Infiltrating Hate Groups: Matson & Tawni

Matt Browning:

What JT would do was he took his border people, and they would go down to the border and they load up their ARs, they load up their shotguns, load up their handguns, and they wait for illegal immigrants, and they shoot at him.

And if they didn't hit them or kill them, the immigrants that they're carrying the bags of marijuana or meth, they would drop the bags and run back.

And then JT and his crew would go pick up the bags, turn half the drugs into the border patrol while they kept the other half and sold them to fund their movement.

Ken Harbaugh:

I'm Ken Harbaugh, and this is Burn the Boats, a podcast about big decisions.

My guests today are Matt and Tawni Browning. Matt served as a detective in Arizona and spent 25 years undercover, infiltrating and eventually taking down white supremacist groups.

His wife, Tawni, assisted in these investigations accompanying him to skinhead events and gaining intel.

Their book, The Hate Next Door, tells the story of their time undercover.

Matt, Tawni, welcome to the show.

Tawni Browning:

Thank you so much for having us.

Ken Harbaugh:

I don't come from this world of undercover intel ops, but I am guessing that a husband and wife team is pretty unusual. Am I right?

Matt Browning:

What's more unusual was it wasn't supposed to happen, but yeah, it's not very common.

Ken Harbaugh:

Tawni, how did you get into it? I mean, Matt was the detective. This was his line of work, and at some point, you decided, “Look, he's going to need backup.” Right?

Tawni Browning:

Well, I mean, look, he had some really great backup teams. He really did. But as this kept going and going and going, it started to affect the home life. And there was a lot of times … I mean, there's a lot of reasons I got into it.

One was that I wanted to bring him back home. I always joke my grandma took up fishing, I took up hate. But there were some times where I just wanted him home with me. And his mind was so passionately elsewhere that I kind of invested myself in what he was invested.

But what really happened is on Christmas night, one of our 4-H lambs was slaughtered and killed and placed on our black porch.

And when my children found that, I knew hate had come home and there was no choice anymore. I needed to get into these guys' hearts and minds and see what was basically invading my home as well.

Ken Harbaugh:

And how did you do that? I mean, Matt's there at these concerts, basically in the mosh pit, but you are really working the crowd at an emotional level and connecting with these folks and getting to know them, right?

Tawni Browning:

Yeah, and you know what, I asked Matt, “How do I …” We would go to these concerts and somehow, while he was in the mosh pit and I was watching him, it kind of just happened.

And then there was one night I said, “Hey, look, if I can get this information, can we go and do what I want to do?” He said, “You can't get that.” And I did. And it just was kind of natural. It wasn't meant to be, it just happened.

But Matt gave me some really, really good advice. And he said, “Just be you. Don't talk about anything you don't know.”

So, when they would talk hate and ugly sometimes parts that I didn't want to hear, I said, “Do we really have to talk about this? Do you guys really have to use the F word every other word? I mean, really?” And it just somehow worked for me.

Ken Harbaugh:

Matt, can you give us like the 30,000 foot view, because I suspect a lot of viewers are thinking about this as a really fringe and niche activity of these extremists when it's a threat that's pervasive, it's growing. It's not just in a midsize town in Arizona.

I mean, you have tapped into something that is a real current in our culture today.

Matt Browning:

I think if you want to look from a 30,000 foot view, if you're looking down and you see all the people down there, it's no different from 30,000 feet or 3 feet. You have no idea what you're dealing with.

That's why the book's called The Hate Next Door, because literally the people that you live next to, the people that you stand next to, the people that you go to church with or go to football games with, they could be members of these organizations and groups because you just don't know.

A person involved in hate, it shows on their countenance. It shows in their speech, it shows in their attitudes, it shows in the way they carry themselves.

A person involved in a normal street gang, it shows in all kinds of different ways. And street gangs are easier to read. But when we're talking, “Hey, it's the ideology, it's the rhetoric, and you put those two together, it equals the violence.”

