https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZDLAl_ids8
Combat veteran Kris Goldsmith reminds us when fascism grows it grows in our backyards. That if we want to tear this movement up from it’s roots, we need to do it together. As Kris says, with unity comes strength, and whether you learned that unity fighting side by side on a foreign battlefield or standing side by side in your hometown, we need to support each other as we step up and fight for our country. And to those who served: Thank you for your service.
Transcript
one of the problems that my generation I'm a millennial we have is that we tend to focus super online you know local
newspapers died after we graduated high school they just didn't exist anymore so
we tend to focus on what Washington DC is doing congress and and Musk and Trump
that's all we pay attention to but fascism when it grows it grows in your backyard it's not a top- down thing it's
it's also grassroots so we're encouraging people to get active get local and to go to your schoolboard and
make sure the fascists aren't pulling books out of your your libraries because that is how fascism materializes all
across the United States and that's where each of us individually can make the greatest impact
hello and welcome to the Politics Girl podcast i'm your host Lee McGawen let's get into it the country is an absolute
mess based on the newest tax bill passed by the Republican House we have a government that seemingly doesn't care
if we live or die they will kick us off our health insurance out of our jobs away from our doctors choosing instead
to make the richest among us have more it's irrational illogical deeply dangerous and yet many of the people who
will be hurt most by these decisions voted for this government instead of being radicalized against these people
who steal from them and will let them starve or die they have been radicalized against the rest of us because of
culture wars and propaganda so today we're going to speak to Christopher Goldsmith an Iraqi combat veteran
investigator and writer who studies disinformation and domestic extremist movements in America chris is the author
of the popular substack on Offense with Chris Goldmith and one of the hosts of the Find Out podcast but we're going to
be talking to him today mostly about his group Veterans Fighting Fascism an organization that is part of the Task
Force Butler Institute out here using their military training for democracy rather than insurrection so without
further ado please welcome my guest thought leader writer and combat veteran fighting fascism stateside Christopher
Goldmith welcome Chris hey thanks for having me oh well thanks for joining me now listen I originally found you
through two films right one was the documentary War Game which was sort of this realtime six-hour war game in which
a Donald Trump type figure had lost the election but was refusing to concede and
kind of violent right-wing militia groups were joining him in that fight and the question posed by that film was
under what circumstances would the sitting president choose to use the insurrection act and deploy the US
military on domestic soil in response and in that film you played a right-wing extremist working to undermine the
system and then I also know you from Ken Harbro's documentary Against All Enemies
which was based on the idea that our democracy is under attack and there's an organized effort by people with skills
namely former military who are helping to facilitate those efforts so Against All Enemies really focused on the
radicalization of our former military and the draw that many of our veterans feel towards these far-right extremist
groups and in that film you had a very unique perspective because when you were first home from war you had the
opportunity to fall into that kind of right-wing pipeline and you chose to go the other way so both films dealt with
the growing extremism of the far right and the role that our veterans play in that world where do you think we sit now
when it comes to those issues so as we're recording this just hours ago I I
published a piece about technofascism and in that piece I write about how the
coup is already happening it was broadcast the plan was broadcast and it
is being implemented so what I try to do with my platform is convince Americans
that all hope is not lost like we it is not too late to act it is not too big of
a problem for individual Americans to pick themselves up and try and solve you know where are we we are in a
constitutional crisis where are we we're in you know the end stages of the
democratic experiment if everyone stays on sidelines and what you have seen is
these two movies documentaries are the result of not just years of my work in
counter extremism but of my life experience as a disillusioned vet as
someone who deployed to a war i deployed to Iraq in 2005 experienced really
terrible things came home to a country that didn't give a that didn't care about my sacrifices or my friends
getting hurt or killed or after we came home a lot of them ending their own lives i came home to
indifference and being lied into a war having really truly believed in it
harboring frankly racist and Islamophobic beliefs being a New Yorker
a kid i was 16 when 9/11 happened right all of these things made me who I am
today and I could have gone down a far different path i was a Ron Paul
libertarian when I got out of the military in 2007 in 2008 I was the
closest thing I've ever done to like really campaigning or getting involved in a political campaign aside from a few
Tik Tok videos last year was me running around my hometown spray painting Ron
Paul revolution right and it was my type of veteran veterans supportive of the
Ron Paul campaign who became the Oathkeepers that is who Steuart Rhodess
