[dramatic music]
[people shouting, clamoring]
- Oh!
- Oh, he's got-- [gunshot]
- Oh! Oh!
[overlapping chatter]
- 35-year-old Air Force veteran and QAnon supporter
Ashli Babbitt was shot by a Capitol police officer.
- In her last moments of life, Babbitt was seen
trying to force her way through a window
that would give her closer access
to the House Chambers in the United States Capitol.
♪ ♪
In the wake of the riots,
some on social media call her a hero and a martyr.
- You deserve answers, and you deserve justice.
God bless Ashli's incredible memory,
and God bless America.
♪ ♪
narrator: It is a story, decades in the making.
- They call themselves...
- The Aryan Nation.
narrator: Desperate.
Angry.
Destructive.
The nation stopped in its tracks.
- Angry mob of supporters.
narrator: The most sacred symbol
of America's democracy attacked.
- Let's burn this shit down.
narrator: A nation already deeply divided over politics,
race, and economic inequality.
And now the claim of a stolen election.
Extremists inciting rage, some using violence.
How did we get here? What fuels their fury?
How grave is the threat to democracy?
all: Indivisible...
narrator: How do we heal the hate?
all: Justice for all.
- The chaos erupted
inside the Capitol this afternoon.
A mob intent on blocking Joe Biden's presidency
stormed the building.
[gunshot] - Oh!
- In the hallway,
the echo of a gunshot rang out
and a woman apparently hit.
- Got an active shooter!
♪ ♪
narrator: When Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt,
35 years old, was shot dead by a Capitol police officer,
she became a martyr for violent extremists
with whom she had no known association.
- The person that shot Ashli Babbitt--boom--
right through the head-- just boom--
there was no reason for that.
♪ ♪
narrator: Babbitt, an ardent Trump fan,
devoured the bizarre conspiracy theories
of the group known as QAnon.
♪ ♪
There was no evidence that she had a weapon
or was part of a plan to fight her way
into the Capitol that day.
♪ ♪
Still, she's been called
a freedom fighter and a patriot.
♪ ♪
- You'll never take back our country with weakness.
You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.
♪ ♪
narrator: To understand why the far right
needs Ashli Babbitt
and how it feeds off a cult of martyrdom,
we need only consider the case of Timothy McVeigh,
also a military veteran,
but one whose beliefs were so extreme
they led to mass murder,
the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City...
- About a third of the building
has been blown away.
narrator: Killing 168 people,
including 19 children.
♪ ♪
- Are you prepared for death? - I am.
I came to terms with my mortality in the Gulf war.
♪ ♪
After that, it's...not that hard
to be "prepared for death."
In truth, from my psychological perspective,
it's a little easier being on death row,
because you know how you're gonna die.
You can narrow down where you're gonna die,
and you can pretty much narrow down the time.
narrator: Before his execution by lethal injection,
McVeigh granted an interview
to 60 Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley.
[dark music]
- If you had your life to live over,
is there anything you'd do differently?
- I've thought about that quite a few times,
and I think anybody in life says,
"I wish I could have gone back and done this differently,
done that differently."
There are moments, but...
♪ ♪
No one that stands out.
- We talked with eight family members
and survivors of the bombing
and showed them our interview with McVeigh.
Are any of you concerned that, by executing him,
that we turn Timothy McVeigh into a--a martyr?
- He will only be a martyr to...
- Those who believe--
- Those people that think like he thinks.
- He's already a martyr. I've been there.
- That's right. - I've seen it.
- He's already a martyr to them, so...
- Killing him won't make any difference.
- It won't make any difference.
- We need people like Robert Matthews,
people like Eric Rudolph, Timothy McVeigh,
who are not afraid to be the lone wolves of this country
to go out there and smash the Zionist system.
narrator: It's a time in his life
he'd like to forget, but Sean Gillespie admits
that once he saw Timothy McVeigh as a hero.
- Timothy McVeigh is looked upon highly in the movement.
He kind of inspired me to do a crime
in Oklahoma City.
See the damage.
narrator: Before he rejected their racist doctrines,
Gillespie belonged to the Aryan Nations,
a fringe white supremacist group
that shared McVeigh's hatred of the federal government.
- One God, one nation, one race.
- Rewind it, and let's re-record it, all right?
I was abused several times by several people.
I had a lot of behavioral issues related to my abuse.
It caused a lot of--a lot of trauma.
I was in these group homes with older kids,
which didn't help, you know, these 17-year-old runaway kids
who were doing drugs and living on the streets.
♪ ♪
narrator: Today, Sean believes that many of those
drawn to extremist groups actually do so for personal,
not political reasons.
