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Episode 436: Mira Ptacin and the Story of How One Town Drove Out a Nazi
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Mira Ptacin (@miramptacin) is a writer and journalist who story, The Crash of the Hammer, ran in The Atavist Magazine. She's also the author of Poor Your Soul and The In-Betweens. Visit magazine.atavist.com to read her story about how a small town in Maine drove out a Neo-Nazi.
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Show notes: brendanomeara.com
Support: Patreon.com/cnfpod
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Plug
00:00:00
Speaker
Oh hey, seeing as it being that Atavistian time of the month, there are some spoilers during this podcast, okay? Visit magazine.atavist.com to read the story and maybe consider subscribing. I don't get any kickbacks, so you know my recommendation and my partnership with those beautiful people at the Atavist magazine is pure, okay?
Understanding Creative Non-Fiction
00:00:20
Speaker
that my style has taken a toll as like right now I'm wearing sweatpants in a sweater and ah the sweatpants go up to my chest.
00:00:36
Speaker
um Oh, this is the Creative Non-Tection Podcast, the show where I speak to badass people about telling true stories, be it narrative journalism, essays, memoirs, documentary film, podcast. We do it all, man. I'm Brendan O'Mara. How is it going? How are those dishes?
00:00:54
Speaker
are Are you scraping off all the all the all the stuff before you put it in the dishwasher? Gotta clean that filter out. That filter gets nasty, especially if you're working in with chia seeds. Those things get... Happy Halloween, everybody. Well, as I tape this, it's Halloween, but this hits the feed on November 1st. So, happy November? How is it November? How are we debating?
00:01:24
Speaker
whether to put a fascist in the White House or not. How is it close? Why is it close? We're all on edge. I'm not smart enough to offer ways of coping with the anxiety, nor can I offer words of encouragement or solace, but we can focus on the writing and the power of the word. So here we are.
Meet Meera Patassan: The Writer's Journey
00:01:43
Speaker
We have Meera Patassan, a writer and journalist who lives on a tiny island off the coast of Maine.
00:01:51
Speaker
And she came to this this wonderful story for the Adivis that deals with the paradox of tolerance, which she learned about in her tight-knit community. And the yarn unspools from there as this community learns that there is a neo-Nazi in a town, and how did they drive this guy out?
00:02:15
Speaker
I'll give more details about Mira shortly, but first we're going to hear from Editor-in-Chief Saeward Darby, who riffs about her side of the table of this story, and also the media's grand shortcomings in covering far-right extremists, something she knows all too well having written a book about it in Sisters in Hate.
Media's Role in Covering Extremism
00:02:34
Speaker
So why waste any more time, okay? Here's Saeward Darby.
00:02:49
Speaker
There's something not enough coverage, but there is a lot of coverage of the you know rise of fascism, not just you know sort of at the heart of the MAGA project, but you know around the fringes in the United States. And it really can feel overwhelming, it can feel incredibly dark because it is. And I think what Mira does really nicely here is she doesn't shy away from the darkness. I mean, this is some really intense stuff, what this guy believes, how he behaves, um you know, the things that he's done, the things that he says he wants to do. But at the same time, i you know, the story is ultimately about hope. um And, you know, she speaks at one point about how the community she is sort of
00:03:31
Speaker
ah you know documenting and their response to him showing up there ah provides a model for you know how can people rally and say that's not acceptable here. um And so I think that that definitely tempers the darker elements. I think too that Mira just has a really lovely writing voice and you know she brings a personal flair to it because this takes place in rural Maine. She lives on an island in Maine.
00:03:59
Speaker
um And so, you know, brings a lot of, like, personal energy to it. ah But she also just, I don't know, her writing just has a light a natural lightness to it. and And I think that it was really well suited for the topic and kind of striking the right tone.
Challenges in Reporting Far-right Extremism
00:04:18
Speaker
Well, there's an element of mainstream or even not even mainstream, but let's just say like newspapers, that they might know there are these far right extremists in the community, but they they feel that giving shining a light or giving voice to that is going to perpetuate it. So it but it's kind of just the opposite. So how is journalism failed in its coverage of far right extremism and maybe led to its mmm perpetuation?
00:04:47
Speaker
Oh, yes, Brendan, one of my favorite questions. um Because I got asked this a lot when I was working on my book, um you know the question of why are you even bothering to cover these people? Aren't you just giving them oxygen? Aren't you just giving them a platform? And to me, that's such a wrongheaded response because they already have so many platforms, like so many platforms. you know And when one gets taken away from them, they find another one. And if you're not putting what they're saying and what they're doing and who they are under a critical light,
00:05:17
Speaker
then you're actually like just kind of letting them run wild. And so I think that it is quite the opposite of platforming or giving oxygen as long as you are putting a critical eye on it. I do think that, you know, back in 2016 and sort of the lead up to it, there were a lot of issues with the, you know, Nazi next door stories um about like, you know, look at this seemingly normal guy in a suit who shops in the same grocery store as all of us and he happens to like Hitler.
00:05:43
Speaker
you know there wasn't There was a little bit more of a like, isn't this a novelty? Isn't this an oddity way of of writing about this stuff? And I think that that really did a disservice to the discourse and we're still you know recovering from from that and kind of working our way.
