the only thing that we're getting is do something
get agitated, but with no particular direction other than get agitated at someone with a
different skin color than you.
Am I reading this right?
Well, so there are two I'm going to just answer that one question with two answers.
So there's the question of what does the action look like that they're asking for?
And the other is what are they doing in the groups besides just trying to agitate people?
And so starting with the latter, it's the fact that I didn't include in my article anything
about the content that they buy.
I think I mentioned it.
So they they will put, you know, statistics on race like black crime versus white crime.
They'll put occasionally an article or a media piece about a, you know, a white European
that was raped or murdered by an immigrant.
And then they will also link to articles that are really that are authentically disturbing,
for example, an opinion piece about how white people should stop having babies otherwise
their white supremacists, this stuff that's so totally beyond the pale that makes the
case that there is an agenda going on, right, to genocide white people.
And but the point I think to make here that's really important is this is a curated space.
It's only telling you one side of the story.
And I think that that's by design.
And you have myriad curated spaces cultivating specific paradigms.
Whether or not there's an agenda to genocide white people, I can't say, right.
But I can say that the way that the information is used in this space is manipulative.
That I can say.
So there's like the truth and then there's the way in which it's being used.
And so, yeah, but they do they do have at this point, they have like what they call
White Lives Matter watching and there's like a few documentaries and I've never watched
any of them.
But I think that they like tell the truth about World War Two and stuff like that.
And then quote unquote.
And then they have White Lives Matter reading, which involves like different articles and
different manuals that interestingly also come out of Eastern Europe.
So they're they're basically they're called Legionnaire manuals.
And it's the one that I linked to in my articles from Romania, and it's basically a map for
training a entire society from the ground up in every possible way.
So outside the main
as well. And then the action that they want to get you to engage in. And also just as
a side note, every single post in these groups also includes a push to reach out to this
Why Lives Matter bot to get vetted. So that is the ultimate goal is to get you into these
groups because you encounter the link like on the banner. And then once you're in the
group, you're like, Yeah, this is rad. I want to join what these people are doing and start
stickering my neighborhood. And so you then like would contact the the bot and go through
a process of getting vetted, apparently. Now, the activity that they call activism in this
group, and then this can also move us into the other groups that are associated with
White Lives Matter is really specific. And it's stickering. It's banner drops. It's
rallies. And in the case of the different groups, they look a little bit differently.
But the stickers, the banner drops, and then also graffiti, which is interesting, I actually
used to be a graffiti artist. And so I can, I can kind of analyze their graffiti a little
bit too. And that's just odd to me. So there's White Lives Matter. And then there's crossover
between White Lives Matter and Patriot Front, which most people at this point know about
because the media just absolutely loves Patriot Front. And, and then there's Robert Paul Rundos
group, Rise Above Movement, and go into but those three groups have online a ton of coordinated
collaboration in terms of the media. In fact, it's, it's public information that media teams
were shared between Patriot Front and Rise Above Movement. And if you go into their various
social media, you see cross promotion all the time. In fact, you even see content from
one group repurposed and put into a different group sometimes. So there's co management
taking place. There's really just no other explanation for that. And they openly collaborate.
So in my article, I have photographs of White Lives Matter and Rise Above Movement members
taking collaboratively in rallies, or they all three groups put together this big white
nationalist boxing tournament called Birth of a New Frontier, which is really fascinating.
And it was a coming together of like all all these different kinds of nationalist groups,
including some which may be legitimate. I don't really know.
Okay, so then just just within I was looking at this for clarification a bit earlier, you've
got subgroups within so you've got will to rise and then another one. And they if I'm
not mistaken, these are like a record label and a merch store or a clothing line under
the Rise Above Movement. It just to clarify that is that right?
Yeah, basically, the Rise Above Movement has kind of been rebranded at least in name as
will to rise. And then there's a media branch called media to rise. I get it. Okay, still,
they still call it the Rise Above Movement sometimes. But a lot of the propaganda has
will to rise in it now. Okay, I just want to read a couple points
that are from our prior points here. On locals, we've got some excellent discussion going
on Vilma says I'm a refugee, and I have a problem with open borders. Most immigrants
are against illegal aliens coming into the US. They overwhelmingly hurt us blacks and
lower income whites. Rebecca says White Lives Matter is classic shit stirring to get some
poor fool to do a physically harmful act against others in quotes. I've seen it over and over
again in the motorcycle world. I'm curious, do you know anything about the motorcycle
world? No, but that might be my next project. Yeah, we'll have to talk with Rebecca about
that. That's very interesting. And then I think this this Yeah, and then Vilma follows
up on the opposite and we have Robert Pape, Robert Pape Pape slash CP OST ADL Ruth Ben
Geyatt and others who still hate against white Christian men. White Christian nationalism
is another BS hate movement being pushed by white elitists. I have a database on these
topics follow the money who's dividing us and why. And yeah, that latter bit basically
is is what I've come to as well. But what you get to is there is a unifying thing. Perhaps
we've even identified perhaps you have shown a particular leader that unifies all these
groups. And was that one Robert Rondo? Yeah, so Robert Rondo, I don't know if I would say
he unifies these groups, because Patriot Front has their own leader. And it's like its own
whole culture. And the White Lives Matter people are anonymous, just to be clear. Yeah.
So but, but Paul Rondo, I mean, Robert Rob Rondo, Robert Paul Rondo, he so he started
Patriot Front, I mean, Ram, it was initially called the DIY movement. And this is in California.
Over the course of 2016 2017, they cultivate the culture of their group. I don't know.
