Undercover Inside Hate Groups with Matson and Tawni Browning

The Preamble

Sharon McMahon

Government, History, Storytelling, Education

4.9 • 15.1K Ratings

🗓️ 26 July 2023

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On today’s episode of Here’s Where It Gets Interesting, Sharon has a conversation with Matson and Tawni Browning about their book, The Hate Next Door. Matt gets candid about his time working undercover in white supremacist groups and what it was like to balance his dueling realities: where the job ended and where his home life began. Matt and Tawni also talk about the type of person white supremacist hate groups target for recruitment and the types of messaging they rely on to spread their violent ideologies.

Special thanks to our guests, Matt and Tawni Browning, for joining us today. You can order a copy of The Hate Next Door here.

Hosted by: Sharon McMahon

Guest: Matson and Tawni Browning

Executive Producer: Heather Jackson

Audio Producer: Jenny Snyder

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello friends, welcome. Thank you so much for joining me today. My guests today are
0:09.2	Matt and Tani Browning, who have written a fascinating book called The Hate Next Door.
0:17.1	Undercover within the new face of white supremacy. And Matt Browning was an undercover police
0:23.2	officer in Arizona for many years and his job was to infiltrate neo-Nazi white supremacist
0:32.3	groups. And man, they have a lot of stories to tell, but also a lot of wisdom about how
0:37.8	to impact people in our communities so they can leave hate groups or never join one to begin
0:45.4	with. So let's dive in. I'm Sharon McMahon and here's where it gets interesting.
0:54.1	I am really excited to be chatting with Matt and Tani today. Thank you so much for being
0:59.6	here. I read your book with great interest and I think people are going to be very excited
1:04.9	to hear from you. We are so thrilled to be here. Thanks for having us. Okay, so let's set the
1:11.2	stage for your work. First of all, you know, of course, people love to hear behind the scenes things.
1:18.6	People love to understand what is going on in the background and the concept behind The Hate
1:26.8	Next Door, your new book, is undercover within the new face of white supremacy. And Matt, I would
1:37.2	love to hear more about how you got started doing undercover work in skinhead groups and groups
1:46.0	It was kind of an easy transition. I was working in the gang unit in Mesa and I just got tired
1:52.7	of sitting in the van. The guys on my squad were ethnic based Hispanics and so we would go to
1:58.4	different Tejano bars or Hispanic bars around town and I would get stuck sitting in the van.
2:05.0	You did it blinded. You did it. No, I couldn't blend in. And so one night it was about two,
2:12.0	three in the morning and I get a phone call from my boss and he's, you know, where you at?
2:16.5	Well, I'm sitting in the van in the parking lot where you guys, well, they had left and they're all
2:21.2	gone home and they forgot that I was sitting in the van documenting. So it was that time that I
2:26.5	thought, you know what, I think it's time to get involved in something that I can do. And then
	...

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