is he he was on the Ron Paul campaign in 2008 and he was fed like I was fed this
ideology this mythology this myth that the election of 2008 the primary
election for the Republicans of 2008 was stolen from Ron Paul and John McCain was
the usurper it it was the same narrative that Donald Trump was using in 2016 and
then he won so people don't really remember the stolen election lie from 2016 then he used it again in 2020 and
then he started using it again in 2024 but he won that one too so you know all
of my expertise on the far right comes from the seeds of having been there and
almost going down that path and understanding the psychology of these folks because I was there yeah this is
the
thing i think that a lot of people who have been to war and correct me
if I'm wrong because of course I haven't my closest veteran in my family
is my my
father-in-law my husband moved all around the world with the US Navy and they lived all around the world and so
it's a very very promilitary family that I married into and I'm of course Canadian by birth so we don't have the
same sort of military background really although my grandfather on my father's side did fight in World War I and World
War II which is very rare but I feel like if you are a veteran you you build
this camaraderie with people overseas you build this camaraderie with your unit or with the military in general and
then once you're out of the military it's almost like you're set a drift you are alone and in some ways people seek
out groups that will make them feel like they belong again especially groups when
you have been a a part of a unit for so long that you seek that out stateside but then the problem becomes if you are
radicalized while you are seeking that unit stateside we essentially have
homegrown American trained terrorists on our own shores people that can use their
military training against their fellow citizens because they feel like they have been abandoned do you find that
there are so many threads to pull on in everything that you just said like there are books focused on each individual
part of everything that you just asked so let me let me just try to choose a few so a lot of folks you know think
about combat veterans and and war veterans and make the assumption that you know it is the experience at war
that that builds this camaraderie this small unit cohesion this brotherhood or
sisterhood it is not just that from the first day of basic training it is
ingrained in you that you have to trust the man or woman to your left and right with your life and with that builds a
real appreciation you know from basic training on you are taking care of each
other you're physically protecting one another you know it there are political dynamics within any group right people
think about politics as Republicans and Democrats you're playing politics when you're in first grade and you're
choosing your friend group right when when somebody's getting bullied that is politics in the military politics at the
micro level is is you keeping each other from harm whether that's the drill
sergeant seeing your buddy mess up on the first day of basic training or that's you know someone pulling you out
from a doorway because you're walking in accidentally walking into a kill zone or what we call a kill zone in the military
where you're likely to get shot so it is not just combat vets a lot of people
look at Stuart Rhodess the guy who led the Oathkeepers and was convicted of sedition before Donald Trump gave him a
free pass and let him out of jail they see the eye patch and they think "Oh this guy must be a combat vet." No no he
shot himself at the range because he's an idiot the man has never deployed to a
combat zone but he does carry this military persona and he allows people to
to make up their own beliefs when they see the pirate patch over his eyes that is a deliberate thing that is a
deliberate
presentation that he's bringing forward but back to what we're focusing
on this kind of like brotherhood the the sisterhood the small
unit cohesion in the 1950s and the 1960s when we were in a different era of
warfare and veterans we had places like American Legion Halls and VFW halls
there were things like the Elks Club there were third spaces i mean when I
was a kid I was born in ' 85 bowling and the pool hall were like popular places
not just for kids but for adults to go to on Fridays and Saturdays those places
simply don't exist especially in the post-pandemic world but really you know since 2000 I think things as they've
become more online as relationships as business as commerce has become more
online so have we as human beings as Americans and we've lost those interpersonal relationships that used to
allow people to not just transition out of the military in a more healthy way
but actually do things like network to build community to to get jobs that type
of infrastructure doesn't exist but for one thing for veterans now and that's
the GI Bill so unless a veteran opts to go to school or to join a training
program using their GI bill where they may be in a community where they're surrounded by other veterans who are
going through the same thing and that was really the the thing that saved me was my student veterans America group
way back in my community college like over 10 years ago without having and being lucky
enough to land in a place with that community you're left a drift whether or not you served in combat you went from
this small unit cohesion this thing where you literally trust the person
that you work with with your life to going back into the civilian world where
frankly you know my impression the thing that I felt the most was that everyone was so selfish no one cared about each
