Stephen J. Ross

They were asked to bring their own guns.

But they would drill.

They were getting taught hand-to-hand combat.

And they were ready for the day that the Nazi Party would rise up.

And that's who the Colombians brought in.

That's who the national states' writers brought in.

That's who the National Renaissance brought in.

And that's who the Nazi Party brought in, was young, disaffected white men.

And this is – if you take a look at the Proud Boys in particular, more than any of the three percenters or the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys openly embrace that we are going to go to these demonstrations and we're going to get drunk on beer and we're going to beat the hell out of all these demonstrators, the liberal and lefties out there.

We're going to beat the hell out of them because they don't even know how to fight.

it gave them a much larger audience.

And in the post-war era, particularly after 1954, Southerners saw it as an assault by the federal government on their very way of life, that there was never a reckoning in America after the Civil War.

We never really talked about what happened.

And by the time Reconstruction ended in the 1870s, things went back – racial order went back to the way it was.

You have, you know, in Plessy versus Ferguson in 1898, that's when the Supreme Court declared separate but equal is equal, which meant the South could maintain its very way of life, a segregated way of life, low voter registration.

They would control everything.

But after Brown versus Board of Ed, it was like everything is up for grabs now.

They saw this as an open attack on their very way of life.

And that brought these hate groups and right-wing elements within the Democratic and Republican parties to the fore.

No, they were out there because they still believed that they could change the very – literally the complexion of America.