And it's just something that has been passed over and looked over for so long because it affects so many different people.

And in order to investigate it, you have to get into the minds of the people. You have to understand why they feel the way they feel, what happened to cause them to do the things that they're doing now. And that's why hate's really hard to work.

Ken Harbaugh:

It feels like something has changed though in the last few years in the way some of these hate groups have been validated and platformed.

I'm thinking about the former president himself name checking a group identified by Canada as a terrorist organization, the Proud Boys from a presidential debate stage.

I'm thinking about Nazi flags in front of Disney World. That kind of thing didn't happen when I was growing up.

But something has happened to allow a new permission structure to bring these groups into the open in a way that they were reticent about a generation or even a few years ago.

Matt Browning:

Well, I mean, what's happened is that in the world of hate, if you don't have a leader, you don't have an organization. If you don't have somebody who's willing to stand up and say their views and philosophies, you don't have people that are willing to stand up with you and support you in what you're doing.

And in the hate movement, as soon as a leader comes into play, you're going to see the whole hate scene come on a rise, the musical come back, the concerts comes back, the barbecues, the cross burnings, everything related to hate will come back into play only when you have a leader.

And what happened was when a person is running as an elected official, he is running for office, you have the base that goes right or left. You have those people, and you're always trying to get more from the left to vote for the right or more from the right to vote for the left.

What Trump did is it was brilliant. He went outside the right and the left, and he went to the extreme right, and he brought that base out, which then added onto who was already going to vote right. And he won the election that way.

Now, what we're going to see is that he's already got that right, that extreme, but he needs to go another step further to bring out more of the extreme, extreme right, because he lost the last election, so he needs more numbers.

Ken Harbaugh:

Is it simply a matter of the radicalized Republican party led by Trump identifying those extremists and bringing them into their coalition? Or are they further radicalizing Americans?

Are there activities, and is there rhetoric actually moving people to the extremes instead of just identifying the existing extremists in American culture?

Matt Browning:

That's a great question.

Tawni Browning:

It's an excellent question. We try to stay pretty centrist, and we always have been. We're not political people really. We lean one way or the other sometimes.

But this has been really difficult given that I don't even know that Trump believes what he is saying. I mean, I don't even know if he buys it. But in the name of a vote, it's kind of scary what it's doing to our country.

Matt Browning:

I think the more people are being radicalized by the things that are going on. If you look at like the border issue, immigration's a problem. We all know it's a problem and we know that something has to be done, but who's going to go the furthest extreme in what we're going to do?

When I was doing my undercover work, I had a source that was at meetings where they're loading up their AR mags to go down to the border and shoot at illegal immigrants coming across the border.

There's seven homicides I worked of immigrants coming across the border. There's organizations from all over the United States that come down to Arizona and New Mexico and basically go on hunting trips to stop people from coming across the border.

That's the type of radicalization that's going on because of the ideology and rhetoric that is being skewed by people who are in power.

And when you have a person who's already a little bit frustrated about what's going on, and then he can jump on a bandwagon and get more indoctrinated with conspiracy theories or extreme news coverage or whatever it might be, then that little seed's planted and it's just going to grow and grow until they do something stupid.

Ken Harbaugh:

Talk about that process of radicalization. I mean, there is a pipeline or a funnel that brings people into these organizations.

You put yourself in that pipeline. You had a closeup view of the tactics that these groups use to move people from extremist curious to a fully-fledged committed member of one of these groups. How does that work?

Matt Browning:

The first thing you have to do … like I'll look at it from the undercover role because that's how I learned how easily it is to become radicalized. I went to my first meeting with the National Alliance, and I had no backstory whatsoever.

And I went in, sat down, and I went, “Holy crap, I don't have a backstory. What if they ask me questions?”

So, what I did is ask them questions. And then from the answers that they gave me, I was able to form my ideology into what's going on and create my backstory.