I don't have an assessment on how authentic this group was at the time. And can give some
examples of the stuff that they got into during that time. But just to give a brief overview.
This led to the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2018. That involved a couple Ram members.
And Patriot Front was born following right on the heels of Unite the Right. So there's
just a bit of a timeline there. So Rise Above Movement exists already. Patriot Front comes
into the picture. White Lives Matters launched like a year and a half ago, basically. And
so they do have some separateness, but then they clearly have some elements that are interconnected
and collaborative. And in assessing, in particular, the media, the social media, the propaganda,
this is really what I tried to point out in my article, is that though they all have all
three of these groups have a different aesthetic that they're utilizing. They use exactly the
same tactics, exactly the same phraseology. They're collaboratively managed, and they
have the same goal in mind, which is to recruit members, cultivate this activity. And yeah,
like the one person said in the comment, probably entrap the disillusioned, listless, young
white male who doesn't have community and set him up to do something that furthers the
domestic terrorist agenda. And that's the whole point, in my opinion. That's the point
of the entire article, is setting this all up because it's a goldmine in the sense of
the bigger agenda when you look at it in context with everything else. So then the piece goes
into the particular aesthetic of Patriot Front, a little bit about how they sticker, they
do banner drops, and all of that. They also, these groups are into training and physique
and boxing and MMA, mixed martial arts. And so a lot of Patriot Front propaganda is them
like, sparring out in the wilds. And then they do this like, particularly staged theatrical
rally thing that just like the internet like breaks every time this happens. People, the
media loves it. And Rob Rondo's group is a little bit more like, not so much the mature,
disciplined, white nationalist vibe that you get from Patriot Front, but a little bit more
of the like young street thuggy, white nationalist culture. They're one of their favorite slogans
is cultured thug, right? And so this picture of like the sun and rad, black sun tattooed
guy with a skull mask, but reading like German enlightenment thinkers or whatever. It's this
marriage of, another slogan that they like is bad boys, good habits, I think, something
like that.
Hmm. Yeah, this is a little uncomfortable because within there are a number of things
that you would describe as healthy or not bad, like being, you know, a young man developing
good habits, you know, in a family context or in a physical well-being context. It almost
like I'm not, I don't want to come across the wrong way, but that last sentence made
me think of the kind of stuff Jordan Peterson advocates, like the setting of good habits,
making your bed in the morning. And it seems dumb that these things would then be, it seems
weird. I'm not saying Jordan Peterson is advocating white supremacist stuff. I'm saying it's odd
the choice to associate. I don't know. I guess it depends on if one believes this is, you
know, manufactured choices for a strategy or if it is, you know, simply just the fact
that you have mutual interests among groups of all kinds, you know, bodybuilders aren't
all white supremacists, but white supremacists can be avid bodybuilders. Do you know what
I mean?
Yeah. I mean, it's interesting because it points out very clearly what is lacking, right?
So when within our not very healthy society at all, we don't promote good hygiene values,
meaningful culture. I mean, there is obviously an intense crisis of identity taking place.
How much of that is due to what is the more complex question to ask. But it only makes
sense that with like a complete deterioration as a nation of a sense of self identity as
a nation, you will see symptoms like what we're seeing. We don't have the capacity
to approach the difficult questions within this theme, in my opinion, whatsoever in a
productive way. We don't know how to ask the meaningful questions about empowerment, about
power, about identity, about how to support or heal or what's moral, how to cultivate
meaningful culture and not alienate people and not use race to further an agenda that
doesn't care what color, what person is within the dynamic. They're just going to extract
the part of it that they can use to further the agenda, which involves less freedom for
everybody. But I think in this particular case, the part worth pointing out is the thug,
because these guys would train and maybe they're actually reading German enlightenment. I don't
know, but they certainly want you to think that they are. But they would train and then
they would go to pro-Trump rallies for the purposes of fighting with counter protesters.
And so there were like a number of instances of really intense, pretty intense violent
clashes between one side or the other. And I'm sure that the other side was equally violent.
And I'm not saying one's better than the other. But the point is, if so, Rob Rundow and his
colleagues went on to get indicted and in some cases charged, and I can be a little
more specific about that in a moment, for conspiracy to riot, because they weren't
just at these events and something broke out and there was a melee and they got involved.
They were, the case was made by the FBI that they were premeditatively training to go to
events to be violent. So I think that's the marriage of the lack of culture in our society,
especially for certain demographics, the pressure from certain places that's really intense
on the patriot, the young white Christian male, that that, that what's lacking there
is being married together with violence. And that's the thing that matters to, to pay attention
to because we don't need to, we don't need to allow ourselves to get radicalized in order
to do something about it. But the lack of knowing how to do something about it is the
thing we need to focus on more.
Yeah, I completely agree. And just, just to relate that you have in Canada and I think
in the States as well, the word freedom is being described in, in propagandistic pieces
for the last like two and a half years, really ever, ever basically starting probably in
around 2021 at the beginning of that year, the word freedom is now openly being described
as a extremist dog whistle.
This is terrible. This is crazy.
