Synopsis: The Price of Reporting on Hate Groups in America Has Risen Dramatically Under Current Administration Description: Today’s guests have paid a price for their reporting on far Right extremists. But if journalists don’t do this critical work, then who will? The Trump administration is scaling back investigations of far-Right extremism while redirecting DHS agents to immigration crackdowns. Join us for this chilling conversation on threats against journalists and the implications for democracy. “I don't think we should hide the fact that there is a toll, that neo-Nazis in particular and authoritarians more generally want to silence journalists. We as a society need to be aware of that. We need to speak up as journalists who've experienced this so our peers don't feel alone when they face similar challenges.” - Jordan Green “Mainstream institutions often ignore these issues until it's maybe too late or they are fully developed. There's not a lot of interest right now in developing stories. Maybe one of the histories that will be told is of the sort of independent muckraker types that we heard all about a hundred years ago, stepping into a role that larger institutions were unwilling to fill.” - Steven Monacelli “The people who are backlashing against me have changed. It's no longer a livestreamer like Nick Fuentes ranting about me for five minutes straight. It's the former campaign manager for Trump 2024, calling me and threatening me with a lawsuit. It's worse because the people are more powerful.” - Amanda Moore Guests: • Jordan Green: Investigative Journalist, Raw Story • Steven Monacelli: Freelance Investigative Journalist; Correspondent, The Texas Observer • Amanda Moore: Freelance Investigative Journalist Full Conversation Release: While our weekly shows are edited to time for broadcast on Public TV and community radio, we offer to our members and podcast subscribers the full uncut conversation. These audio exclusives are made possible thanks to our member supporters. Become a member today, go to https://Patreon.com/LauraFlandersandFriends. Watch the special report on YouTube; PBS World Channel November 7th, and on over 300 public stations across the country. Listen: Episode airing on community radio starting November 10th (check your local station schedule) & available as a podcast.
Synopsis: Journalists Investigating Far-Right Extremism Face Growing Threats: As the Trump administration scales back investigations into far-right extremist groups, journalists on the front lines are facing increased attacks and threats from powerful figures.
Make a tax deductible YEAR END DONATION and become a member go to LauraFlanders.org/donate. This show is made possible by you!
Description: Today’s guests have paid a price for their reporting on far Right extremists. But if journalists don’t do this critical work, then who will? The Trump administration is deprioritizing domestic terrorism to serve a political agenda, scaling back investigations of far-Right extremism while redirecting DHS agents to immigration crackdowns. As programs tracking domestic extremism are dismantled and January 6 rioters are recast as "patriots," journalists find themselves on the frontlines — and their attackers are now people in power. Jordan Green is an investigative reporter for Raw Story whose coverage on far-Right extremism has spanned from Charlottesville to January 6. He is currently working on a book about militant accelerationism. Green also reported on a story we’ve covered extensively on the show: the attack on two power stations in Moore County, North Carolina. A correspondent for the Texas Observer, investigative journalist Steven Monacelli has been tracking extremism, disinformation, social movements, and the influence of dark money in politics. He received the The Al Neuharth Innovation in Investigative Journalism Award for revealing the identities of far-Right extremists, including government employees. Freelance journalist Amanda Moore embedded with the far Right in 2020 and has faced backlash from far-Right groups for her reporting. Her reporting at present focuses on ICE and Border Control, and her work has appeared in the Nation, Politico, and the Intercept. Join us for this chilling conversation on threats against journalists and the implications for democracy, plus a commentary from Laura.
Guests:
• Jordan Green: Investigative Journalist, Raw Story
• Steven Monacelli: Freelance Investigative Journalist; Correspondent, The Texas Observer; publisher of Protean Magazine, a nonprofit literary magazine; co-founder of Apprentice Creative Space
• Amanda Moore: Freelance Investigative Journalist
Full Conversation Release: While our weekly shows are edited to time for broadcast on Public TV and community radio, we offer to our members and podcast subscribers the full uncut conversation. These audio exclusives are made possible thanks to our member supporters.
Watch the episode released on YouTube; PBS World Channel December 7th, and on over 300 public stations across the country (check your listings, or search here via zipcode). Listen: Episode airing on community radio (check here to see if your station airs the show) & available as a podcast December 10th.
Full Episode Notes are located HERE.