And my backstory was, I hated the Mexicans because they sold me of all my landscaping equipment and took it down to Mexico. And that was my whole backstory in the white power movement.

But what happens is that through that, I had to keep telling myself and reminding myself and reading more about what was going on, asking more questions about the views of the illegal immigrants in Arizona compared to the views of the Jews in New York.

Because there are two different views. From wherever you're at in the United States, it's all different.

So, the radicalization process just starts with a question. It starts with getting cut off in traffic by a car that's from Sinaloa or from Sonora, Mexico. And because they're driving a car from Mexico in Arizona, now I hate all Mexicans because they cut me off.

Then you go down the rabbit hole of why should I hate these guys? Well, they probably don't even have fricking insurance. They don't have jobs. They're stealing all of our medical insurance. They're doing this and doing this.

And next thing you know, that seed gets bigger and bigger and bigger until the next time somebody with a snore plate cuts you off, you jump out and shoot at them.

And whenever I teach, I say, “Listen, these guys, you need to understand. They wake up in the morning hating and they go to bed at night hating. And then they wake up in the morning and they hate, and then they feed their mind with hate, and then they go to bed with hate. They never leave the hate movement.”

And that's what was so hard for me as an undercover, is that I was finding myself getting radicalized in that crap. And then luckily, I had Tawni, and says, “Whoa, whoa, Matt. No, everybody's not like that. No, that's not how it is.”

Ken Harbaugh:

I'd love Tawni's perspective on how that manifested itself. When Matt's coming home, did you notice these changes?

Tawni Browning:

I noticed things that would happen, like he would say something and I'm like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.”

Because I grew up in a place on the west side of Phoenix called Glendale, which is highly Hispanic. We grew up very much integrated and not purposely, we just did. And it was great. I didn't know how great it was until now.

But I say, “Whoa, what about so and so and so and so, and people that I loved and adored and he knew, and or our neighbor. What about Mark? What about all these people?” And so, then you could see it almost switch.

We learned later that your brain, actually, the neural pathways do change when you embrace yourself and hate that way.

So, it kind of makes sense. But the longer he stayed outside before he came in, the more I knew I needed to get out there and talk with him.

Ken Harbaugh:

There were some real monsters in these organizations that you tracked and gathered intel on. I want to talk about a few of them, J. T. Ready in particular.

But were there any individuals that over time either of you developed sympathies for? Did you ever have that moment where you realized this person is recoverable? This person isn't rotten to their core?

Matt Browning:

I think Tanya and I have two different perspectives on that. I'll tell you mine, I'll let Tanya tell you hers. My perspective is I don't care who you are or what you've done, if you've committed a crime, then we're going to deal with it.

And the people that I was undercover with, we put, in Arizona alone, 19 people in prison for murder or attempted murder. And that's just in my undercover work, that's in my cases.

Now, I can tell you that there's seven unsolved murders still. There's also a, probably JT has a list of murders still. There's hunting trips where there's victims of aggravated assaults in a murder that I'm looking into still. I'm still looking into a murder that happened in the early 2000s by these guys.

So, I do believe in rehabilitation. I do believe that they can change. We just met a gentleman the other day who was like … we have a string of youth violence going on. And we have a guy that showed up that wanted to help us make a change with the youth.

And he actually knew all the guys I locked up. He was cellies with them. And we were talking and laughing. And you know what, he has changed and I believe it. He has changed. He wants to make a difference.

People like that, in my opinion, are just few and far between. And it's through their actions that you'll find out.

Now, the guys I locked up for murder, no, they're not going to change. One has changed and I know that, and we'll see what happens when he gets out.

Tawni Browning:

This is where Matt and I differ a little bit because I know I mean, he’s been in the trenches and I need to listen to him more because he keeps us safe, but I also can see people's hearts. And I knew that when I got online and saw these guys' hearts and minds, it was completely different than …

I thought I was doing that to protect us. But really the joke was on me. I found that some of these guys were good dudes. I mean, good dudes, I'm not trying to say what they were doing was good, but they talk about their moms and I thought about their moms and their dads.

