Investigative journalist Leah Sottile writes articles teeming with insights, and she produces and hosts podcasts filled with ah-ha moments. Rob tries not to sound like too much of a fanboy as he interviews Leah about political extremism, environmentalism, and the craft of storytelling during the Great Unraveling.
Resources:
Investigative journalist Leah Sottile writes articles teeming with insights, and she produces and hosts podcasts filled with ah-ha moments. Rob tries not to sound like too much of a fanboy as he interviews Leah about political extremism, environmentalism, and the craft of storytelling during the Great Unraveling.
Resources:
Hi, I'm Asher Miller. I'm Jason Bradford, and I'm Rob Dietz. Welcome to Crazy Town where Mad Max looks like a documentary.
Rob Dietz
Hi, this is Rob, we've got a special episode of Crazy Town with Leah Sottile. Leah is a freelance journalist and communicator who covers the topics of environment, justice and political extremism. Her articles have appeared in The Washington Post New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone outside maybe a few other places you've heard of her most recent book is when the moon turns to blood. It's a story of murder, wild faith. And in times, she's also known to do just a little bit of podcasting, having produced and hosted the fantastic series Bundyville, two minutes past nine and burn wild. She's a fellow Portlander and someone I've wanted to meet for quite a while now. So Leah, welcome to crazy town.
Leah Sottile
Hey, thanks for having me.
Rob Dietz
Oh, yeah, I'm really pleased that you're here. You know, I'm not the biggest follower of news and journalism but there's a few of you out there who I'm kind of all in on, and you you're one of them. So we're gonna get to your projects in just a bit. But first, I just want to know, how did you get your start in investigative journalism? What brought you to it?
Leah Sottile
I've known I wanted to be a journalist since I was a kid that was just like, I don't know why I just was something I was interested in. I always was into newspapers. When I was a kid, I could have gone to college and gotten in state tuition at University of Oregon, which has an excellent journalism school. But instead, I decided, with my 18 year old brain to go to an out of state private school of which I will still be paying student loans on forever. I went to Gonzaga University in Spokane. And after college, I got some rural reporting jobs. And then I worked for a while at an alt weekly called the Inlander. And you know, if anybody's familiar with alt weeklies, they were in every large city in America for a while, not anymore. But the Inlander is one of the last surviving alt weeklies in the country, they're still around. And part of my job there, I was the music editor. So the most work that I did in my early career was writing about bands and hopping in vans and like going to shows with bands and stuff. And that that was my thing. That's kind of what I knew. But as a part of my job, I had to produce a cover story like once a month, or once every six weeks. And I just was really attracted to investigative pieces. So even though I was writing music, like my first investigative story I did was about a 21 year old kid who was killed while he was in the Spokane County Jail. And so I was like, what happened there, you know, and eventually investigative reporting just kind of eclipsed all that other stuff. It just felt more vital to me, it was more interesting. And about 10 years into my career, I became a freelancer. So halfway through it's 20 years this year for me as a journalist, and I just really found a knack for writing long, long form stories and doing deep dives into weird parts of the country and culture that other people didn't seem to understand. I think that that job as a music writer, gave me kind of an ability to talk to people on the fringes, I think I myself have always felt a little bit on the fringe of things. And so that came in handy. I never could have expected I would write so much about politics. But that's kind of where things went for me was, you know, following my curiosity, and then just realizing I had an ability that I could parlay into investigative reporting. Yeah,
Rob Dietz
I really liked that idea of using something that's, that's part of you and building on that. And it's cool that you've been able to do it as a freelancer and sort of follow your own muse to what you wanted to work on. I'm wondering, you know, here at post carbon Institute, we have some, some journalistic type projects, we we put out a lot of articles on resilience.org. So we hear somewhat regularly from people who are aspiring writers. And I'm wondering if you have any advice that you could offer somebody out there who, who wants to write who wants to find interesting projects, who maybe wants to get noticed in the publishing world? I know, from my own experience is not easy. And there's a lot of different paths, but maybe you got a couple of words of wisdom to share. Yeah,
Leah Sottile
I mean, I always tell my writing students that there is something to be said for following your curiosity. If you have a question about something or if you are curious about an issue, nine times out of 10 somebody else's to like you, you're probably not the only person think Think about that. So follow it and see where it goes and try and answer those questions and experiment. So I think, you know, I always start with a creativity first perspective, that's kind of I think what makes me sort of different than a lot of other journalists is I think of it like art. First, I think I have to fool myself into thinking that it's art. So that's kind of where I start. As far as getting started in publishing. It is a very difficult industry, it's more difficult now than even when I started, because there's just fewer outlets to write for your budgets. Well, also, the public's interest is spread so thinly because of the internet and things like disinformation. But, you know, I think that, for me, I have just sort of acted as a cudgel in the publishing industry to just like, I am just believe in what I'm doing. And so I will sacrifice almost anything to do that. Have you ever seen that show the bear, it's like about the chef. Yeah, that's, I feel like I've watched lots of journalism movies, and I don't relate to them. But the bear I definitely relate to, you just have to, like, give everything and it might still not work for you to keep going. So, you know, believing in your ideas and knowing that this is a way a good way to spend your time. Yeah.