Music Credit: 'Thrum of Soil' by Bluedot Sessions, and original sound design by Jeannie Hopper
Support Laura Flanders and Friends by becoming a member at https://www.patreon.com/c/lauraflandersandfriends
RESOURCES:
Related Laura Flanders Show Episodes:
• Power Grids Under Attack: The Threat is Domestic Terrorism – Not Drag Artists: Watch / Listen: Episode Cut
• What is Political Violence? Uncovering MAGA Militancy & Strategies to Protect Democracy: Watch / Listen: Episode Cut and Full Uncut Conversation
• Congresswoman Jayapal & Marine Vet Goldbeck: Standing Against the Administration’s War on Civilians: Watch / Listen: Episode Cut and Full Uncut Conversation
Related Articles and Resources:
• I’ve Seen How the Neo-Nazi Movement Is Escalating. You Should Worry. By Jordan Green, July 14, 2025, The Assembly NC
• Pentagon Marine tied to ‘6 bullets to head’ threat against Pete Hegseth won’t face probe, by Jordan Green, November 7, 2025, Raw Story
•. Ex-Soldier linked to far-right groups pleads guilty to gun charge, by Jordan Green, September 17, 2205, Raw Story
• I Was Banned From CPAC, but the Extremists Weren’t, by Amanda Moore, February 27, 2024, The Nation
• Undercover With the New Alt-Right, by Amanda Moore, August 22, 2023, The Nation
• Trump Inauguration Official’s “Phony Charity” Allegedly Pocketed East Palestine Train Disaster Funds, by Amanda Moore, January 19, 2025, The Intercept
• Revealed: The Operators Behind Four Major Neo-Nazi X Accounts, by Steven Monacelli and Tristan Lee, December 4, 2024, Texas Observer
• The GOP Mega Donor Behind The Big to Break Dallas City Government, by Steven Monacelli, October 14, 2024, Texas Observer
• Parker County ‘White Nationalist Fight Club’ Leader Exposed, by Steven Monacelli, February 15, 2024, Texas Observer
• “The Federal Government Is Gone: Under Trump, the Fight Against Extremist Violence Is Left Up to the States, by Hannah Allam, May 29, 2025, ProPublica
• How MAGA Took Over America’s 250th Birthday, by Amanda Moore and Dan Friedman, June 13, 2025, Mother Jones
CHAPTERS:
00:00:00
Defending Democracy Through Investigative Journalism
00:03:17
Journalists Share Harrowing Personal Attacks and Harassment
00:05:59
Amanda Moore Details Her Personal Doxxing and Swatting
00:09:46
Uncovering Neo-Nazi Infrastructure Attacks and Youth Radicalization
00:12:11
From Fringe to Power: Dark Money and Political Influence
00:14:29
How Attacking Journalists Hides Government Failures
00:17:53
Powerful Figures and Government Inaction Fueling Threats
00:21:03
Strategies for Journalists and Supporting Independent Reporting
00:26:01
Journalists' Ongoing Investigations into Extremism and Corruption
00:32:29
Reflecting on the Future of Journalism and Society
00:37:34
Amanda Moore's Stalker and Supporting Independent Journalism
00:42:34
123.
While our weekly shows are edited at a time for broadcast on Public TV and community radio, we offer to our members and podcast subscribers the full, uncut conversation.
These audio exclusives are made possible thanks to our member supporters.
0:21
Without wanting to sound glib, it has to be said that these are good days for violent extremists.
President Trump pardoned militant January 6th rioters on day one in office and fired most of those who had tried to prosecute them.
0:37
His Justice Department has quietly removed research documenting the outsized threat posed by the extreme right in comparison to the left in this country and redirected funds and agents away from tracking domestic terror to ICE and anti immigration duty.
0:54
The federal government is effectively gone, experts encounter terrorism now say, leaving states alone to cope, crimes unsolved.
And the journalists who have exposed extremists hanging out there themselves exposed in a country that's increasingly authoritarian.
1:12
So what is life like for those journalists?
And why do the threats facing them matter so much?
Today we're going to hear from three reporters on this anti hate beat 1 covered a story very close to our hearts.
The attack on 2 power stations in Moore County, North Carolina.
1:31
We've covered that story from December 2022 extensively here.
The sabotage at the stations cut off power to 10s of thousands of residents for days and led to the death of 187 year old ruled A homicide.
Attorney General, now Governor Josh Stein assured us years ago that the investor instigation was top priority, but no ones been charged and the crime remains unsolved.
1:55
Reporter Jordan Green dug deeply into that story and it led him as it LED us to several likely suspects, including a group of neo Nazi extremists.
It also changed his life, as you'll hear shortly.
Green is an investigative reporter for Raw Story whose feature for the news platform Assembly, which was titled I've Seen How the Neo Nazi Movement Is Escalating.
2:18
You Should Worry recently won a top journalism award in Texas.
Investigative journalist Stephen Monticelli has been tracking extremism, disinformation, social movements, and the influence of dark money in politics.
2:33
Like Green, he's won awards for his work, which has appeared in places like Rolling Stone, the Dallas Observer, and on The Real News.
But it's cost him.
And likewise, freelance journalist Amanda Moore, who embedded with the far right back in 2020, has faced backlash from far right groups for her reporting for The Nation, Politico and The Intercept, among others.
2:56
One of the people who stalks her is about to be released from prison.
So I got to start by thanking you all for your work, which is urgently important in these times, and thanking you also for being willing to talk about it when what you are facing as a consequence is serious and threatening to your lives.