And it is, it is crazy. And it's, it's on its, and by the way, like the, the, you don't
have to go very far to, to see that as itself sort of a racist, it's so stupid. It doesn't
even, it doesn't even deserve too much attention other than to say what's the result. You have
the freedom convoy in Canada where there's this narrative painted about them that it's
going to be the next January 6th and it's good. It's mostly white supremacists, racist,
misogynistic. And of course, none of that was true. It was never true. There was zero,
zero such, such attitudes. I think, I think it's zero to be clear the incidents that occurred
during that particular protest where there was a Nazi flag or a Confederate flag were,
I think pretty quickly found to be artificial and not actually from the group. The point
is now you have a story and combine that with the result of the, the commissioner's report
where he found that the emergencies act was just about whatever the nuances of what he
found was the, the story is now that the freedom convoy and that anybody therefore associated
with being anti the things they were anti is now potentially a domestic terrorist. And
so you have people who do have some of the values you're describing, you know, the people
who are focused on hygiene and staying physically healthy and maybe are Christian, maybe happen
to be white, but in a large, a large proportion of the time aren't necessarily even white
or male. But now they're all associated, as you say, lumped together in the group with
violent potentially extremists. And I can see really clearly how that would be an intentional
move because that has happened throughout history. That was the co Intel pro operation
or program within the FBI in which if I'm not mistaken, and I'm not terribly well read
on this, but movements like the black Panthers, like civil rights movements in the way we
think of civil rights movements from the sixties infiltrated had members actually murdered
and described and looked back on in history as being extremist movements when I'm not
sure they actually were. I'd have to read more and maybe you have perspective on that.
The point is there is a legacy of this kind of thing happening where for some reason authorities
will infiltrate genuine movements or create from whole cloth movements that don't actually
have much of a base at all for the purpose of either quashing dissent or maneuvering
them into something worse. What's your, what's your, your perspective on that? Yeah, it's
a good question. I mean, so there's also, there's also accelerating and amplifying certain
beliefs in the hopes of cultivating a movement or taking like a budding movement and accelerating
it or amplifying it. So I'll give you an example because I do try to apply the same questions
and explorations across the board of these divisive issues. Good, good. And really try
to stay objective and look at both sides. And the Antifa movement, as it's often referred
to, I use the term right watch to the right watch movement to umbrella that whole culture
within which you have the anti-fascist movement as it's thought of most often expressed in
the streets and stuff like that. So back in like the nineties and early two thousands,
you had from the left, you had an anti-globalist movement. Actually, they were the anti-globalists
back then. And there were these massive anti-war anti-globalists. There are these massive,
massive protests against the WTO, for example, the World Trade Organization and the globalizing
of the economy and what that was going to mean for certain, for everyone, really. You
had people come up from South and Central America, indigenous communities to attend
these like massive, massive rallies. And the anti-war movement during the Iraq and Middle
East wars was also primarily led by the left. At these events, you had this tiny, tiny fraction
of people who self-identified as black bloc anarchists that were like punkers and they'd
show up and they'd try to wreck stuff or they would wreck stuff. And usually it was buildings
because they were like anti-corporate global takeover of the world and the government and
the militarizing, to be specific at the time, the militarizing of the police. Which if you're
in the streets and this is part of what you do is like, oh, protest all the time. That's
a real experience. I mean, you guys experienced it hardcore in Canada, right? So that's a
part of the Black Lives Matter, Blue Lives Matter conversation that's now totally left
out. And I can just tell you for certain that this tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of the
movement at the time did not organically become Antifa as it is known today. And there is,
and I specifically follow and research, I do a lot of January 6th related research.
And so I follow the Sedition Hunter movement. And if people don't know what that is, right
on the heels of January 6th, the FBI put out a call to the American people to help the
agency identify people who were at January 6th, which I felt like I got punched in the
stomach when I read that. That was a really, really intense moment for me. And so what
happened was a movement sprung up, which has led to the largest manhunt in the history
of this country. On average, basically one person a day is still arrested, where all
these people, they call themselves the Sedition Hunters, sift through thousands of hours of
footage and photographs and work collaboratively to ID anyone that they can. And they know
an immense amount about the timeline. They're the ones who created the hashtag names for
the individuals if they don't have them ID'd. And they tag the FBI in their posts. They're
openly helping the FBI. Now, some of these people, it's been made clear from documentation
from some of the trials are in fact intelligence agents. Now, some of these people I believe
are people who believe that they're doing good work and they're rooting out racist white
supremacists who deserve to be rooted out. But the reality is that the black bloc anarchists
of yore would never ever do anything that involved collaboration with the FBI. So you
have an anti-government movement that's been turned into the movement that's policing part
of the population for the government. And it's the same thing as the mask Nazis pushing
them asking. So somehow this part of the political spectrum transformed over time into the one
that's protecting and actually enforcing these policies on the public for the government.
Anyways, I'm running away a little bit with that. But I just think within the question
of infiltrating a movement and taking it somewhere, there's this much bigger, if you step back
and you look at these things over time, because again, with the extreme left I'll call it,
they just slapped domestic terrorist charges on a number of people related to the cop city
situation that's happening in South Atlanta, where there's a proposed 350 acre cop training
center that is going to be built, the city taxpayer funded money, like bad corporate
interests are in there. And they're like building a town, you know, like a town to train within.
And I don't know that much about this situation. But I think anything like this is interesting.
So I followed it a little bit. And you have kind of a classic direct action situation
happening where you have environmental groups also involved because they want to protect
this forest that is the proposed site. And locals, a lot of the locals in these lower
income neighborhoods that are near this location also don't want this thing to be built there.
And I can tell you that there's a really good chance that this is like next level fusion
center activity between the police department, Department of Homeland Security training and
intelligence agencies. And so you have all these people that have all this information
about this proposed thing, you have some folks that are like pretty radical, and do this
direct action stuff. So they go and they tree sit. And I don't know that much about this
story. There were like vehicles burned and things set on fire and Molotov cocktails,
probably at one point, like the kind of classic tactics of the extreme left, which involve
violence. And there was an altercation with the police, one activist was actually shot
and killed. And in there's been a number of sweeps, because people have like gone and
re inhabited the forest a number of times. And in the first one, six people were detained.