other and and it felt alien to me to come back to the United States and to
see people not really care about anyone but themselves yeah but I don't think
that that's just isolated to people who come back from war i think most of us nowadays feel very isolated you're
saying post pandemic online culture you know we've all lost our third spaces it's not just you know Elks clubs and
Lions clubs and bowling alleys it's everything it's you know small town coffee shops it's main streets it's all
these places that we used to be able to gather that we don't and we are increasingly isolated and that often
draws people to places where there are communities and that is often far-right extremism but it's also church it's why
people end up back in churches and then they do what their church leader says i think the thing is is that like the
concept of all of these movies you've been in and the concept of these people that seek out this far-right extremism
especially our veterans is that this civil war is a possibility in America is
not so far-fetched mass violence is not out of the question which sort of leads
me to the work you're doing with the Task Force Butler Institute and Veterans Fighting Fascism program and now as I
understand it Task Force Butler is a veteranled nonprofit dedicated to upholding democratic values and
countering this rise of authoritarianism right it was founded as you know both
what the film touched on this sort of threat of political violence and extremism that's escalating through the
country but also as a way to expose and dismantle these networks that are
fundamentally endangering our communities can you talk to me about your work with Veterans Fighting Fascism
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me about your work with Veterans Fighting Fascism and Task Force Butler yeah so Task Force Butler Institute is a
nonprofit 501c3 that trains veterans to conduct open- source intelligence research so that we can gather evidence
of criminality by extremist groups like fascist street gangs like Patriot Front
those are the red white and blue looking like Best Buy uniforms the white mask they jump out of U-Hauls we infiltrate
their spaces gather evidence of criminality and then we provide that to both law enforcement and to victims in
the last year we have seen three federal lawsuits one was just an outright win
against Patriot Front with a $3 million judgment we've seen two other federal uh
lawsuits in Virginia and North Dakota of all places the plaintiffs settled in that case we've seen multiple members of
their organizations arrested unfortunately they tend not to spend very much time in jail but one of the
things that we do aside from gather evidence is we leverage our privilege as
veterans to get basically shame the cops into doing the right thing we sell a
shirt on our on our website that says cops don't stop Nazis we do cuz cuz that's the truth when cops see these
extremist groups marching down the street they tend to give them wide birth they allow them to do whatever they want
whether it's you know extremists like Kyle Writtenhouse running around with an M4 on the streets of an American city or
it's the Proud Boys you know marching through Washington DC in the weeks leading up to January 6th beating the
hell out of people cops just don't respond to right-wing violence they act like oh it's a First Amendment protected
speech so we come in and say like "Hey look I look like you and if I get in
front of the press because I'm a veteran the press is going to listen to me so you Mr police Officer Mr district
Attorney you either need to do your job or you're going to have a bunch of veterans talking about how you
are failing to support and uphold the Constitution of the United States." Right so so that is what Task Force
Butler does we we seek and destroy extremist groups veterans Fighting Fascism is much more like the
documentaries that you've seen we sponsored Against All Enemies we are about public education and we are not
just while we are veterans we are not just engaging with veterans one of the things that we do is is we're
encouraging people to start anti-fascist book clubs this is encouraging people to
create their own third places their third spaces where they can join with
like-minded individuals and start to develop relationships in person so you start to build trust in person so that
you can fight fascism in your own backyard one of the problems that my generation I'm a millennial we have is
that we tend to focus super online you know local newspapers died after we
graduated high school they just didn't exist anymore so we tend to focus on what Washington DC is doing congress and
and Musk and Trump that's all we pay attention to but fascism when it grows
it grows in your backyard it's not a top-down thing it's it's also grassroots
so we're encouraging people to get active get local and to go to your schoolboard and make sure the fascists
aren't pulling books out of your your libraries because that is how fascism materializes all across the United
States and that's where each of us individually can make the greatest impact yeah well that's what they always
say start local right and also community community is the way to fight back against this because they want us to
feel
isolated they want us to feel alone they don't want us to get together i
keep saying like when these people are being rounded up on the street
you see
people now starting to be like standing in the way of the person being rounded up and saying "Show us your warrant
prove
to me this." Because the more people that are doing that the more
people that stand up at a town hall when someone's being dragged out and
say this
is their first amendment right to speak if 40 people surrounded that person they would be far less likely to be dragged