- Feeling superiority over people,
feeling that people are afraid of you.
narrator: He says racism was a way
to deflect his feelings of inadequacy and rejection.
His acts of violence put him in prison.
It became a turning point.
- I ended up spending 8 1/2 years of solitary confinement.
I'm alone for the first time,
and all I have is just time to ruminate.
I'm like, "What the hell have I done with my life?"
There's a lot of guilt for something
I didn't even believe in anymore.
♪ ♪
[tense music]
narrator: Today, Sean says Timothy McVeigh
is a mass murderer
and certainly not the martyr some extremists see him as.
- McVeigh is absolutely considered as a martyr,
a person who made the ultimate commitment
and executed a very important violent attack
against the government
and is celebrated for his willingness to do that.
They create memes with his facial image
or the images of the Murrah Federal Building
that he blew to smithereens.
- There he is, right there. The man with the crew cut.
narrator: For violent extremists,
McVeigh became an example
of something called leaderless resistance,
in which a so-called lone wolf stages an attack
without help from a large group
that the authorities might be watching already.
One of the strategy's leading proponents was Louis Beam,
a disillusioned Vietnam vet who joined the Ku Klux Klan
and rose to become one of America's
most influential white supremacists.
- Let me drain the swamp,
and then we'll start on the next one.
[cheers, whistles] - White power!
- Louis Beam came in to visit Aryan Nations
when I was 15 and was living on the compound,
and, you know, I-I went to church service,
listened to one of his sermons.
I didn't really know much about him at the time,
and the old people were telling me, "Oh, he was
a-a helicopter door gunner in Vietnam and stuff."
And it's like he's killed all these, like, "mud races"
is what they call them with Aryan Nations.
And so, like, I was thinking this guy was a hero.
- With all 3 million savages.
- He came up with the idea of--of what was known
as the cell group
or the leaderless resistance,
which was basically,
if you're gonna do anything,
have a small group of people-- three to five, ideally--
because if somebody gets busted,
typically they're gonna turn on each other.
So you wanna keep it small to where only the main guy
knows what's going on.
- The notion there is that if you want to avoid
being caught in your terrorist activities,
you don't have a hierarchy in a terrorist organization
that can be infiltrated or can be,
in a sense, co-opted by federal agents.
You operate in small cells
where you're not reporting to any one person.
♪ ♪
narrator: Before he became the master tactician
of leaderless resistance,
Louis Beam was an ambitious Klan leader on the lookout
for a chance to stoke racial tensions and win new recruits.
- Do you have it in you to make the sacrifice?
narrator: In 1979, Beam saw an opportunity
in the simmering confrontation between local fishermen
and Vietnamese immigrants in Seadrift, Texas.
- The United States in the 1970s were a time,
of course, of emerging distrust of the government.
There was Watergate, and the distrust,
and the criminality of Richard Nixon,
and then we had the waves of immigration from Vietnam
that were occurring at that time
where we, I think rightfully,
opened our doors to immigrants from Vietnam.
- From the beginning, there were problems
between Americans and the Vietnamese
refugee fishermen along the Gulf Coast.
- Put 'em somewhere and make Americans out of 'em
before they bring them down here on us.
- It don't matter to me, but I'd like to see 'em
to get civilized and get to act like us.
- The trouble was sparked by charges
that the Vietnamese violated unwritten fishing laws
and it was fueled by racism.
- I came to the United States in 1975
when I was 11 years old.
'Cause the communists is coming.
narrator: Hien Nguyen's family fled Vietnam
with only the clothes on their backs
as the victorious communist forces
took control of their country
after American troops withdrew.
- At that time, a lot of American people here
believed that the government gave us money.
They give you 300.
"Here you are. You're on your own, buddy."
We survive, you know.
- He left his rights behind him in Vietnam,
and he's over here now
taking my rights away from me and my friends.
- These people, they don't-- they don't think like us.
They--they're just not our kind of people,
and they're vicious, cruel people,
and they're gonna take and grab
what they want at anybody's expense.
narrator: As the anti-immigrant
feelings spread,
this small Gulf fishing town became a powder keg.
- In August 1979, it exploded into the shooting death
of an American fisherman.
- I'm Beth Aplin-Martin, and my dad was killed in 1979
by a Vietnamese fisherman.
That started a, you know,
a pretty serious reign of terror along the Gulf coast
against the Vietnamese by the KKK.
- 35-year-old Billy Joe Aplin was shot and killed
allegedly by a pair of Vietnamese brothers
in a dispute over Aplin's charges
the Vietnamese were poaching
from the local crabbers' sea traps.