3:17
So let me start with you, Jordan.
Why do you think it's important to talk about the the situation that journalists are facing right now?
Why is the tactics that the right is using against journalists so important for the rest of us to know about?
Yes, and thank you for for having me.
3:36
I I think it's important to be open and forthright when people try to bully you in life and in journalism.
And I don't think we should hide the fact that there is a toll and that neo Nazis in particular and authoritarians generally, more generally want to silence journalists.
3:59
And we as a society need to be to be aware of that.
And we need to speak up as journalists who've experienced this so that our peers don't feel alone when they face similar challenges.
Steven, you're nodding.
What would you say to that question?
4:17
I think that's right.
I think that journalists are facing increasing levels of threats, whether it's threats of violence, it's harassment or stalking, or also bogus legal threats.
And, and I think this is incredibly important if you believe, like I do, that democracy requires journalism to function and that journalism is an essential aspect of a free society.
4:44
And so when we're seeing an escalation in these sorts of threats, I think we should be worried, given that journalism is one of the last institutions that can help shine a light on abuses of power or the growing threat of extremism.
5:02
Coming to you, Amanda, we've got a kind of spectrum here on this panel, each of you looking at different parts of this story.
And you made the point very strongly in one of the articles that I read that there is a lot that the kind of political mainstream centrists and leftists get wrong about this right wing ecosystem.
5:23
I think that you called it.
What are we not understanding?
Well, I wrote those words many years ago at this point, and now many of the people that I was writing about are in the administration.
So I think that I probably maybe wouldn't really say that today because everybody can just look at the government and see what it is.
5:44
But you know, they were people kind of lump every group together.
They don't understand what they're up against, what they're fighting against.
And to not understand what is going on makes it impossible to to fix it.
I mean, to give a sense of what you're each up against, I'd love you Jordan to talk about Kind Nix, a 2121 year old soldier at at Fort Bragg who recently pled guilty to a gun charge.
6:13
He's a white nationalist with Patriot Front.
He ran an online platform that listed the names of journalists and politicians and others.
And he was somebody that you actually had had a few run insurance with.
Talk about him.
Sure, Kynex, as you mentioned, the former U.S. soldier at Fort Liberty, now Fort Bragg, former member of Patriot Front.
6:37
He denies reporters that have contacted him operating a channel called Appalachian Archives on Telegram.
But I and other researchers have concluded that it was him based on the content that he posted.
6:56
And so, yes, I mean, it included my docs.
It included some propaganda produced by a group called Terragram that included a kill list that has been cited by the Department of Justice and Prosecutions.
7:16
To kind of speed it up, though, Mr. Nix was outside of my door when a bogus pizza delivery was targeted at me.
I one of my security cameras captured the license plate and it traced back to him.
7:35
So he took a photograph of me when I was responding to this bogus pizza delivery and about a month later he was documenting a neo Nazi flash rally in front of my house.
So yes, he's recently pled guilty to selling illegal firearms to a undercover, sorry an FBI informant and is awaiting sentencing.
8:04
I.
Mean you've had your own bogus pizza experience, Steven.
What was yours?
Well, I got a call from Domino's telling me that I had ordered a pizza that I did not order.
I never ordered a pizza from Domino's to my house.
8:21
And this occurred around a time when I was finishing up some reporting that unmasked the identities of four major neo Nazi accounts on X, formerly known as Twitter.
And the pizza delivery was relatively innocuous in my view.
8:41
What was more concerning, and which happened around that same time, was that someone made a false police report that resulted in two police officers showing up to my door on Thanksgiving last year.
And the more I dug into it, the more confusing and bizarre it became in that the police officers, the Dallas police officers that were at my door told me they had gotten a tip from the FBI that I was beating my wife, which is not true.
9:12
And they spoke to her and they went home.
I eventually was able to get the incident report and a report from the FBI as of yesterday that showed that no such tip was ever received or sent by the FBI.
The National Threat Operations Center, which led me in the FBI agent that I spoke to about this last year, to conclude that someone successfully impersonated the FBI National Threat Operations Center to make this bogus call.
9:41
And in my instance, you know, my door was not knocked down, but it was very concerning nonetheless.
No kidding.
I'm coming to you, Amanda, and I'm just lifting up some of these stories or asking you 2 to give our audience some sense of what we're actually talking about.
You describe in one of your articles coming back from attending some of these far right events, undercover as it were, to find your information, your photographs, your actual information all over the Internet.
10:10
I can't imagine what that felt like, but could you share a little bit of that experience and what's happened since?
Yeah, You know, the information's been out there for years at this point.
They were tracking my gym schedule.
They were tracking kind of everything about me.
10:26
It's been circulated multiple times and nobody will take it down.
Meta will never remove it from Facebook or Instagram.
I've messaged like C suites on on LinkedIn and I still can't get any movement on that.
And I have my stalker.