out by these random rental cops that are you know stopping people from from their
first amendment right i mean one of the things you point out on the Task Force Butler website is that military leaders
who
served at the highest levels of the Trump administration we're talking
people like General Matus and General Millie and General Kelly they all
told
us that Donald Trump's behavior was fascist they all cautioned us and warned the country that he was a major threat
to democracy and yet here we are so can we just talk for just take a little sojourn for a second and just talk about
January 6th because I know that veterans were involved in that attack on our capital but your organization seems to
imply that a lot of veterans actually felt ashamed watching our democracy you know
the democracy that they had fought for be attacked like that especially by radicalized veterans with American flags
and you know symbols of their military service doing it sort of in their name did you find that
yeah I mean I I watched the attack of January 6th from the perspective of the
extremists because I was infiltrating these organizations and they live streamed it most Americans at this point
have seen you know what ended up being in congressional record during the January 6th hearings and obviously what
you know CNN MSNBC Fox News and the rest were broadcasting that day but I watched
them go inch by inch by inch taking the halls that I used to walk as a
representative of a veterans organization as as an advocate as a lobbyist that day felt to me it brought
me right back to 9/11 but the difference is is on 911 when I was watching the
towers fall after the planes hit them I couldn't have done anything about
that but in the leadup to January 6th I was infiltrating these extremist organizations and I was handing off
evidence recorded conversations to them talking about storming the capital at
the state capital of Georgia recording threats that they were making outside the governor's mansion in Atlanta saying
traders get the rope right as they're driving in a pickup armed to the teeth
and none of that none of that evidence that I handed off made a difference so I was I was
heartbroken and and frankly I don't know if you call it survivors guilt like but
it it crushed me and to see the symbols of American military service there were
Marine flags there were flags for some of our veteran service organizations that were being waved along with the
blue lives matter flags that were being used to beat cops right all of these symbols of supposed patriotism and
service were being corrupted and used as literal weapons against the democracy
that we were all sworn to protect task Force Butler wasn't
necessarily my idea i was working as an intelligence analyst i was working as a consultant doing this work and uh
another group commissioned me to start a nonprofit to train other veterans to do what I do
we opened applications for people to join our team to to become
trainees for a day and we received between four and 600 applications from
veterans complete with their whole military history i I knew that a lot of people were going to apply so I made it
annoying to fill out the application to try and reduce the load we still got 4 to 600 people and I had to take it
offline and I've never put it back online because the demand for veterans who want to serve their country with
Task Force Butler with veterans fighting fascism is greater than the amount of resources that I can possibly get what
is what is sad what is frankly frustrating is I've been screaming from the rooftops for four years five years
about the violence that was going to happen on January 6th about the radicalization of veterans the use of
veterans by extremist organizations to gain credibility to actual actually plan
attacks to end our democracy and big funders these so-called
democracy funders look at what I do as too risky they don't support it i haven't had the institutional support to
run either of my organizations i'm I'm doing it for free right now like it's a
side project so you know I I hope that the right
people get this message that there are countless veterans who want to serve
their country who want to fight for justice but I can't keep doing this for free and they're you need you need
backing you need people to be supporting this and it's it's you know far better
use of someone's money than buying another ad in a billion dollar election that we ended up losing right like this
is a far better use of somebody's money i mean I the idea behind your work seems to be create an opportunity for people
to fight back to reclaim the meaning of patriotism to shape the role that veterans play in the American political
landscape your website itself says "We help veterans impose social and economic
costs on extremist groups within the bounds of the law when our government is failing to do so." And I think that's so
important because you're training veterans in research and operations to counter extremism which everyone out
here knows is happening and is growing you are teaching the skills and the context necessary to keep veterans and
their communities safe as well as gathering evidence and intelligence on
dangerous individuals and organizations so that we can do stuff whether that's in court or where else to fight back
against this because ultimately as you guys have pointed out domestic extremism organizations are
growing in America they are growing in membership they are growing in activity levels they're growing in sophistication
and preparation and we need to be meeting that effectively and so we need to be funding groups like yours that
have all of these veterans willing and lined up to fight back for on behalf of their country on behalf of democracy on