00:06:00
Speaker
out of the hole that that dug. um But i I also think that there was flippancy, like I just mentioned, um you know, for maybe the guys who weren't wearing suits and shopping at the same grocery store but had Nazi tattoos on their faces and were showing up at Trump rallies. There was a bit of a like, ha ha, look at these idiots, look at these losers, like don't they know that World War II ended a long time ago? As opposed to, again, kind of putting in taking taking them seriously, putting what not just who they are, but what they were saying, where they were getting their ideas, how they were organizing, like the ways in which like Trump was giving them very long coattails on which to, you know, kind of plop themselves um and get, you know, dragged into the political arena. I think that there was like a huge disservice done there. And then, I mean, quite frankly,
00:06:50
Speaker
I think that there's been way too much of a fixation, and even of late. like This is something that I've been grumbling about to my husband, that people you know the the story in the Atlantic about Trump saying, I want you know my generals to you know treat me like Hitler, basically. Or I can't remember. That's a terrible summary. But like you know the ones where it's like, he basically admires Hitler in the absolute devotion that these generals gave him. I'm so much less interested at this point in whether or not Trump likes Hitler, because like he is a fascist and like we don't you know having this conversation about is he or is he not. it's like He is and he has been, and if you're just coming to the party, like congrats, welcome, we're out of punching cookies, um to use a phrase that someone else what's used with me when describing what it was like to a person of color when they thought Trump got elected in 2016. But i what's more interesting, the question is why are so many people embracing this, right? It's not just, oh, you know, people people who are going to vote for Trump already know this stuff. Like the fact of him saying, you know, I want my generals to respect me, like his generals respected Hitler, like,
00:08:00
Speaker
they're not people who they're they're not going to say, I'm not going to vote for that guy because of that, which is not going to happen. So then the question becomes, well, why are they okay with it? like why What about his message? And what about you know the way that they see politics and see society makes them essentially embrace a fascist future. and And I think that the media has been
00:08:24
Speaker
they're very fixated. I mean, first of all, the media is just consistently fixated on the horse race of the actual election. And, you know, really started talking about the the core sort of stakes too late. You know, we should have been talking about fascism quite frankly, years ago, um and not in a like, don't use that word. That seems too intense. It's like, no, it is what it is. Let's call it what it is. And let's, you know, let's be afraid of it and work and work to stop it. So that's all coming too late now. And I think that's in part because the media is still you know, treats this like horse race journalism, um you know, and it's better for them when the race is closer, it's better for them when they can, you know, try to put the candidates on some kind of equal footing. But now that we're having that conversation about, you know, is this fascism? um Again, it's less is he a fascist?
00:09:13
Speaker
are his like immediate you know circle fascists. And it's more, what about all these people showing up at his rallies? What about all the people who are gonna cast votes for him? What does it say about where we are and like what our problems are as as a society when you know millions of people are embracing that? And I think that we're really just political journalist journalists especially are just kind of behind on addressing that question.
Expanding Essays into Narratives
00:09:41
Speaker
And with Mira's piece, yeah in just ah in unpacking it just a little bit, in some of the backstory of it, you know she had pitched it to a different place. It was a little thin in terms of word count. And then even when she was working with you, it was it was still on the thin side. It was like maybe around 5,000. You're like, we need to up this. And what was it that you wanted to see upped to give it that more rounded, fuller, Atavistian portrait?
00:10:07
Speaker
I seem to remember the initial structure. you know It was more essayistic. right It was more wasn't so concerned with sort of the chronology of him arriving and how people rallied, you know how they discovered who he was, and then started you know making moves to basically let him know he was not welcome. and so One of the first things I did was, I've said this before on the podcast, but I made a timeline, right? And so I understood, you know, from the moment that he basically decided to move me and bought the property, ah made a timeline of key moments. And there were some that we hadn't like the original draft
00:10:45
Speaker
just didn't address at all. you know like when was the Tell me the first time Crashberry, the journalist to the local journalist who was on this guy's tail pretty much before anybody else, you know when did he first find out about this guy? When did he find the deed that let him know where he had bought land? When did he publish his you know first newsletter podcast episode, I think it was about him. And so getting this timeline in place, because that really helped note where action was going to be happening, and then finding the the moments of action that we could really expand on, scene and action. You know, I think the bones of the story were were definitely already there. And then from an out of a standpoint, not that it needs to go strictly
00:11:32
Speaker
chronologically. um in In this case, it more or less does. To make it more out of this, it was like, okay, you know rather than kind of having this be a think piece, we want it to feel like a narrative that has you know, think bits in it. um And so, you know, by way of example, um Mira, ah there's the lovely passage where she talks about how she learned about this guy for the first time um in a church sermon, um and that church sermon itself, um which is about the paradox of tolerance, you know, really sort of
00:12:04
Speaker
creates for um a way of talking about the bigger themes of the story. um And that was always, you know, that was in the original essay. We knew we wanted to keep that but we positioned it in such a way that, um you know, we were kind of putting it side by side with the actions that individuals were taking um that were in keeping with sort of wrestling with the paradox of tolerance, if you will. And I think it worked out really well. I really, I mean, I think you to your point that you made at the beginning of the conversation, like it's a good read, like it's just a
00:12:37
Speaker
given Given the intensity of the topic, um you know it's a if you kind of roll through it. um And I think that has to do with Mira being a great writer, but then also the way that we ultimately shaped it into a narrative. um So you know the central question is, what's going to happen? like Are they going to get this guy? Are they going to find out where he is and figure out how to make him leave? um And like what mechanisms are they going to use? um Because you know there's a real question. um whenever you're dealing with people like this, if they're exercising their right to free speech and they're not committing you know crimes against their neighbors, like what do you do? How do you react? How do you how do you make a stand? you know um and And I think that it's interesting to see the various ways that that people
00:13:24
Speaker
decided to to make a stand. And we're kind of working in the story up until up to that moment. And then obviously, you know, the the aftermath, like the where is he now? And what is he doing? And it turns out that the answer is is really, really, really upsetting.
00:13:48
Speaker
Nice.
From NYC to Maine: A Writer's Transition
00:13:50
Speaker
Yes. Okay, so Mira Potassan is the author of the memoir, Poor Your Soul and The Inbetweens. She's an award-winning memoirist, narrative journalist, editor, and book doula. She teaches creative writing, and her work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The New York Times, Vogue, Poets and Writers, Harper's, Tin House, and more. There's always more.
00:14:15
Speaker
talk about her move from New York City to this tiny island off the coast of Maine and how she makes living the paradox of tolerance and and how if you're tolerant of intolerant people, tolerance then gets snuffed out. Lots of good stuff to chew on here as she spins this incredible yarn about a courageous, courageous journalist who susses out who this neo-Nazi named Hammer infiltrates this community and looks to build a compound through which he can
00:14:53
Speaker
train and try to build a white supremacist ethnostate in Maine and the people in that community, once they heard about it, were not having it. You can learn more about Mira at mirapatassin.com. M-I-R-A-P-T-A-C-I-N.
00:15:11
Speaker
And you can follow her on the gram at MiraPatassan. All those links and such will be at printedamara.com. Hey, ah no parting shot this week since we're running a little bit long. So here we are talking about the crash of the hammer. Mira's piece for the ad of his magazine, Riff.