10:42
He goes in front of the address on my docs and just live streams about me sometimes.
And then unfortunately my little sister was doxed, not docs, she was swatted and I assume it's because they couldn't find me because obviously the information in my 5 year old docs is a little outdated at this point.
11:03
When we say docs, what do we mean?
And when we say swat, what do we mean?
When you want to define what doxing is, Amanda.
Yeah, So Doxy was taking my home address, my cell phone number, my gym schedule, my photographs, my full name, the names of my family members, and posting it on every single platform hundreds and hundreds of times.
11:23
And then swatting was they called the police and I think it was a suicide threat.
So it was a more gentle swatting.
You can think of it that way.
And so officers showed up at 4:00 in the morning to keep my sister from killing herself, But of course, she had not actually called in.
11:42
It was some program, you know, you pay people in cryptocurrency to do this for you, and it's completely untraceable and no one can do anything about it.
And fortunately, it went OK, and they explained the situation to the police officers.
And then I went and asked for my entire family to be put on a swat with caution list in the various counties that they live in.
12:11
So getting a sense of what the repercussions are or have been for you 3 And you're not alone.
You're just brave enough to speak up.
I want to talk about what the reporting is that you've been doing because obviously you think it's important.
I think it's important, but it might not reach the eyes of or ears of a lot of people in our audience.
12:33
Let's start with you, Jordan.
Why did you think it was so important to report on the folks that may be committed this, you know, sabotage attack on the Moore County power stations?
That seems pretty obvious, but particularly the broader network and the networks, Why did you keep digging when you were facing the threats that you've faced?
12:59
Well, you're right, the attack on the power grid was was really kind of what gripped my attention.
Why I really delved into it is around this time I saw a lot of interest on Telegram among neo Nazis in attacking infrastructure and at the same time harassing LGBTQ plus people and drag shows, which the attack on the power grid in Moore County coincided with the a drag show.
13:35
I looked into a group of individuals who had very violent backgrounds and were seeking confrontations and my reporting showed that law enforcement, particularly in Tennessee, was not taking it very seriously.
13:51
And you know, related related to this broader network of neo Nazis.
I found teenagers becoming radicalized, which was very concerning to me.
And that kind of reporting, reaching out to these individuals is what brought on the harassment.
14:14
And it just kind of verifies, confirms to me that it's important reporting.
People need to know we as a society need to come to grips with it and and think about how we want to respond.
You reported on this sort of influx of young people, Amanda, too.
14:32
Can you add to that picture and what you saw even at the level of, you know, fairly mainstream conservative conferences?
When I was undercover, we spent time talking about how we wanted the country to become like a friendly or Nazi Germany.
And these are people who are now up for position.
14:51
Some of them have had their confirmation hearings, you know, kind of Sternwald.
Others have been placed into positions that they don't need confirmations for.
So they're in the Pentagon, they're in the DOJ, they're in, you know, FCC, they're all over the place and.
15:07
You're not talking metaphorically.
I mean, you're not talking, you know, making, you know, a metaphor here like you're talking to me, the actual people that you saw at conferences years ago when you were undercover.
Now, how?
In positions in the administration.
Yes.
And why isn't this A5 alarm fire in our media, do you think, Amanda?
15:29
That's a great question.
If I knew the answer, I probably wouldn't be a freelancer.
I mean, this flow of people is mimicked by a flow of money.
And that's something that you've followed, Stephen.
And we'll come back to you, Amanda, too, because there's much more to be said about this kind of flow of people.
And you've followed some of the money as well.
15:46
But I was wanting to bring you into this part of the picture, Stephen, because you've sort of tracked not just the anonymous people online, but some of the anonymous money and where it's ending up and how it's influencing politics even at the state level.
What'd you find?
That's right.
Well, here in Dallas, I've been following for a few years the activities of a number of groups whose funders, whose backers were never made public.
16:12
And over a series of years in which I also faced legal threats, I faced, you know, attempts to effectively discredit my reputation and my reporting.
I ended up finding that a a significant donor to the Republican Party here in Dallas.
16:29
His name is Monty Bennett had contracted a firm known as Crowds on Demand, which is exactly what it sounds like.
And there's a lot of reporting around Crowds on Demands activities across the nation.
And in summary, what we found was that a number of these groups here in Dallas, including one that pretended to be a part of the Black Lives Matter movement, had been created by crowds on Demand.
16:57
And this natural sort of ecosystem emerged where the donor, who also is the publisher of a news website, was, you know, contracting a group that was being regularly quoted in his news website without any disclosure of the background connections that were there.
17:16
And so it, you know, it is a concern that local journalism has kind of collapsed over the past few years.
And it allows for this sort of activity to occur unnoticed or uninvestigated, often times before it's too late.
17:36
And you know, what I found is that as a freelancer, while I do have the ability to investigate things, these things, it's it's indeed a challenge because we don't have the backing of large institutions that really should be looking into these things themselves.