And all six are facing domestic terrorism charges. And they're all between the ages
of 20 and 22. So the the the powers behind the agenda to bring about the immense amount
of control that seems to be wanted with regards to the domestic terrorist agenda, do not care.
If you're part of the side that is helping the FBI right now, your colleagues are over
here tagging the fascists, supposed that fascists from January six, or not, they're just going
to leverage whatever opportunity is presented to them in order to further the agenda. And
so I saw that cop city situation curated for the two separate demographics basically that
exist in this country into extremely different ways. And when I went into the, you know,
like the Twitter accounts for there's one called like defend Atlanta forest, for example.
And if you go in there and you kind of follow, you see pictures of like community members,
like old people kind of people look like hippies and like a lot of normal looking people all
come together for this like festival to save the forest and they have this little march
and whatever. Definitely a lot of like hardcore black advocacy organizations involved in that.
And you know, and then the cops come in and like arrest a ton of people and a ton of those
people are facing domestic terrorist charges. But over in the right wing media spaces, the
cop city is called a public service center. And this image was like an aerial shot. But
they they did like a night vision filter of this march of people going towards the forest
was circulated in all these right wing spaces with the comment like army of Antifa, you
know, descending on the data. So like, that's the thing that matters. Because if we keep
fighting with each other like this and allowing the curated information to further convince
us that our enemy is our neighbor, then the domestic terrorist agenda, which is the real
problem here is going to plow its way through.
Well, you know, this is very interesting. I've so I grew up liberal. I live in Vancouver.
It's like it's like LA. It's genuinely multicultural. I have never grown up thinking any particular
like I've never understood racism as a premise. I look white. I don't identify as well. I
think the entire premise is stupid. And I now understand that it is now my theory that
this notion that there is a left and a right and sure there's some intermingling between
but those are the weirdos that there's a you're either on this side or that side. And, and
you have issues. So you have environmental issues, you have economic issues, you know,
welfare type issues. And you get if you're on this side, you then by default, increasingly
have only one stance on each of these things. So you get put into a box or either in this
box or that box. And so it's been interesting because I went from coming into this COVID
era. I came in thinking that Donald Trump was evil. I came in thinking that everybody
more importantly, everybody who voted for him was either dumb as heck, racist, or probably
just naive, how condescending of them or themselves bad people. Then the COVID era has allowed
me to actually engage with people who have who who at the time had different views than
I might have had. And I realized how fooled I was. Not that everybody is someone I agree
with, or that we're always going to have common ground on every single issue. And in fact,
that's the point. But I started to notice that, yes, indeed, there does seem to be this
artificial thing. And then you start to think about issues like climate change. And you
realize, well, hold on a second. How can such a complex issue as that, whatever it is that
that phrase means, but everyone agrees, whatever it is supposed to be talking about is so complex,
how could it be dumbed down to climate change exists, climate change doesn't exist? Okay,
point being everyone agrees, you shouldn't litter basically, like, let's start with the
common ground there. Yet, it's not described that way. You're either this or that you're
either pro science or anti science, you're either pro pro diversity, or anti diversity.
These are made up concepts. I don't I don't think pro diversity or anti diversity or even
I don't think those are a thing. I think these are entirely manufactured in the way that
they're presented now, or at least, if you don't want to say manufactured, we've at least
fallen into this system. But my point is, what I'm getting to, I found myself more so
agreeing with people who tended to be on the Republican side Trump side, it just it just
happened to work out that way for a little bit. And you start to also find I found myself
in spaces like bit shoot, or rumble Odyssey, these alternative platforms, which turns out
had a lot of people who happen to be Trump supporters in large part because they had
been kicked off places like Twitter and Facebook. So you start to to hear other perspectives.
And it seems clear there's a dominant liberal force right now on all these issues. So then
it becomes combating that even if you don't necessarily agree with the notion that it's
a liberal force, but you have power structures that identify as liberal. For example, you
have a Democratic President of the United States, we have a tremendously so called liberal
Prime Minister up here and a very liberal coalition government with the NDP. So you
then get into what we have to do, we have to, ideally in the political context, have
someone elected that will defeat them. So now you have a movement of people over to
Pierre poliev here in Canada, and the Conservative Party of Canada. But then you also have this
movement of cultural ideas. And now we're flipping back around where now we're having
people who were very pro, you know, medical freedom, or self determination, religious
freedom, even if it's the freedom to have no religion, all these things, who are now
responding to like this example you just gave is a fantastic one, where you have people
who are now turning this January six wasn't an insurrection thing around and saying, but
this was or this is something where there are, you know, people who are just going there,
like the only story I heard from this was Antifa coming to burn it down. I knew I knew
nothing more about this. And I still need to learn more. But you have two other situations
recently, very related, I believe it was in Tennessee, there was a some kind of protest
event, which was also described as an insurrection, Allah January six, when in reality, I don't
know all the details, but it most certainly was not the same thing. And neither one of
them were insurrections. And it was in response to a tremendously unfortunate and very bad
situation of a school shooting. And the as far as I understand, the person is transgender,
which to me is irrelevant. But the result is you now have whether they're real people
or not, you have commentators on the right, arguing against the Second Amendment in this
situation. So you see a flip flopping and you see almost like the the taking of people
and there's a much longer, more nuanced discussion to be had on the the trans culture issues
and as they affect children, I get it, that's for another day. But I just see this continuum
that swings back and forth. And it's sort of it's not it's sort of warping into like
taking people perhaps like, like me, not me, but people like me who are engaged now, maybe
who weren't before and are trying to do something, you know, and aiming them like taking them
off target almost. I don't know, that was a bit of a I just wanted to relate a little
bit to what I think you just articulated with this whole situation here with Cop City. It
feels like you're right. It feels like there's this bigger progression of of radicalizing
people always against each other in the end. Yeah. And yeah, exactly. Radicalizing people
against each other. The theme of actually using the word neighbor is kind of interesting,
you know, convincing people that like within their own town could be the person who lives
next door, could be a family member, you know, like this, the the terrorist that lived outside
of the country of the past now could be your sibling, right that that like bringing it
home that far to put everyone on edge and coupled with the inability to actually extract
out of any of the politically divisive hot button issues, the deeper moral question that
the disagreement is, is raising actually. So like with environmentalism, I would say
the question the question that we could ask is, do we need to somehow fix or adjust or
cultivate a different relationship to nature? Period. And like just kind of start there.