Rob Dietz
I've always been jealous of people who have that knowledge mixed with a passion of "This is what I want to do, and I'm gonna follow it to the end." I feel like I'm more of a quitter.
Leah Sottile
I actually quit a ton of jobs. Like I would always say that quitting was my favorite thing in the world. Like, I had a lot of other jobs in interspersed with journalism and before journalism. And you know, at the end of the day, I just knew I needed to write like, I just, I couldn't, I couldn't unplug that ability from my brain. yeah,
Rob Dietz
Well, you you brought up art and creativity, not to be too much of a fanboy here. But I want to do a little shout out in preparation for this interview. A few weeks back, I read your article from the high country news that came out earlier this year. The title of that article is "The 90-foot Sentinel of Butte, Montana." And when I saw the title, I was like, Oh, I gotta read this because I had driven past views on time. And it just blew me away the giant hole in the ground there. And I, I was on my way, actually, to an environmental conference. And I remember giving a talk there and saying how you could take the whole town of Butte if you had a magic machine that could scoop it up. And you could just dump it into this. This hole in the ground that's leftover from the mining that was going on there. And so anyway, I just found the whole city fascinating. And I had since been back and kind of toured around a bit. So anyway, I read the article. And this is a passage in it. I just love it. It says: "She stands in the wind, 8,510 feet atop the jagged Continental Divide, at a place where the northern Rocky Mountains slice through the dry brown summer landscape like a saw blade. She is always waiting, watching over the people of Butte, Montana." It's such a good passage, the way you invoke sense of place. And it's poetic -- just another shout out to your writing. But in reading your article, what I really appreciated about it is the storytelling. And the scope. It's It's really impressive. You cover mining, you cover environmental breakdown, female agency, public power community, it's like this really amazing mishmash and story like that you could come away confused, but that doesn't happen here. So I was wondering, maybe you could discuss your approach to tackling a project with that kind of scope. And in the long form pieces and the books that you put together?
Leah Sottile
Well, first, thank you so much for shouting out that article. It's really one of my favorite things I've ever written. And it's kind of one of those things where I've always wanted, like, if I could just like get editors that trust these weird ideas I have, then I'd be like, winning, I guess in my mind. And you know, and I have that at High Country News. I have editors who really trust my ideas. Well, I feel like there's two kinds of people in the world there are people who get off of I-90 in Butte, Montana, and they just get back on the freeway and leave. And then there are people like you and I who go there and are like, what, there's something special about this place. And that's, you know, I went there in 2014 to write an article for Al Jazeera America about the Evel Knievel days because that was a festival that they used to hold there because Evel Knievel is from Butte.
Rob Dietz
I'm sorry, that totally makes sense that Evel is from there.
Leah Sottile
Only place that Evel Knievel could be from, you know, and I think that there is something about Butte that is very dramatic. It has a very dramatic and violent history. And people who are from Butte, people who live in Butte, are very passionate about the ad for different reasons. And when I went there, I think there's two things that sort of represent that there's the grave of Frank Liddell, who is the union organizer who was allegedly killed by the mining company. And his grave says, I'm gonna get it wrong, but slain by capitalist interests for inspiring his fellow men. And I just love that I think that's so beaut to be like, capitalism will kill you, you know, they will put a pit in your backyard of mining waste. But then there's also the statue of the Virgin Mary, that standing up on top of the Continental Divide, and, you know, I went there, and I was like, What is the deal with this? I mean, it's like the Statue of Liberty on top of a mountain. What is the why is this here? And so it was really that question that kept me going back to Butte to try and understand, you know, I thought, okay, 90% of views. I mean, that's probably not correct. But a large percent of viewed as Irish Catholic. That's probably why that Mary statue is there. But it's actually not, it's it's a totally different story. So I think, you know, to answer your question, in a long way, it started with a simple question for me, why is the statue there? Does it offend people who aren't religious? And then it just started to present itself? You know, at first, I talked to High Country News. And I was like, I want to write about this statue. And they were like, why? You know, what's the...? And I'm like, I don't know, I just want to write about it. And they were like, I mean, we trust you, but maybe give us something more. So I kept going back there for probably four years. And eventually, what I realized is that if you could tell the story of the statue accurately, it would also tell the story of women's rights in America would tell the story of trans rights would tell a story about labor and environmentalism and what communities have done in history to sort of rise up and support themselves. That did not snap into clarity until after the dog's decision. So after Roe v. Wade was overturned, you know, I was sort of like wandering around in the darkness, not knowing what to do with this, like, I just have, like, I have a whiteboard over here with like, all my things I'm working on. And it would just be like Mary statue, question mark. It was like, when that happened, I realized, Oh, here's the reason, we need to tell this story. So I'm glad that it was clear to you because while I was writing it, it was quite the rat's nest in my head of like, how do I bring all these things together in a way that's clear? I rewrote that story six times. And so you know, that's what it needed, I think, to be able to become something that wasn't just like a, you know, conspiracy board of like, it all connects, which is a lot of the work that I do feels like. I'm like, listen, this is crazy.