17:53
Well, that gets back to the question of where is the reporting?
And I, I, I, I, you know, I, I, I sympathize with you, Amanda and saying, you know, this should be well known by now, but it still isn't.
So could you tell us a little bit more about what you see as this, as you've described it, ecosystem of people, of money, of influence from what we used to think was way extremes to kind of mainstream politics?
18:24
Yeah, I mean, it was a concentrated effort by various individuals and backers.
Basically, you would have these fairly mainstream conservative events, and alongside them you would have these sideshows, these side events with people who would openly praise Hitler, for instance.
18:42
And they would view these mainstream events as a way to do 2 things at events with younger people, like a Turning Point USA, they would view it as a recruitment tool at something with an older crowd like CPAC, they would view it as a way to do PR for themselves.
Like, yeah, the journalists say that guy's a Nazi and yeah, he dresses like a Nazi, but hey, that young man was really nice to me and we need young people in our movement.
19:06
And it was a very successful campaign.
So the implications of all of this, I mean, coming back to you for a second, Jordan, I can't help thinking that, you know, it's media coverage that developed that sort of builds the public pressure for there to be real answers to some of these unsolved crimes.
19:30
And by attacking the journalists who might cover the situation, we're actually kind of suppressing the the, the, the noise that could be coming from the public.
Is that what's happened in North Carolina?
Or are those 10s of thousands of people that were out of power for all those days in the winter loudly calling for accountability?
19:53
Yeah, I don't think that unfortunately, the Moore County attack is kind of falling off of the radar, you know, with.
Hurricane Helene has happened here since then and now just in the past week ICE raids.
20:10
So unfortunately, I don't know that there is a public clamor for accountability.
Those as you have reported, one woman died because she was denied her connection to her oxygen tank.
20:25
Karen Zwinelli.
Yes, ma'am.
More broadly, I mean, I would just say from my reporting, like I, I, I don't know that it necessarily makes a lot of ripples in the quarters of power in the administration.
20:46
I hope that it kind of creates a record so that law enforcement is not let off the hook in investigating actual threats as opposed to the kind of politicized threats that the Trump administration conjures up.
21:03
Well, there's hoping, but then there's documenting.
I mean, we just saw a story from Baltimore and a front page piece in the New York Times recently about how thousands of federal agents who might otherwise have been tracking some of this might have been, have been redirected to work for ICE.
So is anyone minding the store Jordan?
21:23
That is, you know, something I am interested in, in documenting further to you.
I'm, I'm actually kind of reaching out to other FBI offices discreetly.
You know, it's, it's a real concern that when people are diverted, FBI agents are diverted to immigration support or politicized investigations against Trump's enemies.
21:51
There are right wing terrorist groups who are planning violence and and get have a sense of impunity that they can.
There's a permissive environment for harassment and and threats and violence against their supposed enemies.
22:08
Amanda, have you seen an acceleration in backlash from from these groups you've been reporting on?
I mean, the, the people who are the backlashing against me have changed, right?
It's no longer a live streamer like Nick Fuentes ranting about me for 5 minutes straight.
22:30
It's the former campaign manager for Trump 2024 calling me and threatening me with a lawsuit.
And so, yeah, it's, it's it's more, it's worse because the people are more powerful.
I'm being, you know, shot at with pepper balls by Border Patrol agents now if I try to cover what they're doing.
22:51
So it's different.
But yeah, I think it's personally worse.
What about you, Steven?
I think it's changing.
I think for those of us that have been reporting on this for some time, we've already experienced threats in the past.
23:07
Now I think the nature of the threats is, as Amanda said, more concerning.
And then to piggyback off of what you were talking about with Jordan, I do worry that there is a level of impunity here in which the people who are perpetrating these feel they can get away with it.
23:24
In my instance of being swatted and having police officers show up at my door, a light swatting, one might say it's been really impossible to get the local police to take the issue seriously.
And then I also want to add that, you know, when I have found the presence of extremists in the government, such as a prosecutor for ICE who was working in the immigration courts in Dallas when we found that he was running a white nationalist Twitter account.
23:58
The government has not provided any updates about his ongoing employment or whether he's been investigated, despite the fact that 3 congressmen have sent letters demanding answers.
And and so I do worry that as extremism is embedded into the government, that folks like Amanda or Jordan may be at increasing threat.
24:25
One example if I could add I reported on a neo Nazi in podcaster in Pittsburgh who actually made threats against the Secretary of Defense.
Veiled you could say, but he said the Pete Hagseth deserves 6 bullets and the podcasters older brother, a Marine Corps Colonel who's assigned to the Pentagon had appeared earlier on the podcast and I I raised my reporting raised this issue and the Pentagon press officer declined to comment after the reporting my ex account got swarmed by neo Nazi commenters.
25:12
They were saying accusing me of being a Jew, which of course there's nothing wrong with being a Jew, but that to them, to Nazis is obviously means that you, your your life is worthless.