You know, like, how are we treating each other or mistreating each other? How are we judging
each other? How are we acting upon or not upon those judgments? How much does the does
the past matter? You know, but the quality of the values because what's happening, I
call it militarizing morality, where you get it goes so extreme, you get like the cancel
culture mob. And that is not in any way, in my opinion, connected to anything moral any
longer. So there needs to be like a sensitivity for the quality of it, not just the concept
of it, like that doesn't feel right, you know, that's not actually productive, it's not going
to move us forward. So I just think like all of those, it's a combination of our weaknesses
in that regard, and our inability to dialogue, that's getting so extreme. It's unpopular.
It's extremely unpopular to be saying the things that I'm saying, both camps are like,
what, get over here, you're not allowed to like, have the objective. And you're not allowed
to facilitate a conversation between two different perspectives. mediation, like forget about
it, resolutions, forget about it, we're not trying to resolve anything like this is full
on war. Yeah, that's, that's the thing that's so concerning, because we're doing it to each
other. And that's distracting us from the fact that that makes us vulnerable for the
establishment to come in and just kind of make the final move, I guess you could say
in certain ways. Yeah. Well, okay, so unconscious of your time, and I want to, there's a couple
final points that I think are really interesting as to the content of your article and where
this has led. So I do think and also speaking of using kind of any crisis or any hot button
topic to make things, you know, tied together, you have this very relevant situation militarily
between Russia and Ukraine, which have geopolitical implications for the entire planet as we've
lived collectively for the last year. Now there's disagreement as to what those are.
And that is excellent. But Ukraine has been this tremendously interesting unraveling onion
over the last year or so. And I would love if you could now take us through the relationship
between everything we've talked about, specifically the subjects of your article, and Ukraine.
Go for it. Yeah. Okay. So in, gosh, I want to say February 2022, little over a year ago,
there was an FBI affidavit that was made public. And this affidavit was used in the indictment
against Robert Rundle. So Robert and his Ram members in two separate trials have been indicted
for violence and conspiracy to riot. Robert Rundle and a number of others related to events
in California. But then this other group related to violence at Unite the Right. And the part
of the BBC article that is inaccurate is they claim that Rundle was present at Unite the
Right and he wasn't he wasn't there was other Ram members. But we'll get to the article
because that's sort of chronologically later. Yeah. So the so the Ram members who were present
at Unite the Right are charged, three out of four of them serve time. The the case that
involved Rundle was dismissed. Let me see if I can get this timeline right. It's really
tricky is it was dismissed. And well, first, he's indicted and he flees the country. And
he goes down to El Salvador where he's apprehended and he's brought back. Okay, so that that
matters in relationship to future information. He's brought back. He goes to trial and his
in 2019 maybe. And then it's dismissed that year in 2019 because the judge determines
that the use of the interpretation of the laws over broad, right? Okay, so it's it all
boils down to like, were they premeditatively planning to go riot or weren't they kind of.
And so it's dismissed, even though the prosecution announces immediately that they're going to
appeal and they file a motion to appeal, Rundle flees the country again. Now back to the time
he fled and went to El Salvador, he first tried to go to Europe and he flew to London,
but he was on a no fly list. So they sent him back. And then he crossed, he apparently
crossed the border on foot, the Mexican border and went south. So we know that he was findable.
We know that he was on a no fly list. We know that his prosecution in 2019 appealed immediately
we know that there's a statement in the article from like FBI or someone he was he was considered
a high risk flight risk and like a national security threat. And yet he somehow manages
to get out of the country and this time go to Eastern Europe where he lands in Serbia
now. So in February of 2022, this FBI affidavit is made public that described this FBI agents
documentation over the course of 2017, basically monitoring Robert Rundle and his fellow Ram
members and the part of the affidavit that was so explosive. And this was covered by
a number of media outlets. So anyone can look this up is that the FBI agent details that
Robert Rundle had traveled to Ukraine. He had traveled with a couple fellow Ram members
to Europe to a couple different countries, but he wound up in Ukraine. And he spent time
with Olana Salmonyanka, who was the head of the National Corps, just like the political
wing of the Azov Battalion. And he you know, so it was reported on like he trained with
the Azov Battalion. I've seen photographs of him at the Oh gosh, what is it called?
