Spoiler alert: it only lasted four minutes and forty seconds because the interviewee politely asked me if I was a male or female. I wasn’t disguising my voice so it was tough to continue (see below). Let me start from the beginning on this one.
It’s pretty uncomfortable being eye to eye with another person you adamantly do not agree with deep down in your bones. I’ve had a decent share of uncomfortable experiences now with my Scientologist interview, the “cult,” and the protest with the pro-lifers who were out on the streets with baby fetus posters and megaphones. The challenge is to find the aplomb, human decency, and even empathy to hang out with “others” and have a respectful, curious conversation even when you want to shake them and go off the handle. Though I’ve now had a few of these kinds of interactions, the practice of being uncomfortable is just that: a practice. You’re never “done” testing yourself, and white supremacists were as extreme as I could think of when it came to “people I do not agree with on any fundamental level.”
I doubt anyone needs a refresher on the tiki torch carriers who stomped around in 2017 with a “Unite the Right” message that horrified the nation, or sadly, at least a segment of it. The group behind this march is called the Patriot Front and to be clear, it is still active. Do any Google search, like I did, under “white supremacist group” and many articles will pop up. You may think, “Well, this must be a hard group to find,” but nope, the organization’s website is easily found. (I do recommend having a VPN if you start getting down the black holes I do when searching and reading up on various uncomfortable experiences.) There’s an “application” on the website and to be fair, the website is pretty well branded in red, whites, and blues alongside videos, social media links, a manifesto, and an “updates” section. The manifesto is paragraphs and paragraphs long, biblical sounding, and in most parts, exceedingly vague. There are quotes thrown in from Roosevelt, Andrew Jackson, Hamilton, Washington, George Patton, and Calvin Coolidge (?). Here’s the second to the last paragraph for instance:
“He will no longer know the age of material, of illness, and of disunity. His neighbors will fit the term in more than just a nominal fashion. He will be removed from decadence and given community. He will be protected from barbarism and given civility. His nation will be an extended family, not a collection of strange faces passing by him on the way to a shallow grave. He will no longer be sold a life that will never come; a life of working for something that is neither rewarding nor spiritually beneficial.”
I filled out the brief application. It asks for your age, your political ideology, what “skills” you could offer, and why you’d like to join. Note: there was nothing about selecting your sex or race. I guess this group assumes you are white and male. I wrote that I had heard about the group and was interested to learn more. Also, that I wanted to have an honest conversation with a member.
About two weeks passed and then I got an email response with the subject line, “Your Application.” There was a message board of sorts I could log into and then await an interview slot. I’m including the screenshots so you can see that there is some clear thought and organization going on with this whole process. I then got a DM with the log in info for me to join the call.
The man on the other line, “Michael,” was assertive and confident. He asked how my day was going, and I complimented how efficient the interview process was. He then said, “I don’t mean to be offensive, but are you a male or a female?”
By the way: I recorded the interview on my desktop so I have the audio file and am giving exact quotes here. I replied that I am female and asked if the organization worked with females in any way. “Unfortunately, no. We do not accept female members,” he said. I asked why, and there was a pause.
“I’m sure Thomas, the founder of our organization, could give a much more eloquent answer, but we, uh, follow basis standards of operation and uniformality.” (The actual word he used was a mash up of “uniform” and “formality,” which is not a real word.) If you were to have a female in the type of activism that we do, it could be seen as a weak point or out of the ordinary. It goes out of the morals we have set and the roles of gender that we believe women have. That is my personal statement as a member.”
Now, this is where I could have said a whole cornucopia of choice words, but that would be my comfortable MO. I went on to ask if instead my (non existent) husband could apply to which the answer was, “oh, absolutely. If he likes what we stand for and reads the manifesto, then absolutely.” He encouraged me to point my husband to some of the group’s Youtube videos, social media, and more. I asked about membership, and he said that there is no membership fee and absolutely no donations accepted; the only requirement is “hard work and loyalty.”
I started pressing him about where members where located, were there local hangouts, why did he join, why did they believe what they believed, and so on. It was then that I got hit with a repeated, “We can’t go into details like that.” We promptly wrapped up and he thanked me for my time.
In truth, I felt a bead of sweat roll down my armpit when I was dialing the number. I didn’t “feel” nervous, but the body has its own agenda in situations sometimes. It was a pure physical reaction to the anticipation of having a conversation with a person who I knew for a fact was a Neo-Nazi advocate. And that’s interesting: it was because I “knew.” How many people do we sit next to at a coffee shop, the subway, a plane, or even the dinner table at Thanksgiving oblivious to knowing that that other could be adamantly and completely against what we believe? I don’t know the answer at all to that.