00:15:39
Speaker
well to your point about how everyone knows each other there's there's one line I highlighted in your one of those several lines I highlighted in your story was when you ah saw saw this one woman and she's like there's something you should know about living here if we don't know anything about you we'll make something up and if we like our story better we'll stick to it It's so true. You do not, you cannot live anonymously. And I guess this is a decent segue into the story where Maine and in particular, like this island we live on is very representative of, you know, the larger community of Maine. You think because Maine is so, I mean, it's kind of like,
00:16:21
Speaker
exotic, more or less not warm, but it's exotic. And you know, there's like a style of Maine, people think about Maine, they think about lobsters, they think about sailboats. And when people come here on vacation, they dress the park, they wear their seersucker, they have these like, nautical outfits, and you know that they're from away.
00:16:44
Speaker
And people say they're from away. If you're not from here, you're from away. It's very representative of this island that's representative Maine. You think you're anonymous here, but you are seen. You are seen immediately. It's kind of like you go to New York City.
00:17:00
Speaker
You feel seen because there's so many people and everybody is looking at what other people wearing and who do you know, blah, blah, blah. And I used to live in New York City before moving to Maine. So we thought we'd come into Maine and just slide right in. But within a few weeks of living on this island,
00:17:16
Speaker
We went to Hannigan's grocery store whose motto is, if we don't have it, you don't need it. So we go to Hannigan's, I guess we don't need vegetables, but we go to Hannigan's grocery store and one of the clerks says to us, if we don't know anything about you, we're going to make something up.
00:17:33
Speaker
And if we if it's true but we like, if it's not true but we like that story we're gonna stick with it. So you really have to watch what you do here. If you're an asshole it will reverberate and people will pick up on it just as much as you are really really um Sort of required to help your neighbor on this island where we're in it together more or less And it took me a little while to realize that when we moved here I didn't think anybody noticed but you do notice you notice immediately who doesn't live here Oh my gosh, so so how did you come to live on this little island and off the coast of Maine? Oh my goodness Okay. Well, I'll try to make this story interesting but it was really kind of um throwing
00:18:19
Speaker
ah a dart on the calendar and saying, my husband Andrew and I were living in New York City. I i moved there from Michigan to go to graduate school. um He moved there for work and we met online and we got married eventually and we have two dogs and they were, we didn't have children at the time. We had these two dogs, Huckleberry and Maybee.
00:18:44
Speaker
And we love our dogs, so we would take them to the dog run or the dog park every damn day, every day, morning, at night. Eventually we lived in Prospect Park and um we would take our dogs to Prospect Park for off-leash hours.
00:18:59
Speaker
in the morning and at night. And that was like that was so much of our life revolved around that. Our social life was there. But our dogs, they're they're rescue dogs and they were triggered by people that had sort of large accessories. Like if somebody had a big hat on,
00:19:18
Speaker
or if someone had dreadlocks or if someone had lots of bags, anything that was larger than just this like skinny body they would get really excited over. So they had some police records for nipping at people.
00:19:40
Speaker
And so we had like one nip to go until the dogs were taken away and they're great dogs, but they were picking up on our stress too of just living in the city. So um I was actually at AWP in Chicago.
00:19:55
Speaker
And Andrew texted me and he's like, okay, this is the day and we're leaving no matter what. We're leaving New York. So um we decided Maine because it's a beautiful place to live. It's close enough to New York, but far away enough. It's remote. um And we just rented a U-Haul and moved here with nothing. We had $1,000. Neither one of us had a job. We were living in a Super 8 motel.
00:20:21
Speaker
We found a rental on Peaks Island just to check it out. It was on Craigslist. We went to check it out, and it was just this magical little island, very Whoville. And it was affordable, so we decided to give it one year. Because living on an island in Maine is wonderful in the summertime, but it's very isolated and different in the wintertime. In Maine, it gets dark at like 2 p.m.
00:20:45
Speaker
So um and everything shuts down here at like 5 p.m. and there's but everything meaning a grocery store. So we gave it a try, we fell in love with it and we decided to stay and then a house went up for sale. Endeavor was on the market actually, it was very cheap and we we bought it and then we started getting jobs. I sold my first book, I sold my second book um and really our roots sunk in deep. And the people who live here are kind of like our family. It's sort of like a semi-intentional community here on the island. There's 500 people, but it feels like, you know, 50. That's amazing. And as it was very. yes Yeah. Yeah. And as a ah just as a writer in such a small place that's removed from the hubs that we typically associate with where the right where writers live and make a living.
00:21:40
Speaker
how ah How have you navigated ah that you know that aspect of being a writer in a remote place? I love this question. When I lived in New York, I was in my late 20s, mid 20s, late 20s. And it was very inspiring, but it was really stressful because there were a lot of people and there were a lot of writers. And it was like, who's new? Who's got the book coming out? Whose book launch do we go to? Whose reading do we go to? Who's getting published where? It became really social.
00:22:15
Speaker
And it was less about craft for me, but like attending events or making sure I signed up for reading events. And the books I started reading were like, you know, they were galleys or advanced review copies. And that that was exciting and the energy was fantastic, but it really got in the way with like my internal rhythm and what naturally I would be reading.
00:22:41
Speaker
or what I would naturally be doing with my time when I wasn't writing. So living here, I mean, it's really like that my style has taken a toll as like right now I'm wearing sweatpants in a sweater and like the sweatpants go up to my chest. Um, but I don't care. Like what I read is supplementing what I'm working on. When I'm not writing, I'm outside, you know, I'll, I might be cleaning our chicken coop.
00:23:15
Speaker
Or I might be going on a walk with a neighbor who is not involved in the literary community whatsoever, but is, I don't know, what our neighbors do. I mean, just, you know, the people we live next to have like There's a ah a garbage man and then there's an architect and then there's a cartographer. Everyone's so different. so so i I feel like I'm learning so much more and my net is cast wider than it was in New York. I think this also just comes with age. I'm 45 now and I was in my like prime in New York around 28. But it also helps me find the story like because my life is much more rich um and I can really
00:23:57
Speaker
choose what I want to do with my time. It's much slower here. I really can listen to my intuition loudly. so you know here I thought about writing my next book about living on this island because it's such a magical way of living. i've never locked our We've never locked our door. I don't even think we have a key. My kids walk to school, and then after school, I don't know where they are. They come home when it gets dark. um my My son is in the woods all the time tracking deer. He's 11. It's just this really idealistic way of living. but and I was going to write about it, but I decided that I don't want to shit where I eat. Once I heard um the author and a friend of mine, Takira Madden, say this story, I'm just going to keep to myself.