It's a boxing arena in Kiev, where he was in a MMA competition, mixed martial arts
competition, but they're just boxing, I don't know. And there's a couple other notable high
profile individuals who are present and part of the story. So the reason why this matters
and this was also included in a number of the articles that were written about this
affidavit and this information that came out is because of the CIA and other NATO intelligence
aspects, involvement in coming in basically just gutting Ukraine, unfortunately, and training
doing doing this intensive paramilitary training. And you have Azov Battalion in its in its
current form, which they've had a terribly, terribly difficult time they being the media
and NATO and anyone pushing the acceptable narrative of covering up the consistent exposure
of white nationalist tattoos, patches, propaganda, all this kind of stuff. Now, I don't actually
like to use the word Nazi, because I don't know what that means actually in relationship
to the current iteration of nationalism in Ukraine, for example, how much of that is
organic, I don't know. I think that in those Eastern European countries, if I'm an intelligence
agency, and I want to train extremist paramilitary groups, I'm going to take that angle because
there is something culturally amplifiable about nationalism in that region of the world.
So that whereas like in the Middle East, you would do religious radicalization, for example.
So if that makes sense to me, so he winds up so little Robert Rundle winds up over there
like canoodling with, you know, the military paramilitary high level individuals who are
working in tandem with or have handed themselves over to in a certain sense, the intelligence
apparatus to train them. And so some of these articles are like, okay, well, if Robert Rundle
went and trained with a Zof battalion, which was in turn trained by the CIA, like, couldn't
you say the CIA is at least in part responsible for some of his activity because Selma Nyanke
even says, I think it's quoted in my article, she says like, he came to learn our ways,
and was excited to return to America to like inject them into his initiatives or whatever,
something like that. So yeah, is is Ram and these related groups, are they like blowback,
which is the term for when the CIA like by an accident causes these kinds of situations?
Or is there something more going on? Yeah, so moderate rebels, which then become ISIS.
Exactly, right. So he so that yeah, so the FBI affidavit documented 2017. That's quite
a long time ago. He's indicted in 2018. He tries to flee. He's in in court in trial 2019.
He gets dismissed. And then he leaves the country. So right before COVID March 2020.
Yeah, timeline. And, and he goes to apparently Serbia. And he travels around a number of
different countries there. And you know, the in the media, there's this mixture of kind
of contradictory parts to the story where he's a fugitive. He's being hunted. He's definitely
a national security threat for any country he's in. Bellingcat, which is basically the
CIA and everything but name. It's funded by the Atlantic Council and pushes the NATO agenda
took an interest in in monitoring and trying to track Rondo down and published a series
of pieces in their where's Rondo series, where they were associated books, right where they
do these like cat and mouse like fun like cat and mouse like gotcha pieces where they're
like, he posted a picture to his clothing brand line, and we geo located him just based
on this tiny spot of paint on the wall behind him, blah, blah, blah. So they're like chasing
him all the time and trying to figure out where he is. But I was in all of the RAM related
social media down to his private channel. And when in those spaces, it didn't look like
he was on the lam whatsoever. It just did. It looked like if you were over there and
you were trying to track him down, it just wouldn't be that hard. He was like hanging
out in cafes, going to boxing rings or whatever. And the timeline between the way that the
media reports, especially Bellingcat, I deed him in different places was actually contradicted
by content he put in his own chats. Now, I don't know which one is true, but I can tell
you that it's notable that they don't even mention that content. So they create a timeline
for the reader that contradicts the timeline he himself is like sharing media content out
of. And so it started to look like and I'll just give you one last example. Bellingcat
journalists claimed at one point to send one of their journalists to try to geolocate
Rundle to like a town square. And while this journalist was there in the town square, they
heard his voice behind them and they turned around and they saw Robert Rundle doing pushups
on the second story veranda of an apartment building. And like, why wasn't he arrested
then? They don't even like follow that up with and we immediately called the authorities
and they take credit for him getting kicked out of Serbia, even though that's not confirmed
and all these other things. So really looks like he wanders across borders. The intelligence
in Bosnia like knew who he was, but didn't try to apprehend him. And so I made the case
in my article that he was there wasn't an interest actually in trying to apprehend him
because he doesn't look like a threat. You know, he's really not that big of a threat.
But the counter extremism project, which is like this global terror domestic terrorist
agenda, you know, agency born out of the UN Council for Foreign Relation, some of the
most powerful dark individuals on the planet, ID Robert Rundle as the fourth most dangerous
person in the world. And the only three more dangerous people in the world are like, you
know, like head of Hamas and the like, cuds force in Iran and like, like, like legit,
military backed state powers. And here's this guy like traipsing around, pushing his brand,
he doesn't even have that many followers, and he's listed at number four and they can
no one can apprehend him. And that's weird. And, and then five days after I published
my article after three years, he was arrested. Which is
Yeah, shocking. And so this happened so fast, I didn't even catch on. Excuse me, as you
sent me your article, then you sent me Ronda was arrested. I wasn't even processing what
any of that meant. So that's how quick and you know, that that's how quick this this
happened. And this was five days ago that the BBC published this. Yeah, what happened?
What he was he was finally arrested in Romania. Yeah. On what grounds? What what what did
they what was what's the story here? Right. So it is because he's a fugitive. It is because
he's wanted in the United States. And he's considered fleeing these charges. The part
that I can't say I know is whether or not there was a directive given to go after him
that wasn't there before. Like if there was just a reason, you know, for example, they
needed or updated the indictment, let's put it that way, in January of this year, there
could have been in earnest, you know, elevating of his status or something like that, that
went along with that. So it still doesn't resolve many contradictions in the story,
because he was described as wanted a fugitive had this supposed excellent journalist team
hunting him down literally to his doorstep over and over and over again. And so I don't
know. But yeah, he's he was there was a tip. The story is there was a tip at a local gym.