The killing sparked an immediate
and violent wave of revenge that saw three Vietnamese
fishing boats sunk in Seadrift Harbor.
- There were one to two men on the bow
of each of those boats with machetes.
Some of them had it in their teeth.
And feet up on the edge and they would say,
"I'm gonna kill your kids in front of you
and then kill you first," and, you know,
Dad's talking about, "Yeah, I'm gonna cut your throat."
You know what I mean? It was a serious ordeal.
narrator: For the Ku Klux Klan's grand dragon in Texas,
Louis Beam,
it was the opportunity he'd been waiting for.
- The grand dragon would not say
how the Klan plans to fight.
He says he would like to avoid violence
but would not rule it out.
- Somebody is gonna probably
take care of those Vietnamese.
- Take care of 'em? - Kill 'em.
[tense music]
- The anti-refugee sentiment
started getting whipped up by the KKK,
and they had representatives going out
to all these small little communities
recruiting new membership because of it
and, you know,
stirring up this anti-immigrant sentiment.
- The Seadrift's Vietnamese immigrants,
especially the crab fishermen,
are the most afraid of trouble.
They fear they, their families, or their livelihood
may be attacked by people
who openly talk of avenging Billy Joe Aplin's death.
- At that time, I don't-- I don't know who the KKK is,
but we got shot up right over here
by the water right over here for nothing.
We was--we was working on a shrimp boat.
They just drive by in the evening,
shotgun going off.
- Last night at a Klan rally in the Seabrook area,
Texas grand dragon Louis Beam
petitioned the governor of Texas
to use public funds to buy the Vietnamese boats.
- The Klan has issued an ultimatum.
Unless the Vietnamese are out of the Galveston Bay area
by May 15th, the beginning of the shrimping season,
the Klan has vowed to take matters into its own hands.
- After the shooting, every Vietnamese leave town.
Every one of them leave town
'cause the KKK is coming.
They know if they stay,
there's gonna be more problem
because most of the--the older Vietnamese,
they know how to defend themselves, you know?
So everybody decides, "Forget it, just move."
all: Victory is ours! Victory is ours!
[cheers and applause]
[tense music]
narrator: Beth Aplin regrets
her family's support for the anti-immigrant fervor
that drove the Vietnamese out of Seadrift.
- Many years after, I went through a box of the stuff
that my mother kept and came across government--
letters from government officials.
Also, it would seem I had family members
who were working to establish
a white nationalist organization.
The National Organization of the American Spirit
elected Rudy Aplin--
that was my dad's oldest brother.
"After years and years of whites
"fishing along the Texas coast, the government has brought in
Vietnamese replacements for them."
I mean, they're talking about--
yeah, we've heard that replacement thing today.
The same things they're saying today, they said 45 years ago.
- You are many! Can you feel the strength?
all: White power!
- White victory!
all: White victory!
- White power!
all: White power!
- America first!
all: America first!
narrator: Louis Beam issued a dark prophecy.
"Where ballots fail, bullets will prevail."
He spoke of millions confronting the police state.
That statement was shared by the most violent
of the far right extremists
who attacked the Capitol on January 6.
But the road stretching from Beam
to the anti-government violence
that cost Ashli Babbitt's life,
or that inspired Timothy McVeigh,
was long and winding.
Before them, far right extremists had other martyrs,
and none of them were more important
than Robert Matthews.
- The signs of awakening are sprouting up
across the Northwest, and no more so
than amongst the two-fisted farmers and ranchers,
a class of our people who have been hit
especially hard by the filthy, lying Jews
and their parasitical usury system.
narrator: Robert Matthews was the founder
of Bruder Schweigen, German for the Silent Brotherhood,
but the group was known simply as "The Order."
- You get the heck out of here!
I didn't come all the way down here to hear you.
Go over there!
- Bob Matthews came into the movement with a splash.
[dark music]
When he was only 21 years old,
he founded his first far right organization
and fell into favor with leaders
of the far right architects in the Hayden Lake compound,
♪ ♪
and by the early 1980s, he had founded The Order.
♪ ♪
He formed The Order to be the tip of the spear,
the vanguard of violent action
in furtherance of white supremacy.
♪ ♪
- In 1984, I came to be the case agent in Idaho,
investigating the most significant
domestic terrorist group that I had ever encountered,
and that was a group that was known as The Order.
♪ ♪
narrator: The Order was based
on a group of fictitious revolutionaries
from a white supremacist fantasy novel
called "The Turner Diaries."
It became a sacred text for far right extremists.