Rob Dietz
It's really interesting in hearing you talk about this, my mind went two places. One is making connections, which I think you just hit it: it can either be a really depthful thing where you are, wow, this is connected to that. Or maybe you're doing the conspiracy theory of like, are these things really connected? And, yeah, that's a that's a tough thing to discern sometimes.
Leah Sottile
I often ask my husband who is kind of the first editor that I have, and many things he kind of like I talk through ideas with him and read him drafts and stuff. And I'll be like, Do I sound insane right now? No, no, you're good. You're good. I'm like, okay, I feel crazy.
Rob Dietz
Well, it's good to have that kind of editorial support I, I said I had two reactions. The second one is rabbit holes, which, you know, I fell in the rabbit hole of ecological economics when I just started questioning the dominant paradigm and I'm still falling in that rabbit hole. And it sounds like you step in many such rabbit holes, and I don't want to presume, but I do want to make the turn to one of your podcasts: Bundyville. Because I think that's something of a rabbit hole for you, maybe. But my first question about it is, the first season of Bundyville you covered very specifically the Bundy family and their takeover of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon. I'm pretty sure listeners would remember that strange moment in American history where the patriot movement took over a federal facility. In your second season, you expanded your coverage of this far right patriot movement. And I'm guessing rabbit hole but I'd rather hear it from you. Can you describe how you got tangled up in following and reporting on the Bundys and militias and white supremacy and the other "fun light" topics that come with following them.
Leah Sottile
Yeah, when the Bundys took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, it was January 1, 2016. So before Trump was elected, and when that happened, it went on for 41 days, I did not go cover it on the ground. So at the time, I was a stringer for The Washington Post. And typically, if something happened in Oregon, they would send me there to cover it. But it just, you know, as the crow flies, it makes more sense to send somebody from Boise that could get there quicker than I could it's like six hours. So I sort of had an agreement with them, that when people started to get arrested and hauled up to Portland, that I would be there in court to cover that. But you know, I was obsessed with it. You know, if anybody remembers that standoff, every single thing that happened was live streamed like the Bundys in their ilk, gorgeous, like they had a camera going all the time. And so I was just watching it. I was obsessed. I was like, What is going on there? How? How are these people allowed to take over a federal property and just get away with it? I mean, it's so remote. I mean, I understand that there wasn't like a pressing threat maybe to the public that there would be if it was like a government building in downtown Portland. But nonetheless, I was I was obsessed with watching it, and specifically the last man arrested at the refuge, a guy named David Fry. He was from Ohio. He had this dramatic hours long standoff with the FBI that was live streamed, and I just I couldn't, I couldn't step away. I mean, I was just like, I stayed up, I had to know. I mean, I think everybody who listened to that thought we were gonna hear him get killed by the FBI. He did not, he eventually surrendered. And it was this very dramatic thing. And at that point, everyone started getting hauled into court. So I was there covering their arraignments and their hearings, and it became pretty clear it was going to go to trial. So I covered the entirety of the trial that happened that fall. And I was often going without somebody paying me to be there, like the Washington Post did not want a story every day from the courtroom and on this weird thing. But I would go because I was so interested in what was happening. Like it was just, it was almost like, it was my first understanding that to people, you know, myself as a reporter, and like Ammon Bundy could see the world with completely different eyes. We could see the saint, you know, we could both look at the sky, and I could say it was blue, and you could say it was orange. And we would both be very sure of that. So during that trial, because so many different people were on trial, and they all had really different reasons for being there. I felt like I got this kind of like master's degree in, in what it means to be on the far right in America today. 10 days after that acquittal, Trump was elected. And when that happened, I mean, I obviously was not alone and feeling very emotional and surprised by that. But it did feel like because I'd covered the Bundy stuff was almost like, what I could imagine is like watching the tsunami come towards the land when Trump hit it was like that was landfall, but we saw it coming with the Bundy stuff and everything that happened here. So that was the beginning. For me, I did have a real like knowledge of things like Ruby Ridge, a writer I really respect that I that I knew in Spokane, Jess Walter, who has won National Book Awards for his fiction now, he wrote the definitive book on Ruby Ridge back in the day. So I really felt like I was a student of some of these things, having lived in a really conservative area of the West for a while. So yeah, Bundyville was, after the acquittals in Oregon, it was after the mistrial of the Bundy family in Nevada, you know, I'd covered these two trials hoping to kind of find some answers. And that didn't happen. So I just, I called my editor that at long reads that I was working for, and I said, you know, I just feel like there's so much more here. I could write a series of stories about all the implications of what I've learned. And he was like, how would you make a podcast? And I had no clue how to do that. But I just said yes. I was like, yeah, totally, and found some people to help me make a podcast.
Rob Dietz
I'm really thankful for it. The second season of the podcast is called Bundyville: The Remnant. It's one of my favorites of all time. I've listened to it fully through multiple times, and you cover the rise of right wing extremism in the Pacific Northwest, the empowerment of the patriot movement by the Bundys and Trump, as you were just talking about. You confront over and over again the threat of violence from these white supremacists and militia men and religious zealots, and delusional power trippers even. Were you surprised by what you found as you followed the threads through that movement?