00:24:52
Speaker
And it didn't really resonate with me until I decided just a few weeks ago not to write about where I live and the people I live with. That's something I can keep with myself. And so one of the things I do with my time is, um and gets me off the island, that's another thing. It can become like this magnetic magnetic pole and also sort of like a black hole um to leave the island. It's, it can be hard. It's a 20 minute boat ride. And when people leave the island, they say they're going to America. So when we go to America, you choose wisely what you're going to do with your time. Just like in New York, when like you get on the subway, you map out all the places you're going to go. So it's not just a waste of time. So when you go to America,
00:25:36
Speaker
you figure out what you're going to do with your time there. And i so on Mondays, I go to a women's prison. And I've been i've been going there for 12 years since I moved to the island. And just just maybe like two weeks ago, I decided that instead of writing about myself, I'm going to write about one of the inmates there. She's fascinating. Her name's Katrina.
00:25:59
Speaker
And she's been in this prison for, I think, 22 years. And when she first started, she's in for, for um she she murdered someone. She murdered her ex her boyfriend when she was young. And when she started at this prison, um everything she wrote in the memoir class that I was teaching was just so dark and just very depressed and very, just really sad and hopeless.
00:26:27
Speaker
and Something happened. i don't want to It's not me. It was her. I just could see it because she's writing and and journaling. She has turned a corner and made her life behind bars incredible. Now she's teaching philosophy of love classes on Zoom at MIT.
00:26:50
Speaker
And stoicism just to students that haven't, isn't that amazing? That is incredible. she So it's, that's, I just think that that's the most inspiring thing. I cannot complain about anything in my life. So that's what I'm diving into now. But I think if I were living in it to like long answer to your question, if I were living in the city I don't think I would be able to focus so well on just a single random person. I think New York did something to my ego that I really needed to tear away from. Yeah, that kind of gets to what moving away from such an epicenter of writers did to your sense of competition and comparison. It really ripped off the Band-Aid because also I fell in love with Maine so much.
00:27:38
Speaker
I really didn't care what was going on anywhere else. But but where is this? Like when you write, you you have to tell yourself, you have to find this balance of like, I am the worst writer in the world and I'm the best writer in the world. And it's like, it's never, there's not really ever a weak equilibrium or homeostasis. It's just cut like every second it's just pushable, pushable. So that came back. It's too ingrained in my, um what do you call it? your you know, the the the bridges in your brain, whatever those are called. Whatever you keep telling yourself, you'll start to believe. So um that's just always been in there. and
00:28:22
Speaker
I still feel like if I see someone I know post something and it's like, oh, publisher's marketplace, I have a new book. I'm like, shit, it's been four years since I published a book. And then I have to talk myself off the ledge. But we do have a great literary community here, but it's smaller and it's dorkier and it's less competitive. And we have, you know, amazing writers.
00:28:48
Speaker
on the island there's writers we have um a lot of kids book illustrators and writers but right off the 20 minute ferry ride in Portland we have um the main writers and publishers alliance and they just had this great literary festival and we had Oh my gosh, wait, Melissa Fabos was just here. Morgan Telty lives in Maine. Mike Paternini. Everybody who who I'm not mentioning is here. Lilly King lives here. So we have these great writers and it's it's easy to see them because there's kind of so few of us. There's other people than Stephen King. I never see Stephen King. he No one sees Stephen King, but there's just a smaller community and it's,
00:29:31
Speaker
It's just slower and it's really supportive. It's really beautiful. um so So we're still kind of in the know. and We have internet access, of course. and ah But it's just you really slow down and and think cautiously about what you're going to put your time into. And also the stories are I feel really lucky to be a journalist in Maine too because it's such a big state. And I don't know, I think it's easier for me to find stories. Like when I, how do I find a story? Sometimes I just go outside and walk around and I swear a story will pop up.
00:30:10
Speaker
I had a student and when I taught at a documentary school called the SALT Institute for Documentary Studies, and one of my students could not find a story. He was supposed to write about anything in Maine, any person in Maine, and I said just go outside and walk around and just see what happens. And the first person he comes across is this man who's whistling.
00:30:31
Speaker
And he's known as the whistler because it's such a small place. You start to see the same people everywhere you go. And every time I would see this man, he's whistling. and obnoxiously and and I he said I saw this guy the whistle like whistler know who the whistler is so the whistler we learned he walks and whistles everywhere he goes but some rule was created in Portland Maine in the city where you're not allowed to stand and whistle for more than like five minutes because of this man was driving so many people crazy with his whistling he has to keep moving and he has to keep walking when he's whistling and So there's a story. So, you know, everywhere you go, you you can find something. You just have to like slow down and listen. Oh, that's great. It's ah I always like talking about the that comparison trap to, you know, looking online and you to your point of, you know, you have to be delusional enough to like be like, I'm a great writer one day and a shitty one the next day, sometimes within the same hour. And it. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. and it's And when you're feeling like that and then you're seeing what people might post and you know just comparing your own trajectory to somebody else's and it always feels like you're not where you want to be. or it's ah It's a really hard headspace through which to then generate work or even be a contributor to the literary community at large. so it's like yeah How have you just metabolized that or worked through that?
00:32:05
Speaker
It's such a beast. It's like, you know, you feed the witch wolf you decide to feed. I'm really bad at it. So I sometimes I just like I have to do extremes. If I start getting in a rut psychologically,
00:32:22
Speaker
I will, not always. I mean, sometimes I just pull the covers over my head and and just think nonstop about how shitty I am. But also I'll do things like I will sign up for something that is, has nothing to do with writing, but it's so big and of a commitment that I like have to pull away largely. Like, um, this year I signed up for a, what was like a 10 K and a fundraiser.
00:32:50
Speaker
So it for like, I had to hold myself accountable to something not that had to do with writing. And so I found value in some other place besides writing. That's one thing I do just like make sure I nurture other aspects of my life, especially like community service. Another thing I try to tell myself is that comparison is the death of creativity. I tell myself that a lot.