behalf of the rule of law we need to be able to fund this counter attack I guess
yeah and that's that's I mean one of the things that that we're going to be talking about today is what's going on
on June 6th exactly yeah veterans Fighting Fascism is is joining with a
bunch of other veterans veterans organizations leaders within the veterans community to rally for veterans
so it's called the Unite for Veterans Unite for America Rally and on June 6th at 2:00 p.m eastern we are going to be
joining with tens of thousands of not just veterans but service members veterans military families and everyone
who supports us to stand up for the veterans community and the reason for
this it's not it's not just about defending veterans it well yes it is important and it is our primary mission
to defend the promises that were made to veterans to make sure that the American
government you know provides the health care provides the support necessary not
just to help people transition and not just to help them survive but to help veterans thrive after they've served
their country but it's also to help people recognize that with unity comes
strength if we can unify around veterans issues which
are everyone in politics will say are apolitical or non-political or
bipartisan right they'll at least say that if we can unify around veterans
issues it makes it much easier to gain ground on all of the other issues why
because veterans represent the full diversity of the United States the American veterans community is the most
diverse cohort of Americans of any kind you have everything from people who you
know barely made it through high school or gots to literal astronauts
yeah like Senator Mark Kelly yeah we we have got you know folks who are nothing
but bluecollar they are trigger pullers in the military we've got scientists
we've got folks from every state town city around the country we have people
from most nations if not all nations when it comes to immigrants we've got
families that are undocumented we have people from the LGBTQ community right
every issue that has to do with domestic or fallen foreign policy is a veterans
issue can I ask you something Chris is that why you see this administration trying so hard to get rid of DEI to get
rid of the LGBT things to get rid of the trans demonize the trans community and then fill the military now with their
ranks they're like lowering the you know standards in which you can put in they're lowering the intelligence level
they are cutting out people that they think don't fit because they rather have a more homogeneous group of people that
they can control yes full stop i mean that's that's the
whole answer yes you're right i'm glad that you phrased it this way because to remove DEI is to lower the standards
right it it is the precisely the opposite of what all of these racists are out there trying to convince people
if you remove DEI it makes it easier for lowerforming white men to get jobs that
they shouldn't have i have all of these privileges right i recognize that people
who look like me who aren't as qualified as me certainly shouldn't be competing
for the jobs that that I'm qualified for it doesn't matter what someone looks like if I'm competing for a job I want
to get beat by someone who's more qualified than me not by somebody who
who's you know also a white dude but you know their uncle works for a company
right yeah we we've all seen who the Secretary of Defense is
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secretary of defense is yeah Pete Hegsth is there's some history
there so in 2008 I was running around pissed off about the war running around
with an anti-war organization this guy was leading before it was Concerned Veterans for America it
was called Vets for Freedom and it was this rapidly pro- Iraq war group the
fact that somehow this guy has managed to rebrand himself as someone who's been skeptical of of the global war on
terrorism it it blows my mind and part of the reason that Pete Hegsth is where
he is today is because billionaire benefactors and I know this sounds like
conspiracy theory but it's not cuz I've been there the Koch brothers
recognized that he had potential and they invested in him they gave him the
money to run these nonprofit organizations that he just blew the money and ran them into the ground but
they kept investing in him now he's the secretary of defense on the left
or on the anti-war side whatever you want to call what I was at the time there's been no investment there's
been no long-term investment there's been no mentorship that is part of why we are
here today that is why Democrats feel like they don't have a deep bench and
that's why Joe Biden was running for office in 2024 when he probably
shouldn't because Democrats for some reason and and I'm putting this on the
political donors for some reason are like I'm not going to invest until October before the before the election
like I've been around now for a few of these cycles it and that political
mindset carries over into the nonprofit mindset and that's where I've been working for years and I've been watching
people wait to invest in leaders until it's too late until you know
Pete Haggth and I kind of started on an evening playing field he he was an officer i was enlisted he's now the
Secretary of Defense and I'm still strapping together you know like duct taping together nonprofits to fight
fascism yeah but this is this is right across the board again it brings us back to the thing that you said before about
you know it's not just veterans that don't have third spaces it is the entire left that is not invested we're looking
at a 40-year plan come to fruition with Donald Trump as the leader this is not Donald Trump's brilliant brainchild that
