Weird Little Guys

The guy who took a shot at Trump last summer wasn't the first person to shoot a presidential candidate without a clear political motive. In 1972, Arthur Bremer failed to assassinate Richard Nixon and settled on one of Nixon's opponents instead. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

At the end of this miniseries about white supremacist terrorism in the final years of apartheid in South Africa, this episode returns to the present day as white South Africans are lining up outside the embassy in Pretoria to claim refugee status under Trump's executive order. Sources: https://www.reuters.com/world/us-focuses-persecution-claims-white-south-africans-seek-resettlement-2025-04-24/ ht...

Molly answers questions submitted by listeners. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In 2002, a terrorist group failed to assassinate Nelson Mandela. In 2012, a plot to assassinate Jacob Zuma was foiled. Both plots were attempts to fulfill a prophecy and renew a bloody covenant with God. Sources: Thompson, Leonard L. The Political Mythology of Apartheid. Yale University Press, 1986. FA Mouton (1995) F A van Jaarsveld (1922–1995) — a flawed genius?, , 27:1, 5-11, DOI: 1...

This is the very strange story of the time Dolph Lundgren starred in a piece of apartheid propaganda. Sources: Bellant, Russ. Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party. South End Press, 1991. Abramoff, Jack. Capitol Punishment: The Hard Truth about Washington Corruption from America’s Most Notorious Lobbyist. WND Books, 2011. Easton, Nina. Gang of Five: Leaders at the Center of the...

In the final days of apartheid, white extremists were getting desperate. That desperation contributed to one of the strangest political crises of the late 20th century: Sources: https://dcist.com/story/12/09/24/aryan-nations/ https://archive.idavox.com/index.php/2012/09/24/the-aryan-nations-show-of-farce-in-dc/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naRGivc7Ong Guelke, Adrian. “Political Violence a...

In 1994, a second group of mercenaries arrived at the airport in Johannesburg... but no one was there to pick them up. Their host had been arrested days earlier, after the last group of mercenaries she'd hosted got into a deadly shootout with the South African police. But how did all these Germans end up in South Africa in the first place? https://www.propublica.org/article/vasilios-pistolis-impri...

In 1989, four Afrikaner nationalists and one German mercenary killed a security guard at a United Nations outpost in Namibia. After escaping from custody, they fled home to South Africa. A possibly non-existent group called The White Wolves took credit for the wave of bombings that followed.  Sources: Du Preez, M. (2010). Pale native: Memories of a Renegade reporter. Zebra Press.  Rotber...

In the last episode, we looked at a strange series of rallies held in cities across the United States in 2012 - American neo-nazis were rallying in support of white South African Farmers. But how did they get that idea in their heads? The rallies were put on by a group called The South Africa Project, run by a woman I'd never heard of. Digging into this mysterious South African, I found a lot more...

This is a rerun of the episode that originally ran on February 6, 2025 with a newly recorded introduction with new information about the traffic stop that led to Matthew Huttle's death. Sources: https://www.indystar.com/story/news/crime/2025/02/27/body-cam-footage-jan-6-defendants-traffic-stop-shooting-death-released-matthew-huttle-jasper-county/80731312007/ https://www.in.gov/sheriffs/jasper/file...

In February of 2012, racist skinheads in California rallied at the capitol building in Sacramento. They were trying to raise awareness for an imaginary problem - an ongoing genocide against white South African farmers. In February of 2025, the President of the United States signed an executive order stripping foreign aid from South Africa as punishment for that same imaginary problem. Sources: Fal...

"They got what they wanted." Those were the words of Don Logan after a February 11, 2025 meeting of the Scottsdale, Arizona city council. Twenty-one years after Dennis Mahon tried to murder Logan with a package bomb, the city of Scottsdale finished what the klansman started: they closed the city's diversity office. Sources:  https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/scottsdale-to-gut-diversity-off...

In 2017, an anti-Muslim nonprofit crowd-sourced the organization of a nationwide series of rallies. Many of the people who stepped up to help turned out to be well known white supremacists. Sources: https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2017/05/portland_suspect_in_2_slayings.html https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/27/portland-double-murder-white-supremacist-muslim-hate-speech https://islam...