And the Romanian kind of there's a Romanian special task force that came in and arrested
him. I've seen footage of the arrest. It's all very spectacle like, and he's being extradited
to the United States to face his charges. What do you think you cause this? I don't
have any idea. I will say that I my piece does not have a lot of views. I don't have
a broad reach in that sense. But I do think that of the amount of people who have read
this piece, there are very likely a number of people who are monitoring my work and who
and me at this point. And so and additionally, I do have to say that the there is a pattern
of coincidences like this related to other times my work got disseminated in some way
out there in the world where it then led to a result where the timing was really suspicious
and it really seemed connected to I mean, I have a whole list of like terms I use that
are lower level consequences for my work getting out one is like the reconnoiter when like
the bad guys are like, Oh shit, we've been exposed and they go quiet for three days and
they just have to like regroup. You know, like that's an experience I've had a number
of times but I've also seen some larger structures collapse or break down or go away. Yeah, within
like 24 hours to a few days so I can't I'm not going to take credit the timing is pretty
crazy though. Well, my what I think I said this to you on the phone yesterday. So, you
know, if if it doesn't need to be even as direct as your article caused this, what I
think is probably true, and and you are a trailblazer on this. So this this may be not
entirely true, but the idea that your work represents a larger expansion of awareness
among the population and certainly your article then contributes to that accelerating likely
to an even higher degree than you are aware of based on the stats that substack gives
you, you know, the analytics. But I think in general, like you and I are avatars of,
we're just people as part of larger, you know, society and if we're paying attention, others
are too. And others likely aren't publishing in the same way that you are. No one else
put this article together. You did it took you a year to put together a long time, a
long time. Not everybody even has the ability to spend that much time said even if they
wanted to, even if they have an even better understanding, which would be highly unlikely.
So I suppose and let me know if you if you agree with with this theory that you and I
and anybody else, the more we engage and spread awareness, but even then that implies we're
necessarily correct. And that's not even the point. The point is more simply discussing
issues that largely are apparently not supposed to be discussed or at least supposed to be
discussed in very controlled ways. You know, as you said, the acceptable narrative. Could
it be that simply by continuing to hold spaces like this, either, you know, discussion format
like this or the publication of excellent, well researched, well documented articles
like yours, are we are we simply contributing to the larger societal push in the right direction,
hopefully the right direction? Even in the absence of your article being the specific
straw, it could that be the case? That our work is meaningful and productive. I guess
that's a better way of solving it. Out of this mess. I mean, you know, I hope just do
what's put before you to do, you know, I, I hope that's my hope. And I, in this particular
case, in this particular story, just to bring it back to Chatham, you know, you could say,
like, I wrote this article for the locals that exist in their various places all over
the country. With the hope that people don't fall for it. You know, I mean, that's the
whole point. The whole point is like, don't believe these guys, don't go in and get involved
in these groups. Don't think like, because you need brotherhood and culture and community,
it's then also okay to like slowly accept like real racist thinking. And, and that these
groups as far as I'm concerned, are by design, there to push the narrative, push the division
and entrap people. And they do that on both sides. But in this particular case, I don't
want to see my people get sucked into this crap. And I don't want these jerks who think
this stuff up, and think it's okay to like disseminate these operations into small towns
across America, to get away with it any longer. So anyways, that's just trying to like, expose
what I think is going on out of a gesture of protection.
I think that's the most important part. And the starting at the bottom and going like,
at the local level is where things are actually, that's where things actually happen. The big
narratives tend to happen on the country or the state or the or the or the global level.
But in the end, when it comes to implementing new, you know, sustainable development agendas,
that happens at the district at the city at the town level, when it comes to people actually
going out and protesting, it is the people largely of that area that are engaging. So
the fact that you identified real people not that far from you, who are going to be affected
by this who have been affected by this, and the fact that you then saw an opportunity
to educate those people has the opportunity to educate, hopefully, as we've done here,
people from all over the world. Because there are people in the chat who have been responding,
you know, from North Carolina, for example, saying, interesting, I'm going to go and look
into that North Carolina chapter, see what I can find there. You know, we've talked about
the Canadian and the Ukrainian and the European aspects of this. And it's like we said before,
it's it's there are specific people of interest. But in the end, it's more the process and
the tactics and the patterns that we can identify and then kind of not be as you say, sucked
into fooled by in any context, whatever the next hot button issue is. Am I right about
that? Sounds sounds correct to me. Yeah. Wonderful. Well, thank you, Kristin, so much for spending
this much time with us. We had said we might try an hour. And look at that. We're coming
up on to and I think that's because this has been just tremendously interesting stuff.
And you are a fantastic presenter. And somebody in the chat Monkey King 1981 said, Wow, she
is an encyclopedia. I agree. You are an encyclopedia. And you know, and there were a couple of things
I wanted to bring up and that others in the chat I brought up that that we didn't have
the chance to. So if you're open to it, I'd love to have you back for for a follow up
discussion either on this or on whatever the next step in the investigative process is.
So on that, is there anything you want to leave people with? What are the next steps
for you? Yeah, I guess I do want to just say something about January 6 real quick in relationship
to all of this, because that's a focal point clearly around control and the political division
and persecution. There's hundreds and hundreds of individuals that have been locked up for
over 750 days, mostly in solitary confinement, who did absolutely nothing violent or, you
know, in the spirit of destruction. And, you know, a political prisoner is a political
prisoner at the end of the day. And so there is there's like some real dark stuff going
on around that particular group of people. And I think that that has a lot to do with
the broader story as it unfolds. Were it a different demographic in a different time
in a different context, I would care equally as much. So it's it's the human element and
the human story. And the related political and identity stuff matters as a student of
life doing research and trying to understand what's going on. But it's shocking to me that
so much injustice and suffering can take place in so many different ways. And we can be brought
to a place where we care about the one but not the other. So yeah, I guess I just wanted
to mention them. And I think for me, a next step is probably putting together the research
I've done over a couple years now on that story. And I'm happy to come back whenever
you want, Liam.