- "The Turner Diaries" is an old book written in 1978,
but it's brand-new for everyone who picks it up.
That idea of the underground organization,
hierarchically organized, bent on sparking a race war.
narrator: "The Turner Diaries" has inspired terrorist acts
such as McVeigh's Oklahoma City bombing,
the mass shooting of Norwegian high schoolers in 2011,
and an attack at a Jewish community center
in Kansas City in 2014.
♪ ♪
The book, written by a rabid neo-Nazi
named William Luther Pierce,
also portrays an assault on the U.S. Capitol,
an eerie foreshadowing of January 6th.
In this fictional version,
dozens of attackers and legislators are killed
in what is presented as a symbolic victory.
[overlapping chatter]
- Bro, I see people out there get hurt.
I don't wanna see you get hurt.
- Bob Matthews read this book early on,
and it became his Bible.
- I know that my dad had a personal relationship
with Robert Matthews.
He was one of the soldiers
that actually took to heart what my dad wrote about
and what my dad was hoping people would do
and was trying to start that race war.
narrator: Kelvin Pierce is the author's son
who actively speaks out against
his father's world view.
He says his father was angry,
and not just at Jewish and Black people.
- He would pick an object,
whatever caught his fancy that particular day.
It was either an electric razor cord
or a wire coat hanger, sometimes a two-by-four,
and then he would just start wailing away at me,
and to him, that was discipline.
- Bob Matthews was a good man
who was willing to stand up and accept responsibility.
- There was nothing phony about Bob Matthews.
There was no interest in personal gain.
He believed, and he believed to his core,
that it was up to him
and people like him to save America.
narrator: At the heart of Matthews' beliefs
was the violent anti-Semitic faith
known as "Christian Identity,"
which led to an alliance
with pastor Richard Butler's Aryans Nations.
- He picked up on the Christian identity philosophy
once it was introduced to him.
- Christian identity
is the religious aspect of white supremacy
that holds that only Aryans are righteous in God's eyes.
- They believed that in order to have
a second coming of Jesus Christ
there had to be an elimination of the Jews from the world.
[laughter] - To the right.
- Their first goal, as The Order had it,
was to remove them
from any political connection to this country.
- Hail his victory.
all: Hail victory!
- We felt that an inordinate amount of Jews
were in key positions-- media, finance, government--
and they posed a threat to our continued existence
if their policies continued.
- We only had one person in The Order
that had a criminal record.
Only one. Gary Yarbrough.
Beyond him, we had people that worked hard.
They were family people.
They took care of their families.
Some of them--one--
one of them worked for the post office.
We had people that would never have committed
a criminal act in their life had it not been
for the charismatic leadership of Bob Matthews.
- There comes a certain point, and it did with our group,
where you get tired of waiting and you think,
"Well, maybe instead of us waiting on God,
maybe God's waiting on us to start it all."
And so you start making plans what you could do.
With The Order, you know,
having members from Aryan Nations,
members from our group, they wanted action.
- So, kinsmen, duty calls. The future is now.
So stand up like men and drive the enemy into the sea.
- I think we were all getting impatient.
We were all getting impatient with it.
We were tired of the talk. Let's--let's do something.
narrator: In 1995,
some now disillusioned former members of The Order
broke their silence to describe the effect
Bob Matthews had on them.
- We were manipulated, yes.
He knew what buttons he could push on me.
- He was like older brother I never had.
Looking back, I'd say that he was my mentor.
- Next thing I know, we're--we're having
a meeting in the barracks.
There's eight or nine of us together forming The Order.
narrator: Matthews established strange rituals
to go along with his code of loyalty.
- When you were inducted into The Order,
you swore an oath of allegiance.
And what's fascinating is they did that
by standing around a white female infant.
narrator: That baby was the 4-week-old daughter
of one of its members.
- My baby.
Bob asked me to have her there, so...
- Why would he want her there?
- That was our race right there.
That was our--our future.
That's why we were doing this.
- They raised their arms in a Hitler salute and said,
"I, as an Aryan free man,
"hereby swear an unrelenting oath
"upon the green graves of our sires upon the children
"and the wombs of our wives.
"Should an enemy agent hurt you,
"I will chase him to the ends of the Earth
and remove his head from his body."
♪ ♪
That's The Order.
- [sighs]
I just kept looking at my daughter, I guess.
♪ ♪
And justifying this, I guess.
- The idea behind The Order was that they would be lethal,
secret, and somehow morally above reproach.
So while we will engage in robbery and murder,
it won't be against white mom and pop shops
or--or et cetera.