we're living through right now it's project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation it the our entire Supreme Court is
Federalist Society 40-year plan like these are big organizations funded by people like the Koes who have said here
is our plan to reverse engineer this country so we reverse workers rights
reverse women's rights reverse civil rights we don't want any of this we're going to take it back to here and we're
going
to plan to do it they have long-term plans they invested in propaganda
they invested in people like Rush Limba invested in people like Fox
News invested in Ben Shapiro invested in Candace Owens like you and I are doing the same thing i'm I'm here
bootstrapping it myself trying to tell people the truth when people are spending literal hundreds of millions of
dollars to you know give Tim P you know $400,000 an episode so he can lie to the
American public so we're we're dealing with the same thing and it doesn't need even need to be a long-term plan for an
election it's a long-term plan for a mindset of a country that we need to really get right with I think because I
I I think if if our goal here is to resist fascism we have to do it in an
organized and professional way we can't just be reactionary or haphazard or show up at the October before the November
election we need to go on offense we need to be out here fighting back and I think that's why we're so upset with our
Congress people right now because there's a handful of people that are meeting the moment and the rest of them
are trying to pretend we live in 1990 and it's infuriating to watch you know personally watching your work and
reading your literature I like how clear you are that white supremacists and
fascist organizations are out here they are out here terrorizing Americans and they're not really paying a price
because that is how I feel and it's incredibly infuriating like we were told years ago by the FBI that white
supremist organizations were one of the biggest threats to America and we seemingly did nothing about it we know
our
police are infiltrated by these types of people now we have these
groups like you're talking about the Proud Boys and 3enters and the
Oathkeepers and
these kind of guys and then we have a president a president telling them to stand back and stand by and pardoning
the January 6ers and calling them patriots and importing white supremacists from South Africa because
of some non-existent white genocide so it it's like we've lost our minds and and our side the left whoever you're
going to call yourself whatever is not fascist whatever is not authoritarianism whatever label you give yourself we need
to be fighting back in a far more organized diligent long-term funded way
yeah and and what you're getting at I mean the phrase that you used is the name of of my Substack that I'm growing
into another podcast on offense because if if your only plan and and this was
the most frustrating thing you know whether it was the movie War Game or any of the scenario planning that I've done
over the last four years talking about a potential second Trump presidency and
and the way that the technofascists would ingratiate themselves with him and and gradually take over our government
and just just if people aren't clear technofascism in this case is the people that are like these big tech overlords
these edge lords the the Peter Teals and the Elon Musks and in many ways the Mark
Zuckerbergs these guys that have way too much money and in many ways they want to re-imagine our society based around them
at the top much like a feudal system would be yes and with them at the top they say aristocracy and the rest of us
as surfs but instead of like towing the land we are surfs in a techno feudalism
uh online surfs they have access to our data access to our you know full-time
surveillance this kind of stuff that is a brilliant way to to explain that so thank you for doing that i'm going to
use the that metaphor um moving forward they're not interested in a
multicultural pluralistic society right they're not they're actively targeting minority groups they're actively
targeting our democracy they want to build this homogeneic country that they would prefer right and however each one
of
them sees it I'm sure is actually a little bit different because you
have the Christian nationalists that want a white Christian nation and
then you have
the technofudalists that want it a little bit different but the the gist is they would prefer a nation much like
Putin has in Russia you know top- down control or what Orban is doing in Hungary so your organization is out here
providing resources and the support necessary to fight back but I feel like the core of your organization is service
to the nation right yes a a stronger civil society to counter this domestic
extremism that we know is out here i think one of the things I liked when I read your work is that the goal you've
set out is not to harm those not to belittle those who have fallen for
misinformation or fallen for radicalization but to encourage them to see the truth and to leave what they're
doing to to acknowledge that the path they're following will only lead to their own destruction could you just
expand on that a little bit for me yeah so I for folks who haven't seen it yet
the Against All Enemies documentary is is free if you just search on YouTube
Against All Enemies you'll see it on the Midas Touch Network we made it so that anyone could watch this at any time you
could also watch it on Apple TV or you know any of your major streaming services what I think made that
documentary so compelling aside from I'm a main character of course I'm biased
but it No it's an excellent documentary we did a whole podcast on it it is brilliant brilliant and it plays like a