Leah Sottile
In some ways, yes. But in some ways, no, I lived in Spokane for a total of 14 years. And I really felt like that was it. I think it's necessary for everyone in the urban west to maybe live in a more mixed political zone of the West. So there were things like your Representative Matt Shea, that reporting that went into Bundyville. Season two about him was because I worked at a newspaper in Spokane and was like, What is this guy talking about? Like, I had known that he had supporters, I remembered the whole Tea Party thing. And so I think, no, I hadn't had my head in the sand completely on things like that. I think that what did surprise me was that, you know, anybody could have watched what happened at the refuge or what happened at Bundy ranch and was like, these people are going to prison. But that didn't happen. And so I think really, the thing that surprised me was the government's continued ability to just drop the ball or I'm not a sports person, but like, there's like fumble the football, right? Is that a thing where you just kind of drop it like, yeah, again and again. And I was like, man, that's wild to me. So I think maybe that was the thing that surprised me the most. I think I was also surprised how much you start scratching at this stuff. And you start to realize how connected it all is. How historical it all is that none of this is really all that new. So yeah, I fell down that rabbit hole very willingly and easily though.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, I think there was another surprising moment, maybe, that I wanted to ask you about in that podcast. To me, it sounded like a sort of once-in-a-career kind of ah-ha discovery that you made. And I'm not going to reveal what it is to our listeners in case they haven't listened to Bundyville: The Remnant. Please go do that if you haven't listened to it. But you have this Nancy Drew, or maybe even Scooby Doo type moment where you discover something. And it's like, I don't know -- it connects the story, completes it. I mean, what's it like as a journalist to have a hunch, or kind of feel like something might be there, and then all of a sudden, you're like, whoa! Does that... is this the only time that's happened? Or does that happen from time to time?
Leah Sottile
Weirdly, that happens to me more often than you would think. But I think it's because, you know, most journalists operate on tight deadlines and editors breathing down their neck saying, Give me a story. And it's very high pressure. And it is for me too. But I have this sort of, could I call it a talent, I don't know a talent for really punishing myself with a lot of information and like watching hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of Crazy Talk Radio and stuff like that. So I had made a public records request. And that's the nature of what you're talking about. I won't reveal it either. But with Bundy Ville season two, unlike the first season, I had done most of the reporting for the first season before we put it together, it was just a matter of going and talking to the Bundys in person and kind of you know, some of those interviews that you hear in that first season. But with the second season that was all kind of being created for the podcast and so I was working really closely with Ryan Hass at Oregon Public Broadcasting and I'd kind of gotten in this habit of like getting these big records requests and turning on my recorder as I was going through it to kind of like explain it to Okay, Hey, Ryan, it looks like these records are you know, nothing and or you know, explaining Oh, there's this interesting thing so I just was like a Saturday should have been out living my life but I instead reading public records and had my recorder on and I was looking for something and found it and that I did not expect I mean, I think some people have said like, is that genuine? Did that really happen? Is that stage I'm like, Oh no, that's 100% real. So yeah, when that stuff happens it's like a high like you are you know, journalism is like so low paid people call you fake news all the time troll you and like, there's so many reasons not to do it. And then something like that happens and you're just like, oh my god, this is why I'm doing this. But then it becomes a chase then you're like, I kind of have that again, like so. But it does make you more doggone realizing like a theory that you had. It's actually real. It s like, like I said, a lot of times I'm like, Am I nuts? And that was one of those moments where I was like, I'm not nuts, and I hope people care.
Rob Dietz
Well, yeah, count me as one. I'm happy that that happened to you and that, you know, it clears away some of the detractors and yeah, fake news, shouters and all that. A few two minutes ago, you talked about, you know, these trials, and these folks getting off, nobody went to prison for this armed invasion and takeover of a federal facility it. I gotta say, I mean, I used to work for the Fish and Wildlife Service and particularly the National Wildlife Refuge System. It's the last place, I would have thought that somebody would come and take it over, you know, these are places where biologists are trying to restore wetlands and where we're trying to count birds. And it doesn't feel like the place for this heavily armed takeover. And I found it absolutely ridiculous. And I was kind of mesmerized by it. When they got away with it, I felt like it was just utterly surreal as a How could this have happened? And I mean, since you've probably done about a the deepest dive of anybody following that trial, day by day. A couple of questions, one, how did it happen? And two, how do you feel years on now looking back at that, about the occupation in the aftermath? What is your personal feeling? And what does it mean for the United States?
Leah Sottile
Well, one thing I think that is important to point out is there were two, two separate trials for the takeover of the Malheur Refuge. And just because there were so many people, the first trial was the Bundys, who the government classified as the most major defendants, and they were all acquitted. I think Ryan Bundy had to pay like $3,000 for destruction of a camera or something. But then there was another trial with much more low level participants, and a lot of those people did go to jail, not for a long period of time. But I always thought that was very interesting that the leaders of that, that the ideological leaders, the faces of that the Bundys, really, they let the little guys go to jail. And they did not. How did it happen? I mean, I think that it happened because there was no one thing on display Amalur, you know, you had land rights activists, people who think the federal government shouldn't own or manage land that it should belong to states or private people or, you know, ranchers. You had white supremacists, you had militia men, you had conspiracy theories, you know, you kind of had this just, it was really like the refuge was like an umbrella they all gathered under. And I think that...