I had somebody comment saying your phenotype does not deserve to exist.
25:34
In 10 years your people will be in camps.
So it just to me, I guess, you know, if this was a threat that the Pentagon was taking seriously against the Secretary of War, it it might be a less permissive environment for the Nazis to harass me.
26:01
As we say on this show, this is the place where the people who say it can't be done take a backseat to the people who are doing it.
From our recent conversations with Dolores Huerta on courage, or with the federal workers blowing the whistle at HUD, or with the congresswoman and the Marine veterans standing together against the militarization of our cities, we seek out stories that can inform and even inspire.
26:24
We're proud to stand strong, but we can't do it alone.
Independent journalism like ours only survives because people like you believe it matters.
If you value bold reporting on grounded solutions for a fairer future for all, please consider making a donation today at lauraflanders.org.
26:43
And thank you for standing with us at Laura Flanders and Friends, and for helping to keep independent journalism like ours alive and kicking.
I'm assuming there's a level of misogyny in the attacks coming your way, Amanda.
27:01
Hatred of women especially.
I am the ugliest woman that any Nazi online has ever seen in his life.
And they told me that everyday.
Nothing, not even creative, you know, nothing specific.
Yes it is.
It is bad.
So how should the public think about this now?
27:21
I mean, there is on the one hand, this kind of sense of everything's terrible and getting worse, and on the other hand, the sense of, well, I'm glad that some people out there tracking this and I hope it's not me.
You know, I don't want it to be me.
So I guess my questions to you are advice to other journalists.
27:40
What would you like to see journalists doing about all of this?
And I mean, I'm reminded of an interview that we did with a bunch of the folks who were responding to the attacks in Moore County in North Carolina who said, you know what?
28:00
We meet their hate with joy.
We meet their hate with our refusal to be intimidated.
So I guess one of my questions is, how are you handling the threats against you?
How do you balance the various things I've just described?
28:16
How much security have you actually had to add to your to your routines?
Who wants to share?
Steve, Steven.
Sure.
I can speak to this a little bit.
So after I was first doxed, had my home address published by a cyber stalker, you know, after I've received threats online directed at me or my family, you know, I've taken precautionary measures.
28:43
So I think any journalist that's facing these sorts of threats first does need to take a hard look at what their security setup is in their home and whether they need to add things like cameras or even, you know, consider some form of self-defense.
29:01
And then I would also say that what you said is correct.
People need to not be intimidated by these bullies.
People need to face it with bravery.
And if that involves making others aware that this is happening, I think that's a part of it and, and continuing to do the work.
29:21
The whole point of these sorts of threats is to stop journalists from doing the important work they're doing.
And so lean into your support networks and, and when you see it happening to somebody else, express solidarity and find ways to help lift them up.
29:37
Because at the end of the day, what people want when they're making these threats is for you to feel isolated and alone and unsafe and to stop doing what you're doing.
Amanda.
I am not a registered voter.
29:54
My legal address is APO Box.
I do not have any bills in my name and I never will.
So that might be a little extreme for a lot of people, but it's something that works.
You know, there's programs you can use that help keep your information off of the Internet.
30:10
You don't really need your Facebook account from 15 years ago.
Get rid of it.
Get rid of everything as much as you can.
I'm pretty public.
People know more about me than they do most journalists because of the way I became a journalist was going undercover.
30:25
And that involves some personal background story there.
But most people are not going to have that, you know, amount of information out.
And make sure your family members all understand what they're signing up for by a Taser, maybe a gun depending on your local laws.
Sobering.
What about you, Jordan?
30:41
You have kids, right?
Yes, I have two, two daughters and family is is definitely a leverage point that extremists and people targeting you will use.
30:59
It's really hard.
I mean, I can't gloss over it is taking a toll on my wife and and both of my kids.
One is an adolescent and another is, I'll just say around 5:00-ish.
And it has been very stressful for them.
31:15
And we had to move around a little bit when the the threats were pretty intense.
So, but I didn't want to kind of riff on what Steven was saying that in, in terms of support, I, I think that from my experience, journalists are very good at supporting each other.
31:37
And all three of us, I think, have discreetly reached out and talked to other journalists who are maybe not as public as we are but are experiencing similar things.
But the threats are not only against journalists.
31:53
I mean, there's a broad range of threats against judges, elected officials, activists, of course, immigrants and LGBTQ folks and people, you know, like Steven was saying, like people need to be brave and not think that if you keep your head down, it'll Passover and someone else will bear the brunt.
32:20
And if we face it together and joyfully and defiantly, we will win.
And that's what we should do.
Well, before we go, I want to give each of you a chance to update us on some of the important stories that you've been covering.
32:35
And just by way of sort of numbers data.
I have to say when I looked up that report that is available but no longer on the government website that was released in 2023 looking at extremist violence, the numbers are pretty chilling.