Molly talks to Spencer Sunshine about his book, Neo-Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism: The Origins and Afterlife of James Mason’s Siege. Sunshine's book explores the history of Siege, the book that is today's nazi terrorist's bible. https://www.routledge.com/Neo-Nazi-Terrorism-and-Countercultural-Fascism-The-Origins-and-Afterlife-of-James-Masons-Siege/Sunshine/p/book/9780367190606 S...

In January of 2025, Matthew Huttle was one of nearly 1600 people to receive a pardon from Donald Trump for his participation in the January 6, 2021 riot. Less than a week later, he was dead - shot and killed in an altercation with a sheriff's deputy during a traffic stop in Indiana.  Sources: https://www.npr.org/2021/02/09/965472049/the-capitol-siege-the-arrested-and-their-stories https://www...

In 2010, a rising star in the small world of holocaust denial blogging murdered his ex-wife and then took his own life. This first chapter of his story follows his path from a troubled career as a registered nurse to his growing fame as a white supremacist blogger. Sources: https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Lawyer-Lake-Jackson-murder-suicide-followed-1710794.php http://www.thenation...

This is the end of Dennis Mahon's story. In 2012, he was convicted for building the bomb that went off in the hands of Scottsdale, Arizona's director of Diversity & Dialogue in 2004. In the eyes of the law, Dennis and Dennis alone is guilty in that case... but the investigation leaves a lot of unanswered questions about his co-conspirators. Sources: https://jeffmaysh.substack.com/p/how-an-unde...

In 1994, a former debutante named Carol Howe became an informant for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. For six months, she and Dennis Mahon made weekend trips to a white supremacist compound called Elohim City. Carol reported back to the government that Dennis Mahon was stockpiling weapons and talking about blowing up federal buildings. In April of 1995, someone did blow up a federal bu...

Before we finish the story of Dennis Mahon, let's take a little side quest to learn about his identical twin brother, Daniel. In 1999, Daniel Mahon was fired from his job as an aircraft mechanic at American Airlines. The company felt he was creating a racially hostile work environment. According to the lawsuit he filed, Daniel Mahon felt it was anti-white racism. His deposition in that case gives...

A teenager who murdered two people outside of a gay bar in Slovakia, a teenager who stabbed five men at a mosque in Turkey, and a teenager who planned to destroy infrastructure in New Jersey had one thing in common: they'd all been reading terrorism manuals produced by a group of neonazi propagandists. A new indictment alleges two Americans are responsible for inciting acts of white supremacist te...

After winning his battle with a Kansas City cable company over the right to air his Klan public access television show, Dennis Mahon never made a second episode of Klansas City Kable. He was too busy organizing nazi punks in Tulsa and getting Klan chapters started in Germany.  Sources: Ronson, Jon. “The Debutante.” Audible Originals, 2023 Ronson, Jon. Them: Adventures with Extremi...

In 1990, a single episode of a public access show called "Klansas City Kable" aired in Kansas City, Missouri. The klansman who fought city council for his right to produce it was never prosecuted for the bombing campaign he claims to have carried out in the decade prior, but his long career as a professional racist took him all over the world before a years-long undercover operation finally put hi...

For over a decade, neo-Nazis and Klansmen were hand-delivering VHS tapes of a California-based public access TV show to local television stations in cities across the country. The stations had no choice but to run the show on local public access channels. The show's host, Tom Metzger, received a gift of $300,000 in 1984 that gave him the financial freedom to pursue his dream of delivering his raci...

The Fire Will Not Consume Us: Barry Black, Part 1 In 2003, the Supreme Court ruled that the mere act of burning a cross, absent evidence of specific intent to intimidate, is protected by the first amendment. But who was the klansman who got his case all the way to the highest court in the land? This is the first half of the story of Barry Black, a Pennsylvania Ku Klux Klan leader who won two write...

When Oath Keeper Darren Huff returned to Madisonville, Tennessee on April 20, 2010, he was planning to take control of the courthouse. It didn't quite work out that way. He didn't even see the inside of a courthouse until his own arrest a week later. Sources: https://www.politico.com/story/2010/04/army-birther-under-investigation-035823 https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/army-birther-lakin-rele...