Rob Dietz
They're like migratory birds returning to the refuge.
Leah Sottile
I've never thought of that before. Exactly. I mean, David Fry was a guy from Ohio, who waited for his parents to go on vacation and took the family car from Ohio in January, all the way to the middle of nowhere in Oregon. And he went there because he had struck up an online relationship with one of the occupiers like a online friendship, who had encouraged him to come. And he was fired up about what happened at Fukushima. So you had this just really wide variety of people who were there. And I think that that shows something that, like we saw January 6, there was a wide variety of people who came to storm the Capitol. And that I think it's something that people don't maybe pay enough attention to is that the kind of right wing of politics in America today is willing to embrace a lot of people and not say, Hey, we're not we're not about this or that. They just kind of say, hey, we welcome the numbers. And so, you know, I think that that was one of my frustrations with the coverage and Amalur standoff that really motivated me to create Bundy Ville was that it was reported on by people weren't from the West, and they saw him in buddy's cowboy hat and said, This is a standoff of ranchers. There was maybe one rancher that was there and it was not Ammon Bundy, he is not at rancher He lives on an apple orchard in Idaho. So I think that the coverage really did a disservice to the American people and understanding what a precursor this was for the tactics and motivations and ideologies of the right wing in America. As far as how I feel about it, I think I thought we would put out Bundyville, and it would change the world. You know, I really did. I really thought this is so important. And Ryan and I risked a lot for that. Personally, we did some pretty risky stuff to get that reporting with no, there was no parachute to back us up if we went to a white supremacist compound and something happened to us like we really thought that it would be so outrageous to people that it would create some kind of change and it didn't. People who listen to it that like it -- they really like it, and they share it, and that is that is a very cool thing. But it was very frustrating to us to see when January 6 happened. We just were like, man, if people have listened to what we put out there. So I think, you know, for us, and I think I speak for Ryan, too, when I say this is that it was just kind of a little bit of a, okay. Alright, why are we making journalism then? If it isn't to motivate people to really change things, then then I think what we're doing here is we're holding up a mirror and showing, hey, this is what the world looks like, how do you feel about that? And I think that might be a little bit more of an accurate and measurable thing that we can do with our work. But it's wild. I mean, Cliven Bundy's cattle are still out there grazing illegally. The consequences that some people pay in America versus others is, is a Grand Canyon is between that. I don't know why his cattle haven't been repossessed at this point.
Rob Dietz
I think that's a really good insight about wanting to change the world. But having more of a settling for, hey, we're holding up the mirror, right? I think that's the plight of all progressive activists. You know, we are really good at describing what's wrong with the systems that are in place. And we can see things coming that maybe some other people aren't aware of yet, and we try to let them know. But it doesn't really change things, at least not in the near term. But I think what it comes down to is, it's still really important to relay that and bring more people into the fold of understanding. I want to turn a little bit to what you were just saying about how, you know, okay, and then the storming of the Capitol happened, and not that you predicted that that moment would occur. But I think you are predicting that that sort of thing was on the horizon. I mean, that's a real piece of Bundyville: The Remnant, is, hey, take this seriously. We have a very extremist movement. "Very" doesn't need to be put in front of the word extreme. But we've got to, we've got a movement here that is gaining power, is violent, is dangerous. And it's probably bigger than you think. There's a moment in that podcast, where you almost step out of journalist role and comment how you're shocked at the conspiracy theories that one of the patriot movement interviewees, this guy Bill Keebler, starts spewing. But now we're in a world a few years on, we're in a world where a large swath of the population fell for QAnon. It almost seems quaint, the way you're shocked by what he was saying. Can you talk about this rapid evolution of extremism and conspiracy theories and talk about, maybe, where you think we might be headed? I hate predictions, so you don't have to get specific, but just, you know, kind of trends and ideas?