thriller in many ways like you get very anxious watching it but you're like I can't believe this is happening it's
such an excellent documentary and I think everyone should really watch it it put my personal story my evolution and
my anti-fascist work against the personal story background and
pro-fascist work of the leader of the Texas 3enters and it basically got to
the root of we're both trying to do the same thing we both believe that we are
serving our country we both believe that we are fighting for freedom fighting for our constitution the difference is is I
read and that guy doesn't and and a guy like Stuart
Rhodess comes along who's got a Yale law degree who's a veteran he's got the eye patch so everyone thinks he's a a Purple
Heart veteran when he's not you know and he says "Oh I've got a Yale law degree so when I'm starting the Oathkeepers I'm
going to interpret the Constitution for you." And me when I'm a 21-year-old dumbass who's got a high school
education and then got up by the war I'm ripe for manipulation you know I
swore an oath to the Constitution before I ever read it like yeah okay I read it in high school but I didn't
understand every amendment i didn't understand most people don't Chris no no
so when I was 21 I was ripe for manipulation and I'm I'm just really lucky because I was a Ron Paul
guy and Stuart Rhodess was too i feel like I'm lucky that he and I may have never been in the same room otherwise
maybe I would have got dragged with him but it comes again we're coming from the
same place it's just misinformation and disinformation that has polluted their
interpretation of the founding documents of our country and the ethos of the system of laws that we all live under
together they believe in their interpretation just just like the Westboroough Baptist Church thinks that
they're Christian and they think that it is the Christian thing to do to use
slurs and to protest soldiers funerals that is what the 3enters and
the Oathkeepers are they are just the Westboroough Baptist Church's equivalent
in Christianity right yeah so listen how
do we help you right like it's clear you're only one part of an ecosystem working together to fight extremism you
partner
with lots of other leading experts in domestic terrorism groups that
share your values who create projects and protect the vulnerable
you're out here doing amazing work but like how does one join Task Force Butler
or Veterans Against Fascism and if we can't join how do we support your work how do we convince our rich friends that
might buy a $50 million TV spot and say like "Hey put it here because we have
you
know thousands of veterans who would like to fight back and would like
to be organized and would like to be on offense against this we need to
invest
in the alternative to fascism the way we invested in fascism if we are on the right." Yeah so if people are listening
to this pull over your car and start taking notes because there are a few different things that you can do so
first the most urgent thing that you need to do is go to unite the number four vets
unite4vets.org that is in preparation for the June 6 rally where we are going to be on the National Mall again uniting
for Veterans to Unite for America the Dropkick Murphy's are going to be putting on a free show we're not selling
tickets or anything we just want you to show up 2 PM Eastern on Friday June 6th
which is is the anniversary of D-Day for me as an anti-fascist I I love the fact
that it is on the anniversary of the largest anti-fascist operation in
history which was the storming of Normandy it was United States Army an arm army veteran storming the beaches of
Normandy to fight fascism i could not find a better date to hold this on but
United for Vets is not just a June 6th thing we are making plans to continue
fighting beyond that if you can donate to support this organization that we are forming please do if you are interested
in helping to facilitate the training of veterans to conduct open source intelligence research to track down and
impose legal consequences on fascists whether they're members of the Proud
Boys or they're corrupt cops it doesn't matter it's the same skill set and the same legal system go to task
forcebutler.org you can make a donation there you can sign up on our email list if you are interested in helping
everyday Americans not just veterans learn how to fight fascism in their own backyard go to veterans fighting
fascism.org there we have instruction manuals on how any person not just vets any person can start an anti-fascist
book club to build a third space in their own community to fight fascism in
their own backyard we will walk you through your first six meetings beyond that you don't need us my goal is to
make it so that I could disappear tomorrow and the anti-fascist movement takes everything I know and works works
without me beyond that if you want to support my work directly I'm about to
have a child so I'm about to go a little bit quiet by the time people listen to this I may be a dad just so you know uh
onoffense.substack.com that is my personal newsletter that is where I give people the news and information that
they need to understand things like technofascism and the role of Elon Musk
in shaping foreign policy and domestic i tell people how to fight for veterans on
a micro and macro level and lastly if you like podcasts the Find Out podcast
is my new venture that I've joined a bunch of guys from White Dudes for Harris we are trying to create a space
for for white dudes because white dudes are problem for Democrats and and
America and and we are also you know to to be totally fair to everybody like a
lot of folks have felt unwelcome a lot of folks who look like me have similar backgrounds to me i'm very privileged to