- He said, "Well, guys, if you gotta--
"if you gotta rob, let's--
"let's get rid of the evil, let's--
"let's rob these drug dealers or porno bookstores
and stuff like that," you know.
- What were they gonna do with the money
once they got the money?
- Send it out to these organizations
like Aryan Nations so they could expand.
- People don't realize how committed, dedicated,
and involved The Order was in promoting its goals.
narrator: The Order was determined
to spread its message
to the white population of the United States,
making common cause with like-minded groups.
- They were the most active domestic security group
to ever operate in the United States.
Every month there'd be another criminal act,
a serious criminal act.
And then the next month,
another and another and another.
narrator: The Order began its crime wave
by holding up a pornography store in Spokane, Washington,
and reportedly stealing $369.
- No, we didn't get much money,
but it's better to start small and work your way up.
If we can't take this first little step,
then we might as well unpack our bags and go back home.
narrator: The Order also got into counterfeiting,
but the forgeries were poor, and Bruce Pierce
was arrested trying to use them.
Bob Matthews was furious.
- I never saw Bob like that before.
He was upset, real pale.
I said, I go, "What's the matter, Bob?"
He says, "I gotta do something.
"Bruce is still in prison, and I gotta get him out.
"I'm letting-- letting everybody down.
I'm letting everybody down."
- He took off with a gun.
We didn't see him again for three months.
And he's talking about robbing a bank.
For one, I didn't think he would follow through
because he was scared to death.
narrator: But Matthews knew he needed to set an example.
So in December 1983,
he single-handedly robbed a bank near Seattle,
getting away with $26,000
stashed in a child's trick-or-treat bag.
- He comes back. He's euphoric, we're euphoric.
People that drifted away, now they're back again.
He made it look so easy.
narrator: Inspired by their leader,
The Order embarks on a series of armored car robberies,
collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars.
[dramatic music]
- They did what they set out to do.
They raised money. They did it well.
They were able to make cash disbursements
to other organizations to help them thrive.
- I felt almost like as-- like a Robin Hood type thing,
because I knew most of the money
that we stole was being given away.
- Bob would go around the country
and meet with these people and, you know,
give them a few thousand and say there's more
if--if I like the way your movement is going.
And if it's going in the right direction or not.
- They say money gives you power.
Well, I think the money gave him power
thinking that he was invincible.
♪ ♪
narrator: In support of their course,
The Order, flushed with cash,
began to support an alliance of white supremacist groups,
including the Covenant, the Sword,
and the Arm of the Lord.
- There were so successful at fundraising.
They had funds to disperse to other far right ideologies,
including the CSA.
In the mid-'80s, they gave the CSA
a dispersal of cash they used to purchase some land
that they used to build a paramilitary training camp.
narrator: But staging robberies
and distributing funds
wasn't going to spread the group's message.
So Matthews hit on a new strategy,
a plot to murder prominent Jews.
Jews have been blamed throughout history
for all manner of ills.
As the Nazis rose to power, Adolf Hitler accused Jews,
who were less than 1% of the population,
of being responsible for Germany's economic collapse.
In the paranoid world of Robert Matthews,
American Jews who are less than 2%
of the population we're an easy scapegoat.
- If you're not a Christian, you're un-American.
Is at your point, sir? - That's right.
- Good point, sir.
You and your red neck go to bed.
- You're listening to Alan Berg on KOA.
Alan Berg on KOA in Denver.
- Alan Berg was a Jewish radio host,
and he had a tendency to sort of mock the far right.
He actually got into an argument
with a far right leader on the radio,
and that landed him on the target list of The Order.
- I think the Jews are still firmly in control
of the subject union. I think they're responsible
for the murder of 50 million white Christians.
- You think so, huh? - Yes, I do.
- I think you're sick. I think you're pathetic.
- That's real. - I think your ability
to reason and use any logic is a tragedy.
- Why don't you put a Nazi
on your program and then have somebody--
- Sir, you are a Nazi by your very own admission.
Thank you so much.
That's right. You heard it.
narrator: In June 1984, Robert Matthews
decided Alan Berg would be assassinated.
Bruce Pierce would be the trigger man,
accompanied by Richard Scutari and David Lane.
The three drove to Denver and waited for Berg
to arrive home.
Then when the talk show host pulled into his driveway,
they gunned him down.
- Thank you very much, sir.
- They gunned him down with a fully automatic weapon.
narrator: This is the MAC-10 machine gun
that was used to kill Berg.
Berg was hit multiple times and died on the spot.
- Louis Beam was attending the Aryan Nation Congress,
and he made comments to the crowd
that a significant development had been made
and one of their Jewish enemies
had been taken care of.