00:33:14
Speaker
um I try to change my way of thinking. like my my therapist I have have a therapist I see every two weeks. My therapist has me do this um exercise where i like i I literally have a pair of heart-shaped rose-colored glasses on my desk. and Every time I am writing and I start thinking something that's counterproductive,
00:33:38
Speaker
i I have to put them on. And like it's a reminder not to see my myself through poop-colored glasses, but through like heart-shaped rose-colored glasses. And it's just this act of stopping a certain way of thinking by doing something physical. And so that kind of helps. And another thing I try to tell myself is I try to remind myself that like the books that people are writing are are going to contribute and help make the world a better place. Or if not, it's a capital endeavor, the capitalistic endeavor that I don't want anything to do with. like If it's a shitty book and it's published just to make money and someone took a corner and it's really clear, I just i just kind of like stay away. But um if someone wrote a book
00:34:30
Speaker
that I would never want to write. I'm like, great, the world needs this book. But it's really hard. I mean, it's I try not to. And also I'll just like delete social media if it's in the the the Bad Wolf. But it's I mean, I think every writer does it. I really do. If not, then they're a holder than my I am. So tell me about how you walked into this story that you've got for The Atomist.
00:34:57
Speaker
Thank God. Okay.
Uncovering Stories in Maine
00:34:59
Speaker
I mean, it was such a an accident. I really do think that if I look back on my career and it's like a bullet point lift or a CV of all the the good things that have happened, all of them are like accidents. You know, the first book I published, I will say no one and it was a Kirk's best book of the year. No one would publish it. It took me eight years to sell it.
00:35:25
Speaker
my agent even, my agent of the time said, let's just put it away and and start the next book. But I sent it off to publishers on my own. it's like I sent to an email that was like, I'm representing myself like a boss and would hit send and it finally worked. So everything is like accidental. um With this piece, it ties into Peaks Island where I live. We have a community church, the new bracket church that we attend.
00:35:56
Speaker
um it's It's like an everything bagel of a church. We have atheists, we have Jewish folks, we have Christians, we have Buddhists, we have people just going for the food at the end of church. It's an amazing place. We have an amazing pastor, Reverend Will Greene. His sermons are really just like philosophical lectures or call to um social activism. And so my my husband, Andrew, he is an architect and an engineer, we are completely different brains. He is an Excel worksheet. And I am like a washing machine. And he he is so much smarter than me. And and just well read and just he's so brilliant. And he um approached Reverend Will and said,
00:36:49
Speaker
Have you ever heard of the paradox of tolerance? And if so, will you give a sermon on the paradox of tolerance? I didn't know this until a Sunday rolls around and Reverend Will starts talking about the paradox of tolerance.
00:37:03
Speaker
I did not know what the paradox of tolerance is, and I'll explain what it is. So the paradox of tolerance is ah an idea that's credited to this philosopher named Karl Popper. He was an Australian-British philosopher, and he published something, I don't remember, something like The Open Society.
00:37:23
Speaker
something like that and we after World War II. And what he says about the paradox of tolerance is if we extend unlimited tolerance to those who are intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed and tolerance with them. So Reverend Will, we're like, hold on, math, like say that again. But then he gave this example full of a neo-Nazi named Hammer, who had moved from Texas to Maine, assuming that he would be um hidden and camouflaged. He bought a lot of land in Springfield, Maine, which is basically all forest and some people, I think population 300, something like that.
00:38:13
Speaker
zu bottle this land with the intention of creating a neo-nazi training camp and recruiting neo-nazis to um strength train and practice their, I don't know, penis comparisons, whatever they do, building just hate and planning to turn Maine into a white ethno state and using violence if necessary, and taking on war brides, meaning like kidnapping women and forcing them to to live with them, and and possibly impregnating them to keep the population going. Just crazy philosophies. But we didn't know this yet. All Reverend Will knew was there's a neo-Nazi trying to recruit people to join him and turn Maine into a white ethno state. And although
00:39:00
Speaker
in our church or in society, we we encourage all types of people. There has to be a limit. There has to be a limit because neo-Nazis do not encourage all types of people. So if we let neo-Nazis just be, then they will be intolerant of other people and it's just gonna be a hot fucking mess. And so I heard about this and our newspapers were not covering this what And the reason they weren't covering this Neo-Nazi camp is because they didn't want to give him press. They didn't want to, you know, make him popular or no, they just wanted him to just disappear and go away. I thought this was really frustrating. And I decided, like, how long is this going to stick in my head? And how long is this going to be an itch that I cannot scratch? And if it still bothers me within like a couple of weeks,
00:39:56
Speaker
it's time to write about it. So it bothered me a lot. And I decided, this is crazy. I have to I have to write about this. So I started pitching this story. I pitched it first before Atavist. I pitched it to Guernica. And um they said yes. And um it was a shorter piece, maybe 1500 words. And I wrote it. And it was mostly about the it was more like the what the who what one where And, um, it was brief and we were moving along and then unfortunately something has, had something to happened at Guernica where they, um, they went on hiatus. There was, um, did you hear about this? No. Oh, okay. So this was, gosh, i it was a about seven months ago and, um,
00:40:50
Speaker
I mean, Guernica, Guernica, I never know how to say it. um They're an amazing publication of politics and art, and they're very left leaning. And so they published a piece by um an Israeli translator and peace activist. And this was kind of closer to the beginning of the genocide in Palestine. And a lot of the editors were really upset about this piece being published and giving a voice to Israel.
00:41:20
Speaker
when, um you know, there's there are so many people being slaughtered. So um it was, I didn't know about this until I got an email from my editor, Gerdiko, saying, there's a lot of shit going down right now and I'm resigning. You can keep your piece and work with a different editor or you you choose what you want to do. And I decided to pull the piece because I i cared a lot about this piece.
00:41:48
Speaker
And I love Guernica so much as a publication, but I didn't want it to get lost in the the shuffle of things and also um the magazine just stopped for a while. I don't know when it's going to run again. And I felt this piece was timely and urgent.
00:42:04
Speaker
so um So it was like months of work and um and also just urgent. There's this guy who wants to turn my state into a white ethno state. And also Maine, I should note, is a very, very white state. it's it is um it's the I think it's the whitest state in the country. um So um we i just we don't want this. And so um I started pitching it.