32:53
Since 1990, far right extremists have committed more ideologically motivated violence than the left, according to this report.
But the numbers, 227 events, more than 520 lives.
I mean, these are huge numbers compared to anything we see anywhere else.
33:13
And to me, I think the alarm bells are ringing pretty loudly.
You're working on a book, Jordan, about accelerationists, a term that a lot of people might not be familiar with.
Can you give us a sense of what an accelerationist is and and what you're looking at on the horizon?
33:32
Sure, I mean a more plain spoken way to put it as maybe neo Nazi terror, but acceleration ISM is the idea that from white supremacist perspective, they, these folks believe that there's not a political or electoral solution and the only way to achieve their objective of a white ethno state is through terrorism and collapsing society.
33:59
So I, I feel like it's important for the public to understand this phenomenon, which has grown since around 2017 and has remained A persistent threat.
And because of the Internet, the nature of the Internet, it is evolving rapidly and is also intermingled, in my experience and my research with new nihilistic groups that are praying on youth online.
34:36
So my hope is to help people understand how these kind of twin phenomena are radicalizing young people.
And Amanda, some of your reporting recently has been looking into sham charities and political operatives involved in, in, in some of those.
34:54
Do you want to fill us in and and what are you working on now?
Yeah, I've done some stories about, I mean, basically corruption within the administration and the transition team.
And so there was someone who was on the inaugural committee who the attorney general in Ohio said that the charity that he was running, he described it as a sham charity.
35:14
And now that person is no longer allowed to ever be on the board or involved with a nonprofit in the state of Ohio for the rest of his life.
And he worked with the Trump, you know, campaign extensively.
I've also covered some of the, you know, corruption within the America 250 celebration happening next year and the military parade in the show of Might.
35:36
And now I am primarily focused on Border Patrol and the the roving circus of violence that's coming to a city near you, if it hasn't already come to your town.
So that is how things have shifted.
35:52
It's now state violence instead of random people.
Thanks, Amanda.
And and you, Steven, you've been looking at that dark money trail and you talked a little bit earlier about how it's showing up in local politics.
36:13
What's on your agenda going forward?
More of that.
A little bit more of that, I'm working on a piece about how there's a big effort to effectively change how homelessness shelters and services work, not just in the city of Dallas, but in the state of Texas.
36:33
And the actors that are involved in in the sort of coordinated push to change the way that the homeless are treated and make it more punitive in terms of how we we handle homelessness.
I am also working on wrapping up an investigation into a network of businesses run by Patriot Front members here in Texas and how they have all collaborated together in some disaster relief efforts, which the Wall Street Journal has reported on, as well as sort of their latest propaganda effort to put their good name out there and, you know, Curry favor with locals.
37:16
And I will also be continuing an investigation that I don't know if I can say too much about that it is into the spread of surveillance technologies in the state of Texas in law enforcement agencies that are little known and have not really ever been investigated.
37:34
Well, I wish I thought that you were going to be having less work ahead of you, the three of you, in the time to come.
But no, it seems like you're going to have no end of stories.
I wish you luck with all of them and thank you again for your work.
I'll close by asking you the question we ask all our guests at the end of this program, which is what do you think is the story the future will tell of this moment?
37:54
So looking ahead, I don't know 2510 years, what do you think the future will say of us now, Steven?
Well, I think we see a lot of parallels now in the history of about 100 years ago in the United States.
38:15
So I think it might be a history of revanchism, of certain political movements that we maybe once thought were not popular enough to succeed in the United States.
I think it will also be a story of corruption and a story of political violence, for better or for worse.
38:35
Amanda, how'd you answer that question?
Bleak.
I mean nothing.
Nothing.
Good.
Hope.
Hope we have history in 10 years still.
Yikes.
Or I thought somebody, Jordan, are you going to say there's a great tide, rising tide of brave journalists that pull back the curtain and provoke the people and to radical, creative, constructive, nonviolent action?
39:03
Well, I was going to say, to Amanda's point, I'll try to try to end on a hopeful note.
No, I think that I always tell myself remembering is our job as journalists.
Like, part of it is just just writing down and documenting the history that the current administration is trying to sweep away and bury.
39:26
But I think the history of this moment, when we look back at it, will be a history of institutions and powerful people and billionaires capitulating.
And then also a history of people that we don't maybe see now or wouldn't expect ordinary people coming together and, and trying to forge and remake a, a democracy, A multiracial democracy.
39:57
I, I think it, it's, it's inevitable that people will respond.
People will not allow themselves to be crushed.
And we shall see what what transpires.
People can find some of those people, actually a lot of those people in our reporting from North Carolina.
40:18
We have a whole playlist of stories on exactly that, on the face of serious violence, people coming together for joyful and creative and determined pro democracy activism.
So I encourage people to check out that archive at our website and to check out the work of all of you incredible journalists out there.
40:37
Yeah.
I mean, the one thing that I didn't say in terms of what the history might say about this time, because I didn't want to be too negative to our colleagues.