And I mean, one guy, he could really speak the king's English. And I was like, “Why are you here? How did you get here?” And some of that sucked me in. And the whys made me see, “Oh, there is a way out.”

That's what I'm trying to say. There is a way out. We've seen it happen, and we've seen people take that ugly, ugly and make good out of it.

Ken Harbaugh:

Matt, you referenced J. T. and hunting trips. I think some people are going to assume that's a kind of metaphor.

Matt Browning:

It's not.

Ken Harbaugh:

Can you talk about who J. T. was and what you mean by hunting trips?

Matt Browning:

I tell you what, J. T. was a piece of garbage, literally a piece of garbage. And I say that with all due respect, he's passed away. He killed himself after he killed a family of five.

But he literally is the person, if you want your stereotypical racist, radicalized white power skinhead, that's J. T. Ready. Military trained, he was in the military, got court-martialed, came to Arizona, radicalized himself in the doctrine of hate.

But what J. T. did is he took that and he formed a lot of different things. And it's a great example because as he grew older, he also, grew older in the white power movement.

So, he started as a skinhead, then he moved into the political party, and then he went into the border groups, and then he went into national socialist movement. And then he created his own border group. And then-

Tawni Browning:

And then he ran for sheriff.

Matt Browning:

Then he ran for sheriff. But before sheriff, he hooked up with the Republican party in Arizona and was buddies with a senator, another piece of garbage. Man, the guy was so full of hate.

What he would do, he took his border people and they would go down to the border and they call him special ops, and they would go down and they would … and we're not just talking going and camping on the border. I mean, these guys …

Remember J. T. was military trained. They load up their ARs, they load up their shotguns, load up their handguns, tack out. So, they had the vest, camel, everything on, just like you would think the full military garb would be.

And then they go down to the border and they just sit and wait, and they'd literally hunt just like you'd hunt a deer or a coyote or anything else.

And they wait for illegal immigrants to come across the border. Then they shoot at them. And if they didn't hit them or kill them, the immigrants that they're carrying the bags of marijuana or meth or anything that the coyotes are making them carry, the cartels, they would drop the bags and run back or scatter.

And then JT and his crew would go pick up the bags of drugs and sell the drugs, and then turn half the drugs into the border patrol, say, “Hey, look what we did for you.” While they kept the other half and sold them to fund their movement.

Ken Harbaugh:

There is a so-called Army of God, their term, headed down to the border. They have members at the border right now. I mean, as an aside, the direct translation of Hezbollah, a terrorist organization is Army of God.

I don't know if this group appreciates just how crazy they seem, but we have this happening right now. I mean, J. T. Ready's been dead a while, but the kind of thing he was doing is still happening, right?

Matt Browning:

Oh yeah. No, J. T. started doing his thing in the mid-‘90s. Or in the late ‘90s, JT started his first border group, and then it morphed into all this other stuff until he eventually he was involved in a murder suicide.

Then you have Chris Simcox with the Minuteman militia, you have all the other border groups that go down and stationed at the border. You know what, these guys, they-

Tawni Browning:

Well, there's Shawna Forde who's on death row.

Matt Browning:

Shawna Forde, who killed-

Tawni Browning:

I mean, she was doing the same kind of thing trained by J. T. Ready or a part of all of that.

Matt Browning:

She killed another man and his daughter down in Arivaca. But you have the Army of God coming up and you know what? Do whatever you want to do. I really don't care. You guys, if you think you have to do this, then do it.

The problem I have with it is when you're interfering with what is going on. They are coming across and everybody in their organization is just not a good person doing good work. That's maybe 60%, 70% of the people in the organization.