This turned my head.
♪ ♪
- Do you have it in you to be strong, to brave,
to stand up for your folk and your people
and to act like a white person?
Do you? - Yes!
- To them, it was a strong indicator
that they were on the right path
and that the things they were doing
would eventually intimidate the government to the point
that they would get their demands.
They were creating another country.
They were creating a country of Aryans,
free of Jews.
narrator: Former Order member, Denver Parmenter,
would later reveal disturbing details
about The Order's plan for an Aryan Nation.
- In court this morning, Parmenter testified
that members of The Order discussed assassinating
not only Alan Berg,
but also Hollywood television producer Norman Lear.
Lear is a Jew, and The Order felt
his programs were anti-white.
In testimony last Friday,
Parmenter had disclosed the existence
of The Order's assassination unit.
And he said other targets were
Henry Kissinger, David Rockefeller,
and the heads of the three major networks.
Parmenter said the news media were
"responsible for indoctrinating our race,
poisoning their minds."
- Their ultimate goal was to establish
a whites-only homeland.
Initially in the Pacific Northwest,
but ultimately they intended
that to become almost the entirety of North America,
all the way down to the Mexican border
and all the way up through Canada.
Their intention, their stated goal
was for that to be an Aryan homeland.
- A letter was sent to Congress
declaring a state of war
between The Order and the United States.
And in the letter that they sent to Congress,
they tell them specifically,
"We don't care whether you swing to the left
"or you swing to the right.
We'll swing you by the neck."
narrator: By July 1984, feeling almost invincible,
The Order staged what would be their most lucrative
and high-profile robbery.
Equipped with armor-piercing bullets,
the group held up a Brink's truck for $3.6 million.
But they were overconfident and sloppy.
Matthews left the gun on the truck's front seat.
The authorities traced it to another member of the group
and the FBI made investigating The Order a top priority.
- Once I was able to show strong probability
that people associated with the Aryan Nations
were committing crimes,
the Attorney General gave the consent
to do a full-scale investigation.
[dramatic music]
narrator: Then the FBI got a tip.
Matthews was planning the murder
of the well-known civil rights attorney Morris Dees.
- And if these people really truly wanna have a revolution,
then they have that right.
But we have a right as a free people
to protect our democratic society.
narrator: Through his Southern Poverty Law Center,
Dees has fought hate groups for 48 years.
In 2000, Dees would win a $6 million judgment
against Richard Butler, bankrupting the Aryan Nations
and one-time ally of The Order.
But back in 1984, The Order was the target,
and the FBI was in hot pursuit.
The bureau had an informant inside The Order.
His name was Tom Martinez.
- He wasn't asking. He was telling me,
"You're gonna be part of a cell to kidnap
and murder Morris Dees."
And he said, "We're gonna torture him."
♪ ♪
narrator: Martinez, Matthews,
and fellow Order member Gary Yarbrough
rented motel rooms in Portland, Oregon.
- I went over to the Pico,
and I could see Bob come out on the balcony.
I never in my life was so scared.
I heard a shot fired.
♪ ♪
I heard voices yelling.
[siren wailing]
Next thing you know, I hear sirens.
Police were out there, cameras,
news people, reporters.
- We almost had him in Portland,
but he shot an FBI agent
and then another FBI agent shot him.
narrator: Matthews, only lightly wounded,
from a gunshot to his right hand,
was able to escape,
but a defiant Gary Yarbrough was captured.
- Christ the king!
I don't follow man's laws.
I am a Christian first and an American second.
If anybody attacks God's law or God's people,
yes, you have the right to defend yourself.
It says to drive all of those people
who are opposed to my laws from us.
To cast--cast them away.
narrator: The FBI found a note Matthews
had left behind in his motel room.
"Surrender now, or face daily firefights
"with the heavily armed warriors
of the white American Revolutionary Army."
♪ ♪
What Matthews did next would become a tale of heroism
handed down by far right-handed extremists
from generation to generation.
- And then he took refuge
in a hideout in Whidbey Island, Washington.
narrator: For two days, Matthews hid out in a cabin
and waited for what he knew would be inevitable.
A final showdown with the FBI.
- FBI SWAT teams
started their invasion of Whidbey Island last night
and stretching into the morning.
narrator: While he waited,
he made an audio recording for Richard Kemp,
a member who'd said he wanted to resign from The Order.
- I think his last words were,
"You guys are gonna have to live with that."
narrator: On December 7th, the FBI tracked Matthews
to a remote location in Washington State.
More than 75 heavily armed agents
took up positions around a cabin on Whidbey Island.