00:42:31
Speaker
all over the place. And I pitched it every possible literary magazine um or journalistic reportage place you could think of. And one of those places was the activist. And I got a response from Sayward. And one thing I loved about Sayward is that she had written a book recently called Sisters and Hate. And it's, um she spent years with ah um white supremacist women and um and so it was like a match made in heaven um and I love working with women editors too um and Sayward and I just like clicked and she she has been in the trenches with this kind of stuff and and I'm pretty new to it. This is the first time I've written about neo-Nazis and um
00:43:22
Speaker
So I said yes, and I said yes to the dress. And we started working together, but so and I was like so exhausted in dripping in neo-Nazi shit that I was so tired of it. But then Sayward said, your piece is about, I think maybe it was 5,000 words, but we publish pieces that are 10,000 words and more. So you're going to have to you know op it And so then I then i moved on to the second phase of the reporting. And it wasn't just about you know what I'd heard about the neo-Nazis. And it was go to the camp. It was really get deeper and deeper into the story of these neo-Nazis, visit the camp. And then there's a bigger part of this piece that I haven't mentioned yet. And this is this guy, Crash Berry. He's one of the
00:44:15
Speaker
the few remaining kind of like muckracking private investigator reporters that I have heard of um where he actually like gets dressed um in disguise and he's not an armchair reporter he he goes into the belly of the beast and one of the bigger things about this story The Crash of the Hammer is that it's not just about this neo-nazi camp that was happening, it's the story of how the story was spread. Because newspapers weren't really reporting on Hammer and his camp and his goals, how did people find out about it? Crash
00:44:56
Speaker
was kind of this crashberry was the spark of the world learning about Hammer and his as training camp in Maine. so Crash is a homesteader, a lumberjack. He's done everything from like working in alpaca farms. He's been a journalist for for decades and decades and decades. He's done everything. um he He writes about shitty people in Maine, shitty people in power of Maine,
00:45:25
Speaker
in Maine and he he gets in disguise and attends events that they're in. He creates, what do you call it? I think they're called like sock puppets where he creates like a fake persona online and we we'll be following these um Nazi influencers on like social media and conversing with them. So he he basically gets in there and Crash spent years following Hammer.
00:45:55
Speaker
And it was through Crash where I learned about all these details of Hammer. So the story for the Atavis is not just about this the paradox of tolerance with the neo-Nazis, but it's about this real old school reporter who really risks his life, in my opinion, to get stories
Impact of Investigative Journalism
00:46:17
Speaker
out and independently reports them and independently shares them. And because of Crash,
00:46:23
Speaker
the story trickled out and people in Springfield started to learn about this neo-Nazi camp and the word spread and they were intolerant of this toler of of this intolerant person and because of Crash, the people of Springfield basically scared a Nazi out of town and and this Nazi felt it was too dangerous for him who wants to turn Maine into a white ethno state with violence if necessary, he felt he was he was unsafe in Maine and he left. So that's what the story is. And it was a lot and I spent a lot of time with Crash too. I brought i have two kids now and i I don't completely want to separate my work from my family.
00:47:10
Speaker
but also sometimes I have no choice because I'm a mother. So I'm also a soccer mom. So this soccer mom brought my kids to the neo-Nazi camp and no one was there. And we also went to visit Crash at his homestead and we stayed for a couple of days and really got to know Crash, amazing human. um So now we call him Uncle Crash Defer.
00:47:31
Speaker
um we've We were really good friends now. um It was an amazing experience. um so So this short piece for the for Garinica turned into this something that took over my entire life and part of my family's life. And yeah, it was it was a wonderful experience.
00:47:48
Speaker
What was the part of the story that broke it to a point of that 5,000 word story to something that did sustain the the larger Atavistian word count? like That's a good question.
00:48:02
Speaker
um I think it like so so one of uh a teacher I had in graduate school his name's Vijay Seshadri he's a poet and one of the best teachers I've ever had and he told us that um if what is on the surface of a story like the who what when where why is also what's kind of brewing underneath the surface. It's one-dimensional and art is three-dimensional, therefore, this is not art. so I think the first version that I wrote, the 5,000-word piece, was who, what, when, where, why? like This happened. Isn't this crazy? An end. um But with the Atavus, and this is what SayWord really encouraged me to do when we spoke for the first time, is to really like breathe life into it. um
00:48:55
Speaker
make the characters three-dimensional, show us like what they're doing when the camera's not rolling, show us, ah I mean it was you know the basic show don't tell and the first piece I did it was not art it was reported and this piece is so much more artful it shows I mean it it has so much more detail that is showing us and not telling us it has um It has hammer shitting in the woods because he doesn't have anywhere to go to the bathroom. It has hammer um carving apples and making apple cider at an Airbnb, which was eventually outed and banned for housing a neo-nazi and things to crash, um which got the word out to this town. It it told us how um not just like you know the townsfolk
00:49:51
Speaker
didn't want him there. they They threatened to backhoe him into the ground and not tell anybody. like It was just, it came so much more alive. um i went When we went to visit visit Crash, one of the most beautiful things I saw was how he um was taking care of the animals on his homestead. And he told my kids, when I wasn't there, my son Theo and Simone, my daughter Simone told me this, Crash told them, It's our job to take care of these animals and give them the best life possible. And that he was talking about these two pigs that he rescued from a factory farm. And if I hadn't spent this time with Crash, seeing him in his tender moments, I just thought he would have been like this really hardcore, intimidating reporter, but he is really just this soft teddy bear of a person. So, um, it was really with the Atavist.
00:50:44
Speaker
And what I love so much about the Atavists is if they they want their stories to be three-dimensional and their artful stories, even though they're fact-based. Well, I think that it also speaks to the patients required to report a story of this nature and just spending time with people. If you can, it's hard in this climate and this journalistic climate to put forth those kind of resources and to to be patient like that. But that patients did.
00:51:12
Speaker
net that little that anecdote with your kids, which closes out the story about, what you know, with the pigs and Christopher. And but yeah, so yeah what is it about these stories that really requires that degree of patience is as much as we might want to like rush to publish?