Leah Sottile
Yeah. First Bill Keebler is not somebody I'm ever probably going to forget. I mean, that interview was, you know, at that point, I feel like I was pretty schooled in talking to people on the fringes of society. That had been a thing I'd been doing for a while. But even then, you know, during that interview, Bill kept saying the FBI was watching us, and that we were in trouble. And we were getting followed. And he was talking about conspiracy theories. And like, I don't know about you, but when somebody says that, even to my face, it takes me a minute to kind of register what's happening. Like I'm like, oh, okay, I see what you're talking about. Okay. We're in QAnon territory. And so, yeah, I mean, that interview, I think you're hearing Ryan and I genuinely processing like, okay, hilarious that we would maybe think that this guy had some cogent ideas. I mean, he tried to bomb a building, like a federal building, so not exactly the most clear headed move. So, you know, I think that it, yeah, it is funny looking back on that because it just really, it was like, you know, wildfire that got hit with wind right after that. It just was everywhere. So the evolution... I mean, I think that we can all kind of blame Trump for everything for, you know, this rapid spreading of conspiracy theories, but I think that's kind of what I was talking about with the Malheur Refuge is that the Republican Party really got behind this idea, and they didn't divorce themselves from things like QAnon and anti-semitism. And so I think the evolution of it really is like a multifaceted blame. You know, you've got the Republican Party, you've got high tech companies who allowed a platform for these ideas. You know, you've got a whole lot of people, I think to kind of say, well, this is how it it mainstreamed, then COVID happened. And I remember when that first started to happen. I was like, oh my god, this is exactly what the far right has been waiting for, you know? They look for something where they can offer answers, or you had so many people that were so fired up about their workplaces getting shut down, their kids being home all the time, and having to wear masks, being told what to do. The far right was like, hello, I'm here with open arms to take you all in, you know. In the spring of 2020, I went to some anti-mask rallies in in Washington state and in Oregon, and it was really wild to see. Usually at those rallies, it'd be guys in flak jackets and flags, but it was like moms that were there. And so the kind of bungling of COVID. And the handling of that disaster. I think it just really was like a gift to conspiracy theorists in the far right for it to spread. I mean, as far as it goes, I don't think I have predictions. I don't often feel like I'm the right person to say that. But I do think we can see where this is going. There's like rising authoritarianism in the way that police handle protesters. It's booked bands in school districts, it's school boards and county commissions being taken over by people with really hard right ideological ideas. I mean, the thing is, none of that is new. That's always been back to the 60s and 70s. That was the motivation of groups like Posse Comitatus, was to start at the local level. That's how you start building a support network. That's how you start building your political capital. So then you can kind of go further. So yeah, I mean, things are tracking the way that people have planned. It's just that the hard right, you know, far right groups. They're really good at playing the long game, and they're playing it.
Leah Sottile
Yeah, I get that sense as well. Your podcasting, while you cover the extreme right, far right patriot movement, you also dive into some left wing extremism too. I really love your more recent podcast, Burn Wild, which I've listened to the whole series through two times, and you cover the history of the Earth Liberation Front, and the law enforcement actions that were taken to capture what they termed ecoterrorists in that movement. What do you see, having done series on both sides of the political spectrum? What do you see as key differences between the right wing and the left wing radicals you've covered?
Leah Sottile
That's a really good question. And I realized this morning, that today is the 25 year anniversary of the Earth Liberation Front burning down the Vail Ski Resort in Colorado, which was their biggest and most public act, an arson that really got the attention of of the world in a way that they hadn't before, which I thought was interesting, because so much of that podcast, burn wild was me trying to understand the they never killed anybody. They never physically harmed people. How do those actions weigh up now? You know, in 1998, maybe saving the Earth was the fodder of environmentalists and hippies. But now it's like, you know, we have kids walking out of schools over climate change. So how do we weigh these actions and through a modern lens? I mean, I think that one of the differences that I've seen kind of between the far right, and the far left is that sort of what I was talking about before is that the right is really willing to embrace them all. Whereas the left is not one of the things that I think was a very interesting thing to hear from the members of the Earth Liberation Front that I interviewed, there were there were several but three main people was they all were like, We really thought we were in the right here, and that there was a climate crisis coming. And we were right on that. But we were wrong on the support that we would get. I think that this is something that we have continued to see with the treatment of people who sabotage the Dakota Access Pipeline, and were called ecoterrorists. And I think a lot of people don't really realize still that the term ecoterrorists was essentially purchased by lobbyists, corporate lobbyists. And that is a term that is very political. I see the right unifying in a way that the left does not, that the left is much more willing to kind of parse and say, "Oh, we aren't for this or that." And I think that's just a moment of learning that I've had. That's a big difference.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, it's interesting to me. the violence piece, too. Like you brought up protesters of pipelines. I got to meet Ken Ward and I came to know Leonard Higgins, who are two of the Valve Turners. Another protester, Tim DeChristopher I know a little bit too. He's the bidder who went out and participated in a public auction of oil leases and bought them all. And, you know, they were like, "What is going on here?" And he got slapped really hard for that, you know, what is really almost like a prank, went to federal prison for years. And those folks, they're nonviolent monkey wrenchers, or, or I guess, you know, wrenchers, really, because they take a wrench and turn the valve or whatever. And so I see that as a key difference. I don't necessarily condone arson, but I do see the plight of people who are like, well, what are we supposed to do to get attention? What are we supposed to do to stop this? What we can see coming? I suppose the right wingers feel the same way, you know. They probably have the same emotional content, but I feel like some of their efforts are just based on religious ideology, rather than say, science.
Leah Sottile
Sure. Yeah. I'm with you, it was very difficult for me to understand. When you burn down someone's business, that is harm. But having said that, you know, the main character of our of our podcasts was named Joe Dibee, and he was somebody who was, you know, on the lam for over a decade and FBI's most wanted. And he fully admits now to burning down a facility in Eastern Oregon. That facility was a horse meat processing plant. And really, he burned to the ground the last of a thing that Americans wholesale had said, "We are not okay with slaughtering horses for food for European countries." So how do you weigh that up? You know, do you say terrorist? Or do you say, our world did not want that, and he was a nonviolent protester for a very long time. So it's not as black and white, I think, as people want to think. And I think that you're right, there is an ideology at play at the far right, that is different. I mean, I asked the head guy of the task force with the FBI who is still searching for the one member of the Earth Liberation Front that is out there. Is it an ideology to believe in climate change? And I received a lot of mixed answers for that. But you know, it's one thing to have an ideology on the far right, that's like Christian identity, Jews are the spawn of Eve and Satan. And, you know, it's like, that's an ideology. But is climate change an ideology? So, you know, I think that that was where I had a lot of things I learned with Bundyville. I made a podcast after that called Two Minutes Past Nine about the Oklahoma City bombing. I learned a ton about the far right. That got a lot more complicated with Burn Wild, because the answers to those questions are a lot more gray when you look at those sorts of actions.