- And we're hoping to resolve the matter as quickly
and as safely as we can.
- When I got to Whidbey Island,
I tried my best to get him to come out of that bunker
and talk with me
and surrender and not sacrifice his life.
Bob was committed.
There was no changing his mind.
He was too far down the road to abandon his beliefs.
- You are continuing to negotiate?
- Yes, at this time.
- How are you talking to him?
- I can't discuss that at this time.
- Is he armed? - We don't know.
We presume he is. - Why is it taking so long?
- I-I can't discuss any of this further.
Thank you.
- Were shots fired by--
narrator: For 32 hours, the FBI tried
to convince Matthews to surrender,
but Matthews refused to come out.
♪ ♪
- I was part of a SWAT team,
and we decided that we would go in and bring him out.
As we made the initial approach into the house,
he opened fire with a fully automatic weapon.
[gunfire]
♪ ♪
I took several rounds just within inches of my head.
I was very fortunate that I wasn't hit.
- No agents were injured.
They were able to move themselves from the building.
♪ ♪
- Later that night, we were still trying to get him out.
We sent a helicopter in and the helicopters set down
just above the top of the roof,
and he opened fire on the helicopter,
and then he turned and opened fire on me again.
There were two other agents with me.
The three of us were taking some pretty heavy fire
from him through the window.
narrator: That night, the FBI worried
that Matthews would try to escape in the dark.
They fired illumination flares into the air.
One of them fell on the cabin.
- The house eventually was caught up in a blaze.
- Unfortunately, a fire started.
I feel quite certain that he succumbed
to the--the heat smoke.
[dramatic music]
narrator: Robert Matthews was dead,
but his dark legend was only just beginning.
- I was there through the night
and walked up the next morning.
He was laying at ground level in a tub.
- An autopsy will be conducted tomorrow
on the human remains found in the ashes.
- Bob deliberately sacrificed his life
knowing that the blood of martyrs stirs the people.
- He died defending what he believed was the right thing.
narrator: No surrender.
That was what turned Bob Matthews
from a man into a dangerous martyr
for far right extremists everywhere.
[somber music]
♪ ♪
- We're going to Freeland. It's on Whidbey Island.
It's a town where Bob Matthews got in a shoot-out in 1984
with 75 members of the federal law enforcement.
Yeah, it's kinda interesting to come out here
and see the spot where Bob Matthews died.
narrator: Every year since December 8, 1984,
and those final desperate hours at the cabin,
Whidbey Island has been a place of pilgrimage
for far right extremists.
- What do you think of this gathering here?
Is it something that you're gonna say a few prayers
for Robert Matthews? Is that why you're here?
- Maybe a silent one, yes.
- What kind of--
- It's just a-- this was just a memorial.
Just a--just a get-together of a few of us and that's all.
narrator: Sacred to white supremacists,
the anniversary has also been a draw
for left-wing anti-fascist groups,
hoping to confront them.
- Thank you to the neo-Nazis
for uniting all these diverse groups.
- Yay, Whidbey Island! [cheers]
- This is a memorial service, we never protest any of
their funerals or anything. That's ridiculous.
- All we came for was a memorial service.
You know, we didn't come up here to start stuff.
- Just a private-- - We're not here to run around
and hurt people or start something.
- We wanted to have a little campfire in a campground
and remember this guy.
That's all.
- Why is he so dear to your heart?
- Because he did a lot for the movement.
- Fifty miles away and you people just can't leave
a white man alone, can you?
- Today is December 8th. You know,
it's the 37th anniversary of Bob Matthews' death.
narrator: Sean Gillespie spent 16 years in prison
for hate crimes.
- It'd be interesting to see who shows up.
I'm definitely a little nervous, you know.
Since I've left, I've never really
had any interaction with anybody in the movement.
narrator: When he first joined the Aryan Nations at 15,
Sean remembers how he once considered Robert Matthews
a martyr, a hero.
- Bob Matthews represented basically, you know,
not, like, giving up,
like, going the full extent,
to the most extreme that you can,
and that's giving your life for a cause.
narrator: And it's a cause that Sean
completely rejects today.
- I got 30 years off my sentence,
and I'm not fucking it up.
narrator: And talks openly about it,
hoping to change people's minds.
- The world has become more diverse.
And I think it's kinda disproven
a lot of what they believed in.
I mean, there's so much stuff out there nowadays proving
that one race is not superior to the other.
- You're here to honor the memory of Bob Matthews,
who was--who was a racist. He was violent.
He robbed banks and he also killed Alan Berg.
So do you--do you espouse his philosophies?