Adding Depth to Storytelling
00:51:30
Speaker
Oh, gosh, you'll be entering through the side door instead of going through the front door. um Because with readers, I think, ah at least for me, when I'm reading a book,
00:51:42
Speaker
Often, i but if it's nonfiction, if it's journalism, I see like the headline or the topic, and that's what grabs me. But then after a while, you get used to that big thing. You get used to the thing that you entered the front door through. And then what else is there? like what Who cares? So it's a neo-Nazi.
00:52:08
Speaker
I mean, neo nazi, the worst thing you could imagine is a neo nazi, but then you get used to the fact that he's a neo nazi. It's like, so what, what else is there? What's what's so what makes this um like a living breathing thing rather than just this flashy topic. So, um, and you also you learn learn to humanize people. I mean, as much as we want to like, hate a neo nazi, what kind of What can we see in there that that kind of helps us understand him a little more? Not like, forgive him. I don't i don't think I'll ever be there. Yeah, that starts to tiptoe into tolerance, right? Yeah, I'm not there. I'm not there. But I say, I didn't do that with this neo-Nazi. I didn't. And that was on purpose. There's enough that makes him interesting and there's enough to write about. I had no intention of
00:53:06
Speaker
trying to find a way to empathize with him or sympathize. I'm not there, and I don't think I will be. um so So I did not hang out with a neo-Nazi for this story. I just got as much facts as I could via Crash. But I did spend a lot of time with Crash, and I still hang out with Crash. When I first started working as a journalist or studying journalism, the teachers some of the teachers I had said, never buy your subject a cup of coffee.
00:53:36
Speaker
Um, because you don't want to have like any kind of like tit for tat exchange, like never have a relationship that's informal with them. And I think that's bullshit. Like you can't, it's almost like if you're a photographer and you see a car crash, are you going to take pictures of it or are you going to put down your camera and go like, see if everybody's okay.
00:54:00
Speaker
And with spending all this time with humans, it's not objective. It's it's a it's a relationship. So, um you know, Crash and I are buddies now. we We met up for coffee and lunch in a park a couple weeks ago. And he, we met halfway. He lives um about an hour from Lewiston, Maine. I live about an hour from Lewiston, Maine. So we met halfway. We met in a park. I get there, um and I just left prison. I'm looking for Crash. I don't see him anywhere. But I do see a ah very tall man with um who's kind of slumping around in the park with long hair and a big hat on. And I was like, no. that kid And I looked at his shoes.
00:54:47
Speaker
and they were paisley crocs and i know crash wears paisley crocs and it was crash that he came in disguise to this park just to surprise me so like i mean how are you not going to have a friendship with a person like that so so yeah i think um it's It is hard to slow down and and just like wait for the proper amount of time a story requires. But if you don't, your editor is going to have you keep redoing the story and going back for more and more, especially if you have an ah editor of, like ah say words, caliber. um so So it'll bite you in the ass eventually.
00:55:26
Speaker
Well, I think what adds another layer of that rounds out the story and makes it more artful is your narration and your voice in the first-person nature in which you deploy your own voice and in the story. So ah was was that ever-present? and ah Or if it you know or how do how do you think about that that aspect of the narration, whether you're going to be in or out of the story?
00:55:53
Speaker
Yeah, totally. I mean, it was even more present before Sayward went in with her her editing goggles on, and she toned my voice down a lot. And I think, I mean, I don't know, I think I like to write like I talk, and then I dramatize it a little bit more. And I think I went in this one knowing I wanted a casual voice, because I wanted the reader to feel comfortable reading about something that's really upsetting. I mean, my mom is from, she was born in Poland. We have relatives that were in Auschwitz. She
00:56:36
Speaker
If I told her, you know, I wrote a story about a neo nut, so do you want to read it? She would say no, but since I'm her daughter, she would want to read it or I would make her read it. And and to have like a ah calming, casual voice guiding the reader through the story makes it a little warmer and um less, I don't know, less uptight and isolated and upsetting. um it It kind of makes the reader feel like you're next to this person rather than the person is like this,
00:57:06
Speaker
omnipotent narrator from above, a godlike presence shouting down at you. So that's part of part of the thing. And also my insecurity as a writer chimed in and said, like, you know, make yourself likable as a narrator, because you don't want to lose the reader.
00:57:25
Speaker
But they were definitely toned down my voice a lot. I thought my voice was robotic in this one compared to what it was originally. Oh wow. Well yeah, i found i I found a certain irreverent quality to your voice and a dryness to it that I appreciated with the story. I almost felt like you were this.
00:57:44
Speaker
if the the small communities through which that drive this guy out are kind of like ah a snapshot of an episode of The Simpsons or something, I felt like you were like a really, you were a really good observer of what was happening. And your little, you know, kind of punchy, dry sentences of your observations here and there I thought were, ah to me, a a good pop of color. So. you I appreciate it. Yeah, and I suspect maybe it feels robotic because you you were on a different side of the dial maybe at first and it came back a bit. But at least to me reading it for the first time, it did feel there was a vibrancy and a freshness that I loved from your na narration of it. What were some of the maybe hiccups or hurdles that you experienced while reporting the piece that you had to kind of work through, run jump over, run through? Yes, of course. Sure. um
00:58:38
Speaker
Well, one of the biggies, I mean, it's always challenging for me to you know put on my reporter hat. and And I just assume no one wants to talk about certain things. um Like my second book, The In-Betweens, it's about um a camp of mediums that has been gathering, I mean, different mediums, but ah mediums have that has been gathering since the late 18 1800s, sorry, 1800s. And I spent a lot of time with these mediums um and, you you know, um I would assume that they're very defensive. I would be defensive if I were a medium. If I could see dead people, I would assume nobody believed me and I would be very defensive. um But when I, so I was surprised that they were completely open to talking about their lives and and what they see and hear. um With Springfield too,
00:59:38
Speaker
I knew the town did not want to be known as ah town the neo-Nazi town of Maine. They want to move past it. I had read some quotes about this. I had talked to some some Springfield locals about this that Crash connected me to. So when my family and I went to Springfield, we got a cabin in the woods. and we we were i My intention was to go find the neo-Nazi camp and also talk to locals.