The rest of the people are looking for a fight. The rest of the people are looking for who can I shoot at? The rest of the people are looking for a reason to hook onto something, to go and do what they want to do. And that's the problem I have with it, is that they're not all good people.

The guy who founded it might be really good, he just wants to make a difference somewhere. But it's all a garbage that you pick up along the way.

It's like driving a car down the highway. Your windshield's clean when you leave the house, but as you get to where you're going, you got bugs flatter all over the place and you can't see.

And that's what's happening in the hate movement on things like this. It starts out really good and sounds really nice, but when you get to your end goal, you can't see it because of all the crap that people are throwing at you. And the people that you've picked up along the way are blocking your view.

Ken Harbaugh:

Why do you think these groups work so hard to bring in former military law enforcement, others with the backgrounds they have?

Matt Browning:

I can only speak for my personal experience on this, and that is because working undercover, when I retired a group out of New Mexico was starting to do this whole border thing. And so, I was asked, “Matt, can you infiltrate this group?” And I said, “Yeah, sure, I can do it.”

For whatever reason, I didn't hide who I was, I didn't use my undercover name, I didn't use any of my undercover stories. I said, “Yeah, I'm a retired cop. What do you need?”

As soon as they heard I was a retired cop, I bypassed all the training, I bypassed all the background checks, I bypassed everything. And I was then put on a special operations team that would go and do the special ops at the border.

I wasn't going to be parking lot security. I was going to be part of the training. And then at night, I would go do the special ops hunting trips with the guys and sit on the side of the hill with a 50 cal and shoot at people.

Tawni Browning:

It just sounds so crazy. No one wants to believe it's happening. I don't want to believe it's happening. I was a Disney-esque mom. I tried to create that in this home.

And it's not Disneyland out there. It really is happening. It really is. And it's so shocking to the senses that we would actually shoot human beings for sport.

Ken Harbaugh:

I think one of the scariest aspects to a lot of people is that recruitment of law enforcement and going the other way, the potential infiltration of law enforcement.

You talked about J. T. Ready running for sheriff. Well, we have examples around the country of these constitutional sheriffs who reject federal authority, who in some cases are conspirators with insurrectionists. And I think that is really concerning to a lot of Americans.

Matt Browning:

Well, everything comes back to Arizona, man. I mean, Richard Mack, he's out of Arizona. You have Stewart Rhodes, he did his time working for the Arizona Supreme Court. And so, Stewart Rhodes is the Oath Keepers, and Richard Mack is a Constitutional Sheriff's Association.

So, my whole problem with all that … I mean, again, it goes back, you want to hang out with the guys and go have a beer or talk stupid stuff, go do it. That's great.

But do not teach people that if the FBI or any federal government comes into your county, they have to report to you because you are the elected official. You are in charge, you are the man.

You're going back to the original posse comitatus views and philosophies. You're going back to all the haters of the ‘80s and ‘70s that started this whole thing, or were teaching the same stuff.

And as a police officer, I take offense to it, I do not support her whatsoever. The Oath Keepers, in my opinion are, you know what? We saw him at January 6th winding up the staircase. We don't need that stuff, especially law enforcement.

Ken Harbaugh:

How does the LEO community, which let's be honest with each other, it leans conservative. I'm a military vet, same can be applied to my community.

But in the case of law enforcement, there's this real cognitive dissonance after January 6th where you saw your brothers in arms being beaten with flagpoles, with American flagpoles being maced.

And yet there is this tendency now to defend the insurrectionists. You have members of Congress calling them hostages, some of them being called martyrs. I'm wondering, as a former police officer, how you and your buddies talk about that.

Matt Browning:

The problem is, we don't talk about it.

Ken Harbaugh:

Oh, wow.

Matt Browning:

And that's the problem. We just go on with our thing. And there's a lot of guys in law enforcement, like when I go and teach, I always say, if I'm teaching a four hour block at the three hour mark, I say, “This is the point of class where probably some of you are going to get up and walk out. And I accept that. I appreciate so you don't stand up and yell at me.”