- I don't know everything about The Order,
you know, like, you--you may think I do.
I-I know he fought for our people.
- If Bob Matthews had been on January 6th,
he probably would've been planting bombs.
He probably would've been trying
to execute members of Congress.
I mean, you know, he advocated
the violent overthrow of this government.
And him and members of The Order would have gladly
ratcheted the level of violence up.
- These individuals conspired to overthrow the United States
government by force and violence.
♪ ♪
- 20 years ago, I would have definitely been at that rally.
And I would've definitely have been one of the ones
who was violent, and knowing me,
I probably would have brought it to an extreme.
Stand, my kindred, now, before it's too late.
Because if you're not with us, you are against us.
- What the fuck's your problem, man?
- I-I honestly don't know what I'm expecting.
I think it's--it's gonna be...
them spewing hatred, and...
♪ ♪
If they even show up.
And yeah, I don't really expect too much from 'em.
Definitely not afraid of 'em, but at the same time,
it is kinda, you know, nerve-racking
to know that, at one time, I was one of these people.
- They can take my picture as much as they want.
Hail Robert Matthews! Hail Robert Matthews!
all: Hail Robert Matthews! Hail Robert Matthews!
- So we are at the location where in 1984,
Robert J. Matthews,
a member of The Order, got into a shoot-out
with 75 federal agents.
It was down the hill.
That was where the shoot-out occurred, down this road.
It's private property now.
But this is where it happened.
narrator: But Sean does not expect what he finds.
Absolutely no one has shown up to commemorate
the anniversary of Matthews' death.
- I don't know why they aren't here.
You know, I mean, it's, you know, that's a good thing.
Maybe it's--shows that, you know,
these people are diminished and their--and their hate.
You know, there's not as many people out there
that are actively involved in the white Supremacist movement
as there used to be, or it could just be,
you know, they're afraid of the political climate now.
You know, they-- they act like, you know,
"Oh, nobody will forget your name
if you do something."
And it's like, I mean, they--they know his name,
but they do forget being a martyr
for a cause is ridiculous,
'cause you just waste your life.
You waste your freedom.
You waste whatever you have in life
that's good for something that doesn't
mean anything that nobody really cares about.
narrator: Whidbey Island resident Terry Hanneman
is not surprised no one came.
- So I'm not surprised they didn't show up.
- Yeah.
- Last year, there was only like,
five or six people
compared to like 25, 30 the year before that.
So I think maybe they're starting to,
I don't know, lose interest maybe?
- That is, that'd be a good thing I think.
- One could only hope. - Yeah, exactly.
- Right, but that doesn't mean that they won't show up.
You know, because this is something that--
- I hope they don't, you know, I hope--I hope that it's
a chapter left in the past. This is so...
narrator: As a Native American,
Terry can only shake her head at neo-Nazis
who say they want to "reclaim their land."
- And to start hating, you know,
because they were a different color
and because they weren't from this country,
excuse me, you know, I--I am from this country.
- Yeah, I know you-- - I am a Native American
and then someone like that
to say, "No, we're better than you"?
- You have better claim to this country than anybody.
- Right, yes, I know. That doesn't work for me.
[tense music]
narrator: But far right extremists
and the paramilitary organizations
they belong to have not disappeared.
There is ample evidence that they were in the vanguard
of those perpetrating the violence
when the capital was attacked on January 6, 2021.
- It takes some age to remember
and recognize how bad things are today.
- People, instead of getting involved
in political concepts,
they get involved in political personalities and hatred,
and an inability to even talk to somebody
that doesn't think like you think.
[overlapping shouts]
- Active shooter, multiple people down.
narrator: It was that kind of thinking
that led a young white supremacist named Dylann Roof
to shoot dead nine members of a Black Bible group
in a South Carolina church in 2015.
- To carry out these twin goals of fanning racial flames
and exacting revenge,
Roof further decided to seek out
and murder African-Americans because of their race.
narrator: But at Roof's trial,
a different kind of thinking prevailed.
One by one, the relatives of each of his victims rose
to forgive him.
narrator: That is what we call healing.
narrator: On the next episode
of "Indivisible, Healing Hate"...
extremists from across America
united a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
- There's fighting, there's pepper spraying.
People are hitting each other with torches.
[indistinct shouts]
It's a nasty scene.
narrator: The result is an act of domestic terrorism.
- I'm the mother of Heather Heyer,
who was killed in Charlottesville.
[people screaming]
- We need to go. - Paramedics, right now.
Holy shit, a car just drove into people.
- A 32-year-old woman was killed,
and 19 others were hurt.
♪ ♪