But I, I do think that's something that I know Amanda probably agrees with me on and others that are kind of in this space is that mainstream institutions often ignore these issues until it's maybe too late or until they are very fully developed.
41:04
And there's, there's not a lot of interest right now in sort of the developing stories of these things happening.
So I mean, maybe one of the histories that will be told is of the sort of independent muckraker types that we heard all about, you know, 100 years ago and and then stepping into a role that larger institutions were unwilling to fill.
41:29
There's also like a problem with writers.
I mean, like, I'm the only writer getting shot at regularly every weekend by DHS.
There's no one else.
It's all visual.
There's just not writers.
And all the visual people are pissed at their writers because they're not out there.
So there's like this black hole of information that will continue to be a black hole of information.
41:46
I'm very negative.
It's been a rough couple of months guys, but.
No kidding.
I don't.
I mean, the only, the only reason that my journalism is successful in my view, I mean, it's not the only reason, but one of the biggest reasons that I've been able to get these stories out is because no one else is looking where I'm looking.
42:04
It's not like I'm the fastest and best resourced person or even the most skilled journalist in my area or the state.
It's, it's, it's a, it's sort of a market failure, you could say.
And and I'm able to capitalize on it as a freelancer, but in my view, telling the story is much more important and I wish there were more competition to tell these stories.
42:28
So I want to also ask you one question that I realized I forgot to come back to Amanda, which is I mentioned at the top that one of your stalkers is about to be released from prison.
Can you talk about that, what that means?
Sure.
42:43
And who is he?
So my soccer is Brian Battenkar Battisti, and he's stormed the United States Capitol while wearing an ankle monitor that he was given for breaking into an elementary school in the same county in which he had just been kicked out of his high school for threatening to shoot it up.
He's been monitored by the FBI for about a decade, which I know because I bought all of the audio from his old court records.
43:02
And the prosecutor talks about that with the judge at one point.
He is schizophrenic.
And why not take his medication?
And even when he does, he still has a problem with stalking women.
I'm in contact with the women, the girls, they were girls at the time that he stalked 10 years ago when he was in high school.
There's another victim.
43:19
I actually don't even have the restraining order.
Someone else does.
The process to put someone in jail for stalking is so arduous right now.
He's there for a probation violation that comes from the stalking.
He went on a live stream on probation and threatened to murder a third woman by bashing her skull in.
43:35
He gets out of jail in 10 hours.
He follows me all around the country.
He'll follow me to Detroit when I go there for a Nick Fuentes event.
He'll follow me anywhere he can unless he's in jail.
And now he won't be in jail anymore.
So Charlotte, look out.
He's coming for you tomorrow.
43:53
He, you know, he's extremely unwell and he has fantasies about, you know, raping and killing me, stabbing me 20 times, handing out my address to Nazis, all kinds of stuff.
And yeah, that's it's like a full time job.
44:10
Having him stalk me is a full time job.
Do.
You have a bodyguard.
I don't have a job, where would I get the bodyguard?
No.
Amanda, that's a horrific story.
I would like to say that it's criminal that you are out there on your own, all of you.
44:26
But you mentioned earlier the state of our mainstream media, where people used to have some protection and used to have some editors who backed them into doing this kind of reporting without being romantic about what our mainstream media was ever like.
There was more than there is now.
And yeah.
I would like to add, I'm very lucky that Rawstory supported me while I was being actively threatened and helped pay for a relocation.
44:53
At the time I started reporting on Acceleration ISM and the kind of neo Nazis that were mobilizing around the Moore County attack and Terra Graham.
I asked myself that that same question of why isn't anybody else reporting on this?
45:09
If somebody else was reporting on it, I wouldn't need to.
And part of the answer to that, AC Thompson from Pro Publica had, you know, earlier done amazing work on Adam Waffen and acceleration as groups.
45:28
He has been public about being swatted by the leader of Adam Waffen.
And I don't know if he just kind of like took some time off from it, but he has come back and reported more.
But I think that is the answer for for why more people aren't doing the work is because it is dangerous, unfortunately.
45:51
Well, we have to go back to history and we did have Ida B Wells, We did had Ida Tarbell, Ida B Wells in particular saw her whole building burnt down, did historic work that changed our history for good.
So the tradition there is also one of survival.
I just want to remind us survival and impact, real impact from courageous reporting.
46:11
Ida B Wells, of course, reporting on lynching at the turn of the century and confronting directly the lies that were being told by the rest of the media.
So Jordan Green, Amanda Moore, Steven Monicelli, thank you so much for joining us today.
Thank you.
46:26
Thanks for having us.
Thank you.
Thanks for taking the time to listen to the full conversation.
These audio exclusives are made possible thanks to our member supporters.
Please join our members now by making a one time donation or by making it monthly.
46:43
All the information is at lauraflanders.org.
And thanks again to all of our member supporters.