But that's when we get into the whole constitutional side and the Oath Keepers and the military vets and things like that. And sure enough, they get up and walk out.

Tawni Browning:

Two people usually.

Matt Browning:

Yeah, two. But still, that's two too many people, because from that too, I have two in my class who then go and tell 10 at their department, who then spread it to another 15 or 30 in other departments that are all linked up and hooked up with these different organizations.

I personally think it's wrong. As a police officer, you have to be straight down the middle neutral because you're dealing with both left and the right and dealing with victims and things like that. And I don't think we can let our political views affect what we do in the job.

Tawni Browning:

And that's one thing that he does say when he teaches, is, “Look, this isn't political. These are facts. This is what is happening. I can back it up and so stay with me.”

So, it's just so hard. But there are some guys that reach out to you who says that, (and those are the guys that are asking him to teach and things) “My guys need to know this stuff.”

And so, I think there is hope and when we talk about it, then everyone can form their own opinions and ideas based on fact and information.

Ken Harbaugh:

Do you worry about how the law enforcement community will react if the next presidential election is really close or if the losing candidate decides not to respect the results of the election, which if it's Trump, we've already seen, he refused to accept the results of his last loss.

I mean, if it comes down to mass protests, I worry about how law enforcement may behave in some areas, not everywhere, not in most places. But given some of these sympathies, it's a concern.

Matt Browning:

I'm glad you said that word, sympathies, because my concerns are exactly that. Law enforcement is amazing. I love cops. I love our military. I support them. I get upset when people say defund. No, we need to train and we need to do more.

But I also get extremely upset when I have law enforcement that believe more that the vote was stolen than that it was what we thought. I get upset with those people. You can't let politics run law enforcement. You just can't.

At the upper levels, I understand. As a chief level, you're a politician, I get it. But when you're on the ground fighting every day, you'll divide the police department, you'll divide your squads, you'll divide the communities, because I don't believe the same way you believe.

And when you have these extreme politics going on that are sucking in the extremes, there are cops, there are military, there are bad people, good people, all kinds of people that are sucked into these movements.

And before they know it, it just gets completely out of hand. And I guess, I don't know if I answered your question, but yeah, it worries me. It really does.

But I worry more for the guys back in DC who have to fight the crowds at the White House than what's going to happen in Arizona. I worry in Arizona about the border and the guys going down to the border.

I worry back in New York, and Chicago, and Detroit, I worry about the hate there is geared towards the Jews and the Muslims. It's all different throughout the United States. So, yeah, I worry about it.

Tawni Browning:

I think we all saw it happen on January 6th, we all saw it. And I actually believe in law enforcement. I think that when it comes right down to it, at least, I would hope they're going to do the right thing.

Matt Browning:

I don't believe in corrupt law enforcement.

Ken Harbaugh:

We had one of the Capitol police officers who defended the Capitol on January 6th on this show. I mean, extraordinary story from an immigrant to this country who fought in Iraq in the army, came back and had to defend his nation's capital against fellow Americans.

And just striking perspective on how abandoned he feels by a major political party that calls the people who attacked him hostages and martyrs.

Matt Browning:

You know what, just like everybody else, we've watched the videos and we've done our own little research on everything going on there. But it always goes back to this one thing.

As a police officer, how in the world can I assault another police officer, whether it's at the capitol, at a gas station, at a football game, anywhere else? To me, that is uncalled. I cannot understand why law enforcement would be a part of the problem.

They should have stood up, turned around, flashed the badge, got on the other side with the cops, and fought against everybody else. That's what a cop should have done. It's an embarrassment. It really is an embarrassment to know that there were right cops that were part of that.

It's an embarrassment to know that the military was part of it. It's an embarrassment to know all this stuff. I mean, I'm looking at tattoos and t-shirts, and then it's like, “Whoa, those are Oath Keepers going up and doing all this crap. No, man, don't.” So, yeah, I feel for those guys. I don't know.