be from New York right so I have just got a a a better relationship with the Democratic Party than someone who lives
in a rural area right just because of exposure what we are trying to do with the Find Out podcast is show men not
only are you welcome in the Democratic Party but here is how you can leverage
things like your privilege and your identity to help everyone and and not
just yourself and as someone whose life has been dedicated to service I for
folks who don't haven't internalized this yet I want to convince you that helping people is the most fulfilling
way of life that you can have some people you know do it through the church some people do it through
volunteering there are many many ways that we talk about in the Find Out
podcast which people can find at findoutpodcast.substack.com substack.com or anywhere that you listen to podcasts
we are helping men get involved in other forms of patriotism and a healthy form
of masculinity yeah which is so essential because we hear nothing these days if we're not hearing about the male
loneliness
epidemic if we're not hearing about the incel community if we're not
hearing about a man that shot up something or a man that killed himself
there is a definite problem going on but like you're saying if we stop thinking about just ourselves and how we're
feeling and we start helping other people we start reaching out we start finding third spaces to find other men
or other people that we can join together with in in service of others not just in service of ourselves this
world owes me i deserve this give me this i think that's what makes people so unhappy is that they feel that they're
not being given what they are owed whereas it's really like what could you give JFK style you know ask not what
your
country can do for you but what you can do for your country you could
also put that into your fellow man i have to say like I found myself
very inspired
reading your website i don't know who wrote it maybe it was you was it you who wrote it i loved reading in the belief
that you think America is and I'm going to quote you an inclusive complex and
turbulent nation defined by moments in which we approach one another with open arms and reject those who seek to define
our nation by a single race or creed or religion or ideology and I also really
loved that you sent a message directly to your adversaries right it says to our adversaries and you said for those who
wish to use violence or the threat of violence to achieve political goals in the United States of America let Task
Force Butler be a warning and a promise america is watching you and I think that
is wonderful i think a lot of us are seeking people who want to stand up who
want to fight back who want to go on offense and I really just hope we can go to uniteforveterans.org or and help out
with the march or we can go to Task Force Butler and help out with that project or tell other people about it or
talk to our veteran family members and say join with this group and let's grow it because ultimately we deserve a
better country than this we don't deserve a country in which we're having a military birthday party for a man
who's a draft dodger like we can't be doing stuff like that we have to be using our skills and our patriotism in
which to help other people not just ourselves and I think you guys are doing that every day with your work and I want
to make sure that we support you moving forward thank you so much and and I do have to give credit it it wasn't I alone
who wrote that that was a collaborative effort with with my co-founders and particularly my my first chief re
researcher who is a brilliant person i am so thankful for your presentation of
the fight for democracy i I have to say that we exist in a space as creators as
podcast hosts as people who create stuff on on social media we live in a space
where the algorithm rewards outrage and panic and I am so thankful to talk to
someone who does not do that because not only is it worse off for audiences you
know
they get a dopamine hit because they feel like oh now they're informed
but they're panicked so they they get addicted to their phone you are
helping
people actually learn that they can sign off get offline and put in the work to
build community and there is nothing more important than that so so thank you well thank you Chris i mean look you're
about to be a dad i started this whole project because I'm a mom and our children do not deserve this version of
America they deserve something far better and it's not about going back it's about going forward and making
something
that's really worthwhile for all of us i want to thank you so much for
joining us today honestly you fought for our country overseas now you're
fighting for it at home you're really showing us what heroism and patriotism looks like and I'm really so grateful
thank you thank you so much so that was Chris Goldsmith reminding us
when fascism grows it grows in our backyard that we need to get active locally to tear this movement out from
its roots to stop it in its infancy and we need to do it together because as Chris says with unity comes strength we
need to support those willing to fight back willing to step up willing to bring their skills out of retirement to
support our democracy and rule of law i don't know about you but listening to that I believe veterans fighting fascism
and Task Force Butler need our help we should make sure any veteran who wants to stand up for the Constitution they
swore to uphold gets the opportunity i want to thank Chris for joining us and you for caring enough about democracy to
be here now go to uniteforvets.org and check out the June 6 rally to show your
support until next week PG out
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