Rob Dietz
I wonder, too, about the response from law enforcement. The Earth Liberation Front was pretty directly attacking commerce. And, you know, the far right is not. They're even kind of saying, "Well, we need more private commerce. We need private commerce on public lands." I don't know that this country has an appetite for attacks on capitalism and commerce and the ability to make money. I mean, the fact that you're talking about a horse meat facility... I was, I remember when that came up. I was like, "What? There's a there's a horse meat processing..."
Leah Sottile
I'd never even heard of such a thing. Like, wait, what? Why?
Rob Dietz
What century are we in here? What, what is happening?
Leah Sottile
People in Redmond, Oregon, a smaller city -- they were not fans of the horse meat processing plant either. So I think what you're honing in on is really interesting. It's like, okay, so the attack was on capitalism. It was on commerce. And I think that that was really a big thing that was at the heart of the Earth Liberations Front's actions, was not just destroying the facility itself, but a wholesale call for systemic change.
Rob Dietz
I don't think I can ever condone arson, but it's funny in economics. People have been talking for years, and politicians too about getting the prices right. If you're going to produce something and sell it in the economy, and people are going to pay for it, the price should reflect all of the costs that it inflicts. People get nervous that gasoline is costing $4 or $5 a gallon. If you were to actually add up the costs, it should probably cost about $10,000 a gallon, but we've never been any good politically at getting the costs added into those prices. And it's almost like, again, I don't condone arson as the way, but I feel like that's what the Earth Liberation Front was trying to do. They were trying to make it as costly as it ought to be to go rip down a forest or take some other action that externalizes all those costs. I wonder if you got that sense, ever, in talking to the people who are involved?
Leah Sottile
Definitely. I think all of the people I spoke to said directly, "We realize the only thing that makes change in this country is if something costs a lot of money. So we tried to make it expensive to fix these things." I think what, to a tee, each of them maybe underestimated was... take the Vail Ski Resort, for example. They burned it down, they built it again. I think that they thought it would be harder for that to happen. And the collateral consequences of that was the ski resort was built again. But because the government didn't know who committed that specific arson, what ended up happening was the environmental community, the above ground, mainstream environmental community in Colorado was infiltrated by the FBI. And all of a sudden, everybody was in the crosshairs of like... they could have been the person that did this. So I heard a lot of guilt and remorse on the part of the people who were a part of these actions. That's not what they wanted. That's not what they wanted to happen. And I think that, you know, when we talk about like the long timeline of this, effectively, they helped kind of destroy the radical wing, their own radical wing, because many environmental groups... like you think about, you know, in the 1990s, in Oregon, the hottest thing to protest was forest actions and clear cutting. You don't see that as much anymore. And I think a big reason is because a lot of those people who were involved maybe got scared and left. Like, this isn't worth it. Or they decided to go into the kind of nonprofit space and try and have political clout, which is interesting. I think, a very interesting thing that all of them said was, "Yeah, I don't know that I would do it again."
Rob Dietz
Yeah, because it's almost a capitulation in the nonprofit space. You can find so many environmentalist organizations that took a turn toward techno optimism. We're going to find the technological way to solve our problems. We're going to partner with businesses and corporations, and you would never expect a place like the Sierra Club to take stances like that. And they did. Maybe it's related to the smackdown that the radical side, the extremist side of the environmentalists, took?
Leah Sottile
I mean, I think a really great example of that is a couple of weeks ago, there was a big conference at the Forestry Center here in Portland. I believe the conference was called "Who Will Own the Forest?" And you had a lot of big corporations showing up there to talk about... like you're saying, these kinds of technofixes, and a lot of companies that are essentially greenwashing, you know? There were environmental spinoffs from BP that were there. And there was a small protest that happened where people came out and blocked the entrance. There's probably, I don't know, two dozen people, and they're yelling in the faces of these techie people and hanging a "land back" sign, which has become a real center of the of the environmental movement now. But they actually held a counter conference, and that was in downtown Portland, and they had all kinds of environmental speakers, Indigenous land rights speakers, talking, and the thesis of that whole thing was how absurd is it that these corporations are all getting together to say, "Who will own the forest?" Nobody will own the forest. The forest owns the forest, and we should not maybe think that we can own it, which I thought was really an interesting kind of modern moment in activism.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, that was my first thought when you listed that as the title, is like, well, we're part of the forest. We don't own the forest.