Tawni Browning:

I think there's a lot of law enforcement officers that feel exactly the same too. I mean, I think that the other side may get a lot of the press and stuff, but there are a lot of really, really good, good dudes that are in the military and law enforcement. There just really are.

Ken Harbaugh:

Tawni, can you talk about the weird religious elements that work their way through these hate groups' ideologies?

At one point in the book, Matt talks about his credentials as a churchgoing dad as establishing him within these hate groups as a leader. I mean, it seems really like a conflict to me to have these religious themes and then these hateful activities, but they're able to weave them together.

Tawni Browning:

I mean, there's all levels of religious extremism, but I work on the very far end of extremism in some of these polygamous groups that I've been blessed to be able to work with.

And I'll tell you, I mean, some of the rhetoric, they're saying what I heard from skinheads, except for just taking it even further things like, “Hey, Hitler had the right idea, except for he didn't do it with the priesthood (meaning God).”

Or I'll see some of the same kind of nationalist tattoos. These are obviously ones that are rebellious within their own religion, but it's crazy that they turn to other extremists, symbolism and things like that.

So, Matt always says that if you put religion into anything, into any ideology, you’ve supercharged it. And that is a huge indication for violence.

So, Jesus didn't teach hate, he taught love. And that's the opposite. And so, I wonder as humans, how we get so twisted sometimes.

Ken Harbaugh:

That's a really interesting observation, that if you add religion, if you add this idea that we're doing God's work, it gives you permission to do just about anything.

Matt Browning:

Show me any movement that doesn't have suppose it said with quotes “God.” You have the Vikings, when they went and took over lands and stuff, they did it with Odin. They were pagans and then they did it through Christianity.

And then the Christian Identity Movement, Richard Butler, he did it all with God. All these guys did it with God. The finniest priests who are the most violent, violent skins out there, they do it because God told them to do it. They're God's soldiers.

So, anytime you have the ideology plus the rhetoric, and you multiply it times a little bit of religion, you're going to have violence.

Tawni Browning:

And that's what's so scary. I just want to ask like everybody else, how does this even happen? Like I see people say if you have dark skin, you're going to hell. Automatically, I'm like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa.”

So, I would like to throw that out to the people. Why is this happening? Why as humans do we believe this kind of hate would have anything to do with religion, anything to do with Jesus, anything to do with God, which teaches the exact opposite of love?

Ken Harbaugh:

Talk to me about the Skinhead Intelligence Network and what you're up to now.

Matt Browning:

Well, SIN, we changed the name, it's now, called the Supremacist Intelligence Network, because we thought that, I mean, I-

Tawni Browning:

We want to be inclusive.

Matt Browning:

Yeah, we want to be inclusive. I wore the T-shirt and everybody thinks I'm a skinhead and I'm not.

But what it did is started out being a local organization because we wanted to get people together to talk about law enforcement, together to talk about the different hate groups or skinheads that are running around.

And what we found is that hate has no boundaries. And so, we're tracking people from California to Florida, to Arizona, to DC, to Chicago, all over Canada, south America, Italy, Germany, all over the world.

And so, Tawni and I put this organization together, and we brought experts in from all over the world and we talked about hate. We shut down a lot of organizations and tracked a lot of people.

But most importantly, what we've done is been giving law enforcement the ability to communicate with other guys working the same things they are in different regions of the world.

So, we can now, together … hate in Australia is the same as hate in Arizona. So, we can track all that, and we can get together and meet and look at trends and kind of develop a plan to fight it.

Ken Harbaugh:

This podcast is name for the documentary that is about to be released about military vets joining extremist organizations. And one of the surprising things about the success of this film is how incredibly well it has done overseas in Europe in particular.

And it's surprising because I did not realize how concerned our European friends were about what's happening in the US.