Oh, well, amazing. Well, and I would love for when when you do get that put together,
will that likely be published on Beyond the Maze as well? Yeah. So let's use this as as
an opportunity to remind people beyond themaze.substack.com is where you can find Kristen's work. Everybody,
if you have not yet, you should go and read up on their, you know, six to eight articles
out so far, maybe. Oh, no, there's more. You've been very busy. And they're all worth the
read. That's the best place I assume to go if you want to be a paid supporter. People
can can become paid supporters there. And when this this this research on January 6
is put together in a form we can go through, I would love to do another episode just like
this. And in the meantime, because this you're correct to throw the red flag of urgency on
this as well. So if even before something more substantial comes out, if there are any
opportunities for people to go learn more, or potentially, if they feel it's correct,
support individuals who are in the middle of some of them some pretty intense and ridiculous
legal battles. Let don't hesitate to get that to me. And I will do what I can to to get
that out to people as well. I could just mention really quick, a couple websites people could
go to. And I also I really encourage people to actually look into some of the personal
stories of some of these individuals, because I really strongly believe that disseminating
these stories would help undo all the work that's gone into framing a narrative that
is completely off the mark, mostly off the mark, and involves like young people, you
know, there's Brent, this guy, Brendan fellows is in his 20s. He's like, one report said
he's on the spectrum. He's autistic. He like walked into the Capitol. Anyways, I could
I could tell you a lot, but he actually was not. He was not incarcerated initially, but
he said something disrespectful to his parole officer. And so they decided to throw him
in jail. And he was in solitary confinement. He said he wouldn't negotiate with terrorists
because he he didn't have because it was COVID. You know, there's like there's meaningful,
meaningful stories. So one is Americans for Justice. I think that's a for j.org. The letter
a the number four. The letter j.org. Gosh, what American Gulag is American Gulag calm,
I believe is another good resource. And there's CAP, there's citizens against political persecution.
Yeah, and actually American Gulag, the website somewhere on their lists, all of the different
organizations and the various websites that exist. For various things, there's like a
letters to prisoners program, there's a way you can donate for food, because that was
one of the ways that they were being mistreated in a number of cases was their food was rotten,
that they were being fed. And there's one website listed on American Gulag that is the
placeholder for letters and stories from the prisoners to reach the public. So it's all
just content from the prisoners themselves. And there's a spectrum of, you know, people
in there and stories and circumstances, but there's definitely a lot of people in there
that shouldn't be. And full disclosure, I haven't myself, I'm not familiar with these
websites. So just the friendly disclaimer of I'm, I'm very happy to share them. And
I am, I have no reason to doubt they are not exactly what Kristen is saying. And I hope
people will go and explore for themselves. And as Kristen says, the stories of these
individual people, not the caricatures that many people, including myself at the time,
understood them to be. So let's let's hope others can step up and engage on this as well.
And really quickly, scroll down on the right there on the front page of that one. Keep
going. Oh, I don't know where it is. Okay, forget it. There's somewhere on this website,
there's a map of the United States. And you can click on Yeah, arrest map. There you go.
You can click on any state to randomly click on a state and see what happens. New York.
And then you scroll down and you see all of the individuals that have been arrested from
that state. And you can click on them. And you can read anything. Oh, that's interesting.
No one in Wyoming. That's Wyoming didn't show up. Or they're really good at not getting
ID'd. And you can click on individuals and you can get all of the records related to
that person's case and trial. Anyways, yeah, that's wonderful. Okay, thank you. That's
a tremendous resource. Okay, well, that's that's fantastic. Thank you so much, Kristen.
And once again, just a just one more plug beyond the maze dot sub deck.com everybody.
And while I have everyone here, I want to also give a specific shout out to rounding
the earth dot locals.com where we have been having a tremendous discussion this entire
time. A lot of what we've talked about today revolves around community or how community
can be hijacked, manufactured impacted in various ways. Well, we've got a cool, awesome,
smart, healthy community of people who do not agree on everything, and therefore often
wind up teaching each other a lot. And I am tremendously grateful for it. And so it's
also, it also happens to be the number one way you can support rounding the earth and
support me. I'm very lucky. Matthew Crawford has given me a platform on rounding the earth
to have discussions like this one with Kristen. I'm very happily paid to do this job. And
it's a huge, a huge gift that I don't want to go unthanked. And so therefore, I want
to as often as I can, as reasonably as I can, request that people support rounding the earth,
not just to continue my employment, that's not the point, but to continue to support
a platform started by a gentleman who seems to genuinely care about holding open, honest
discussion, particularly with those he may not agree with. And the best way to do that
rounding the earth dot local.com, you can become a paid supporter. And by the way, not
everyone can. And that's okay, because you could also join as a free member and keep
up to date with everything we're doing. How was that as a plug? Was that okay?
Excellent. Okay, cool. Okay, well, thank you again so much. Thank you to everybody who
has been watching on all of our platforms. And yeah, I'll be back myself on Friday for
an episode of rounding the news, where I'll cover some interesting stuff. And there will
be a locals exclusive super fun supporters only episode with Matthew and possibly myself
tonight. And yeah, any final words, Kristen, before I hit that fun outro song?
No, I just I had a really good time with you. I really like talking to you. It's easy. And
I appreciate you. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate you as well, Kristen. Thank you.
And we will talk again very shortly. Okay.