Leah Sottile
But there were a lot of very wealthy, a lot of very wealthy people at that conference who may disagree with that.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, no doubt, no doubt. Here in our nonprofit at the Post Carbon Institute, we've been leaning into this topic that we call the Great Unraveling, a term that was coined by Joanna Macy. Some people are calling it the polycrisis. And this is the idea that climate change, international conflict, overgrown economies, inequitable distribution of wealth -- all of these kind of bad mega trends -- they're creating a set of cascading and interrelated crises where you've got feedback loops, you know, how a climate crisis can jumpstart an immigration crisis or a refugee crisis. And I'm wondering to the extent that you agree that we're at a time where our systems are resulting in cascading crises, to what extent do you see political extremism as an almost expected, and maybe even sometimes an appropriate response to trying to deal with those crises?
Leah Sottile
Boy, that's an interesting question. I think that extremism is something that is always there. And I can mostly speak about this for about the far right. It's something that's there, but it thrives in the spaces between things. So, for example, the militia movement is very effective at recruiting people in times of crisis. hurricanes hit Florida and Texas. And essentially, some of the first people that will a lot of times show up or groups of Oathkeepers or three percenters saying, Hey, we're here to help you rebuild your house, or get you some bottled water or canned food or connect you to resources. And that is a great way to say, hey, we were there to help you like maybe you want to show up to our meeting, or maybe you want to join our Facebook group. And then it's a, it's a good way to start recruiting people. So this is to say, you know, extremist groups really act as a wedge that kind of gets in that space, and offers something and then pushes people apart, and kind of drives that chasm. So yes, when you have a COVID crisis, and a climate crisis, and economic crisis and housing crisis and a drug crisis, there are so many opportunities for extremists to really get in there and offer answers and tactics, and play on fears. Because I think that fear is the most effective tool for any politician or anybody to kind of recruit people is to offer answers, and people are afraid you see it, I mean, you can open any media outlet and not see that fear, just dripping off the page over all these myriad crises. And I think that that's something that I think, personally, you know, one of the effects I think of doing all this work is to see for myself, it hasn't all made me more afraid. It just made me more aware of the sort of rhetoric that is very effective and comforting to people in times of crisis. So I think that's kind of all I can offer there is that extremist groups love to act as a wedge.
Rob Dietz
It's a really good point. It actually made me start thinking immediately that those of us who want to see prosocial changes, I mean, we've got to have our own wedge as well, I mean, going in and offering aid to somebody who's experienced acute crisis. That doesn't need to be the realm of the extremists. Of course, we can all participate in that and bring people into our communities who have suffered, and maybe we can help generate a culture of love rather than one of fear.
Leah Sottile
I mean, that's exactly it. I think that you know, you see groups like those keepers, I think it's just a great example. They're very effective at doing that sort of work. But you know, in 2020, in Portland, you heard that term mutual aid go around. And that's really essentially what people were trying to say is that, we have to help ourselves, we have to help each other and approach with believing people, and helping people and loving people, like you say, like, that is what you're doing when you're trying to put money in the pockets of other people or give them their land back. Like that's what we're doing. And you know, there are people who think that's radical, but really, it's like, well, when you've got people living on the streets, in tents, and you've got these horrific drug crises, and you've got homes burning down, and people not getting the money that they need to rebuild those homes. Like, who's gonna do it? We can do it for ourselves. And I think that that's a really interesting thing to unpack.
Rob Dietz
You have been really generous with your time. I want to let you go in a moment. But I first want to ask if you've got any projects that you're working on, or anything that you want to preview, or any conclusions that you want, or anything you want to say to our listeners.
Leah Sottile
Well, I'm not great at ending on an up. I mean, thank you so much for having me. It's just like, like I said to you before, it's like I sit here doing my work and hope that it matters, so I appreciate you highlighting it. I am continuing to work on issues of extremism in all things. After I wrote my book When the Moon Turns to Blood, which is really about religious extremism in the West, I became very interested in looking at more facets of that. So I have a second book in draft form that I will then get back from my editor at some point, hopefully not soon, because I don't think I'm ready to do that. But it's about more religious extremism issues in the West. And then I'm also looking at some specific cases of people who were wrongly incarcerated for decades for crimes that they didn't commit. I think that the correction system and in our system of policing is something that I have long been fascinated with. I've done a lot of stories on police brutality and police shootings. And that's kind of an extension of that work. So continuing to do that, but really continuing to focus on how these issues play out in the West. I'm really committed to the West and reporting on the West and getting it right, because I feel like so many people like to helicopter in and tell us who we are. So yeah, that's kind of what I'm continuing to do.
Rob Dietz
Well, thanks so much for all that work, for delving into spaces in society that are not the most comfortable, and for reporting on it in ways that are engaging and informative and give us, out here, something to work with in a framework, worldview. It's, I think it's great work, and I really appreciate having met you and
Leah Sottile
Yeah, you too.
Rob Dietz
Getting to talk with you.
Leah Sottile
Yeah, happy, happy to, you know, it feels important. And I'm going to keep doing it. So, you know, always looking for story ideas, too.
Rob Dietz
Leah Sottile, everybody, go out and check out the pods and the articles and the books. I really appreciate having you as a guest here in Crazy Town.
Melody Allison
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