And I think your last answer gets at that. The whole world is looking at what's happening in the US. We are now, exporting terrorist ideology, extremist ideology in a way that other countries used to export it.

And extremist groups in places like Germany are drawing inspiration from what's happening here. Can you address that?

Tawni Browning:

We've seen that for a while.

Matt Browning:

Yeah. Oh, I mean, we got a guy that was in Australia that's actually, I believe he's in South America now, and he's in I think Brazil. And he's building communities that have the same ideology of basically the government, “Stay out, leave us alone.”

Tawni Browning:

But he had traveled here to the states lots and then over into Europe as well. I mean-

Matt Browning:

He's from Germany originally. He had the nationalist mentality and he's going all over the world teaching it.

But what I found is that we have to talk, we have to communicate. I mean, it's like with your podcast, if you don't have people talking about your podcast, you're not going to have the listeners and viewership that you need to keep going.

And in law enforcement, it's not just happening here. Like I said, it's everywhere. So, if I were to say, “I'm Matt Browning, I know everything there's know about hate.” “Well, come on, dude. No, you don't.”

Because there's a guy in Australia named Geoffrey Steer, who's one of the greatest hate fighters I know. And we talk and we share information, and he tells me, “Hey, so and so's coming to the US.” And I can call him and say, “Hey, there's a band coming from the US to Australia.”

And what they'll do before, as soon as that plane lands, those guys do not get off the plane and they're shipped back to United States. They don't allow it there.

And so, there's things that we can do. And the problem I have with the guys in the military that are haters is that they have that opportunity to go all around the world and hook up with people all around the world and talk their hate.

We have a guy that was in Florida that would go to the hate band shows all through Germany and Italy because he was stationed there and we're no different. I got guys that are in Germany that I can call and talk to. So, all I'm doing is combating what I'm seeing these guys already doing.

Tawni Browning:

Well, you're saying, I can't wait to watch your documentary.

Ken Harbaugh:

Yeah, March 29th. Well, don't worry, we will be promoting it heavily on this network.

Tawni, my last question is for you, and I wouldn't even bring it up except you've talked about it on TV and you mentioned it briefly in this interview. How have your kids managed all this and are they doing okay?

Tawni Browning:

They're exceptional. I mean, I had a 6-year-old that would hide a knife underneath his pillow to protect his mom when his dad was at work.

So, there were things that were affecting my children in ways that I didn't understand or know. And we talk about it now, and that's one of the reasons that we wrote the book, The Hate Next Door. Matt wanted to write it, is for the kids, so that they knew what was happening during all that time.

And they're good. I mean, some of them couldn't read the book at all, and other ones read it in a day. But I mean, my kids are doing good and I mean, cross your fingers and stuff, but they're doing things that are going to change the world.

I've got one that's going to be a pediatrician because he wants to start early. He wants to be able to do intervention early. He thinks that he can change the world by changing the trajectory of a child's life. So, I mean, if that's the bar that we're going with, I think we're doing okay.

Ken Harbaugh:

Well, that's a great uplifting note to end on. Matt and Tawni, thank you so much for your work and for joining us today.

Matt Browning:

Thanks for having us.

Tawni Browning:

Thank you.

Ken Harbaugh:

That was Matt and Tawni Browning. You can find a link to their book, The Hate Next Door in the show description, or by visiting mattandtawni.com.

Thanks for listening to Burn the Boats. If you have any feedback, please email the team at [email protected]. We're always looking to improve the show.

For updates and more, follow us on Twitter @Team_Harbaugh. And if you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to rate and review.

Burn the Boats is a production of Evergreen Podcasts. Our producer is Declan Rohrs, and Sean Rule-Hoffman is our audio engineer. Special thanks to Evergreen executive producers, Joan Andrews, Michael DeAloia, and David Moss.

I'm Ken Harbaugh, and this is Burn the Boats, a podcast about big decisions.