01:00:07
Speaker
and um And I just picked up on the vibe that people do not want to talk about this. I also knew they didn't want to talk about it. So um so you know I brought my family with me. And we're going into, say, the general store. And I'm supposed to be asking questions to people um because it's a you know it's like a four-hour drive for us.
01:00:30
Speaker
um I just kind of had one chance to do it. And and i I just didn't feel comfortable. So I bought some gum for my daughter, and we looked around the store, and I was like, how am I going to like how am i best going to use my time here if we're not going to be talking about a neo-Nazi? I'm going to write down what I see in the store and and um describe the scene and the setting.
01:00:55
Speaker
um And then after we're paying for the gum, I didn't say, hi, I'm a journalist. And I would like, to I just said, you know, what? So we're just passing through what tell me about this. We heard about a neo Nazi that used to live around here. And this woman said, you know, yeah, I never had the pleasure of beating him. But blah, blah, blah, blah. So we got some quotes, but um I just knew people didn't want to talk about it. So that was really hard. Also, it's a really, really rural area. So it's hard to like
01:01:27
Speaker
catch people on the street. um And then when I call different places in Springfield to see if people would talk to me, I cold called people. So many people hung up on me. No one would talk about it.
01:01:40
Speaker
And that, just like I'm sensitive, so that made me feel bad. But I just kept moving on. And another thing was, how do I write about a Neo-Nazi if I'm not going to spend hours listening to him rant on YouTube or whatever platform he was using?
01:01:58
Speaker
um Crash had done all the dirty work. So how can I make sure I'm not just like using Crash and all the live work he did to for my story? um I'm letting Crash tell the story because he's the one who found it. And I think those were the two biggies. Those were the two biggies. People didn't want to talk about it. And I didn't want to spend hours and hours and hours listening to a neo-Nazi, but it all worked out.
01:02:27
Speaker
Oh, I tell you Mira I hate cold calling it's my yeah it's the god You would think when I tell people that I hate like talking on the phone I hate cold calling they're like you're a journalist I'm like I hate it and you I'm like and I tell them like you'd be surprised how many reporters hate fucking cold calling and hate talking on the phone hate it ah Yeah It's the worst. I hate talking on the phone. I never answer my phone and I never call people. I always find like any way possible of just slipping it in in ah in a different way. I mean, I don't know how.
01:03:05
Speaker
become a birthday party clown and that's how you start to interview people. I don't know. Anything possible. I know. So some of the, when I, if I have people on the show who have been reporters for like 40 years, you know, back, back that pre-day email, they, they've developed a muscle around the phone where they just like, yeah, it's just what you do. You know, I don't even think about it. Just pick up the phone call, call, call, call, call, call, call. call all day long. And um after email and and stuff, very it's harder and harder. But it just doesn't really align with my personality to to make those kind of calls. That that salesmanship, you need to you need to really sell yourself in 15 to 20 seconds so they don't even hang up on you or on a voicemail that they might call you back. And it's the worst. I just hate it. But there but it's the job, I guess. So yay for us. yeah
01:03:57
Speaker
there Well, Mira, this has been an awesome conversation. What I love doing at the end of these conversations is asking the the guest, you in this case, for a recommendation of some kind. And that's just like anything you're excited about that you want to share with the listeners. Oh, yeah. I will tell you right now. I have a few. ah So there's a journalist who I love so very much um that I feel like he he's as well known as
01:04:29
Speaker
others but he's one of the best writers I've ever read and his name is Michael Paternitti. Oh he's the best. i Oh my god. Yeah I'm looking right at uh love uh where where's his collection I've got it on my bookcase. wayss dying Yeah yeah I love him a long fall of 111 heavy uh just was ah just a masterpiece that uh anyway yeah keep going Paternitti know who you're talking about he's a master. how yeah read mike patternini he also did a really amazing piece um on i think it was this american life so he does everything and um he's just he and his wife sarah are amazing great people they have a non-profit that they started called the telling room and great book of
01:05:18
Speaker
It's also, yeah, it's one of Mike's book and books. And The Telling Room is ah this nonprofit for youth um interested in in writing. And it's an after-school program. It's free for everyone. um So I would say look at The Telling Room online. I think it's just thetellingroom.org. And Mike Petronini's writing, if you want to learn how to write well, read Mike Petronini. I also started reading recently Sarah Gerard's new book,
01:05:47
Speaker
Um, Carrie Caroline Coco. And Sarah's written fiction. She has a collection of essays. um And this is a new book of hers of investigative reporting. And she's writing about a friend of hers who was killed by her roommate, um the friend's roommate. And um it's just it's an amazing piece. She's done so much work. And now Sarah, after after you know jumping into something, something personal happened to her and she decided to,
01:06:19
Speaker
write about this. um and And now she's going to get her master's in criminal, oh gosh, like criminal law or something like that. So I thought i thought i think she's an amazing person. um So I think those are the two I would recommend right now. oh And also just go outside and talk to people or go outside and just be in the woods.
01:06:44
Speaker
Those are things I recommend. Oh, for sure. and Yeah, definitely the woods. But I think your point of kind of that that slow journalism of going out and seeing people face to face, especially where we're so digitally interfaced, to do things face to face, it just engenders so much more trust. And ah in journalists are just under fire. And to have that face to face and a handshake, I think it goes a long way.
01:07:12
Speaker
It's going to give you the best story. It's going to give you like the real breathing, living story. If you slow down and just like, you know, just what is it? The, the art of fact, think of it it as the artifact and rather than like a piece, you got to do a piece, a piece, a piece. Oh, I love that. Well, Mira, this has been great. So thank you so much for the time and for this amazing piece you wrote for the activist. So I look forward to when we can maybe have another conversation of this nature again.
01:07:39
Speaker
i mean Anytime you'd like, you can stay with us. Oh, fantastic. That's awesome. Nice. Thank you for your time, too.
01:07:50
Speaker
Awesome. Yes. Hey, thanks to you for listening, coming this far, being along for the CNFing journey. Also, thanks to Mira and Sayward, as always, magazine.adivis.com, so you can read the story. BrendanMira.com, hey hey, where you can subscribe to the monthly Rage Against the Algorithm newsletter that went out today, November's edition.
01:08:11
Speaker
You can also subscribe to the podcast on your podcast platform of choice, and that is gonna do it. too As always, stay wild, see ya in efforts, and if you can't do, interview. See ya.