This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. This
year marks the first anniversary of the white supremacist, neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville,
Virginia, the deadly “Unite the Right” rally protesting the Charlottesville decision
to remove a statue of a Confederate general from a downtown park, General Robert E. Lee,
became the biggest and deadliest white supremacist rally in U.S. history in decades. We are joined
by A.C. Thompson. The documentary he did, the correspondent for Frontline PBS, is
called Documenting Hate: Charlottesville, premiering tonight on PBS stations across
the country. In Part 1 of our discussion, we discussed the documentary.
As this documentary comes out, you were in Portland, Oregon, for yet another white supremacist
rally, and one took place in Berkeley, California, as well. Describe what you saw, A.C.
Right. Actually, you know, I would revise that, and I would say that it was perhaps
a fascist rally in Portland, but not a white supremacist rally. And that’s sort of another
new wrinkle in the far-right movement. So the groups that were in Portland, they wanted
you to know, “Hey, look, we’re not racist.” And many of them had leaders who were people
of color. But they also said, “Hey, we’re really into fascist characters like Pinochet.”
The first guy I met had a huge shirt on that said “Pinochet did nothing wrong.” And
other people had shirts on that would say things like “right-wing death squad.”
And so, these are what I would call multicultural, multiethnic fascist groups, that they laud
characters like Pinochet. They laud characters like—
The dictator of Chile that ruled with an iron hand.
The Chilean dictator who killed tens of thousands of his opponents and whose folks often threw
them out of helicopters. You know, they are fans of folks like the Indonesian dictator
Suharto, someone that you’ve studied very much. And they would say, about somebody like
Suharto, “I don’t care that he’s Asian. I’m not prejudiced against Asian people.
I just like that he was involved in slaughtering tens of thousands of—in fact, hundreds of
thousands of suspected communists.”
Over a million.
Yeah. So that’s the kind of—these are the kind of groups that we’re talking about.
It’s a new wrinkle on the fascist movement and on—and they’re not explicitly white
supremacist. They’re a little bit different.
And so, talk about how police dealt with them versus the anti-fascist protesters.
You know, what I saw in Portland was sort of a response to Charlottesville, that they
were trying to keep these two groups separated, and, unlike we had seen in other events, they
were trying to keep these groups from fighting, which police had failed at in many cities
before. But I think, from what I saw, it seemed like the group that was getting the harsher
police treatment seemed to be the leftist faction, the anti-racist faction. And I think
the concern, I would say, in Portland is that police were using less lethal munitions and
firing them in what seemed to be somewhat indiscriminate ways at the counterprotesters,
the leftist protesters, in a way that really could have seriously injured people.
And the same happened in Berkeley.
This similar thing happened in Berkeley. I wasn’t there, but that’s the reports that
I’m hearing. And I didn’t document it, so I don’t know all the details there.
Wasn’t a guy shot in the head in Portland?
That, I have seen the photos, and my colleagues were actually at that scene when it happened,
and it sounded terrifying. I was in a different part of town when that incident happened.
And it looked—but that looked scary, the photos, absolutely.
And do you think there’s any relation to this crackdown on the counterprotesters, more
harshly than the protesters, and Donald Trump being president?
You know, it’s hard to say. A city like Portland is not a place where Donald Trump
has a lot of sway, I would say. A city like Berkeley is not a place where there are a
lot of Donald Trump fans. I think, really, part of what we’re seeing here is just a
longtime problem with sort of police adjusting to the dynamics of this current political
moment and still trying to actually effectively police these situations that we have, that
we’re going to continue to have, where you have very intense standoffs between people
on the left and people on the right who are concerned about this particular moment.
Are you saying these fascists are the Proud Boys?
Here’s what I’m saying: Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys are extreme-right groups
that I don’t think they’re—they’re not white supremacist groups. They’re just
not. But they have a lot more in common with certain fascist movements that we’ve seen
over time than, say, other groups.
Before we go, you’ve been doing a lot of reporting on Blaze Bernstein, the murder of
this young man. Explain who he is and how it fits into this whole movement.
So, Blaze Bernstein is—was a gay Jewish college student who was from Orange County,
California. And when he disappeared and was murdered earlier this year, my colleagues
and I thought, “Hmmm, that looks like a case we should probably be following. You
know, we don’t know yet, but it looks suspicious.” When we started getting more details about
it, we kept investigating. And eventually, we found out that, hey, the guy that has been
charged by the police, Sam Woodward, with the murder is a member of the most extreme
neo-Nazi group in the country, Atomwaffen Division. And he spent all of his time in
the Atomwaffen chats—
Now, Atomwaffen, A-T-O-M-W-A-F-F-E-N,
A-T-O-M-W-A—
German for?
German for “nuclear weapons” division. I believe, if you were German, you would say
something like “Atomwaffen,” something like that. But yeah, so he was a member of
this incredibly rabid, incredibly extreme group that’s dedicated to domestic terrorism
and the overthrow of the United States government—
The man who’s charged with his murder.
The man who’s charged with this murder—virulently anti-gay, virulently anti-trans, virulently
anti-Semitic, anti-people of color—I mean, really, really intense group.
And Vasillios Pistolis, the leader of this.
No, he was—
One of the people in it.
Vasillios Pistolis was a chapter leader for the group in North and South Carolina, but
he was another character who was a key figure in the group. The group’s lovely leader
goes by the handle “Rape.” And his name is John Cameron Denton, but he uses the handle
“Rape.”
And who is he?
He’s a Texas neo-Nazi based outside of Houston.
And you’re also investigating him.
Yes, he will be in our second film, our follow-up film, that will air on PBS in the fall.
Finally, one of the issues we didn’t deal as much with is the whole misogynist part—
Right.
—of these movements. And if you could talk more about it? You touch on it in the documentary.
Right. It’s really interesting, because the earlier waves of white supremacist groups
were highly patriarchal, but they weren’t openly and violently misogynist. And I think
this wave of white supremacist groups have even worse sort of gender politics. And a
lot of them are just absolutely aggressively anti-female. And that’s the kind of thing
that you get with a guy who goes by the handle “Rape.”
Well, we’ll do Part 2 of this soon, as you’re doing Part 2 of your documentary. It’s coming
out soon?
In the fall, October/November.
I want to thank you, A.C. Thompson, correspondent for FrontlinePBS, reporter for ProPublica,
his documentary, Documenting Hate: Charlottesville, premiering tonight 10 p.m. Eastern on PBS stations
around the country and at PBS.org/Frontline. To see Part 1 of our discussion, go to democracynow.org.
I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks for joining us.