That Time that I was Accidentally Friends with a White Supremacist

So you guys, here's a thing that's happened this summer:

I'm part of this super low-key homeschool group in my town--for those of you playing the home game, it's the nice one, not the one with the mean moms who bullied me for several years. This nice homeschool group trends more hippy than not, with the kind of people who drink homemade kefir out of jars and pass around grain-free snack bars and form nature co-ops. We used to have an afternoon playgroup every week. We've gone on camping trips together. I chip in on the natural foods group buy sometimes. I love them.

One of the moms in this group was among the hippiest of them all. She once lovingly explained to me why tampons are bad. She sometimes brought homemade jello--like HOMEMADE jello, made with, like, organic gelatin and applesauce and coconut oil, and she ate it out of a Mason jar. On a hike, she gamely pretended to consult with me about tree identification via bark, politely ignoring the obvious fact that I obviously cannot identify any tree beyond if it's a maple or an oak or a sycamore, and for sure not by its bark. We were Facebook friends, and I was really into all the photos that she posted of her sheep and the stuff that she wove on her honest-to-god loom. On one camping trip, she taught my kid how to use a drop spindle. I really liked her, you guys. I really, really liked her.

She and her husband are farmers, because, you know, of course they are, and they sell at some of our local farmer's markets. That's not important right this second, but hold onto it.

Okay, so a couple of months ago I was scrolling Facebook, as you do, and my friend had vaguebooked some weird post about people who were spreading lies about her. I had no idea what she was talking about, which is generally the point of vaguebooking, but in the comments to her post, someone commiserated with her and said it was awful, all those awful things people were saying about her in our town's local Facebook group.

Does your town have one of those? A sort of indie little Facebook group where people ask for recommendations of good carpenters and bitch about the road construction and sometimes gossip? Our town has two--an official one and a sort of anti-official one for the snarky people who can't say anything nice. I swear that I've heard more breaking news on these groups that later ends up in the newspaper! I also know all the good carpenters, and where to get a watch fixed, and that the McDonald's by the highway always tells people that they're out of soft-serve when really they just don't want to get the machine fixed.

So OBVIOUSLY I immediately clicked onto that Facebook group and scrolled down to see who was talking trash about this friend, and indeed, people were talking trash about her!

Okay, here's another tangent: last year, in the county over from mine, a guy committed a hate crime by vandalizing a synagogue. He'd originally planned to burn it down, and still had bomb-making supplies in his car when he was arrested. His trial recently happened, and as part of it the transcript of the FBI interview was released, and on page 70ish of this interview transcript he gives the first names of two people who were members of a white nationalist hate group, Identity Evropa. He claims that these people had dinner with him in a local diner, and within a couple of days of that he'd used a money order to pay dues and join this group. He's pretty disjointed, about what you'd expect, but there's a pretty strong implication that these people who met with him are the ones who recruited him into this hate group, not long before he became radicalized enough to commit an actual hate crime.

And now we're back to the story: in his interview, he gave the first names of these people he met with, the members of Identity Evropa, and their first names matched the first names of my friend and her husband. People were claiming that they WERE these people, and were trashing them and telling people not to buy produce from them and that they should be banned from the farmer's market, etc.

I've had mean lies spread about me before, and it sucks, so I was loaded for bear at this point, and I immediately went into research mode. It shouldn't be that hard to prove that my friend wasn't the person named in the FBI transcript, and shame on the FBI for making it so easy for someone to be falsely accused like that.

Step 1: I found the FBI transcript for myself, and read it for myself. And yes, the names did match, and the location that he gave for their meetup was feasible. BUT in the interview, he also gave the woman's handle that she used when she posted on the Discord message board associated with Identity Evropa. So...

Step 2: I Googled that handle and Discord, and the first hit was Unicorn Riot, a non-profit that specifically worked to obtain and post the messages from neo-Nazi Discord chat boards. You can search this by Discord handle, and doing so gives you all the leaked posts from that specific handle. There's no context to tell you what the user is replying to, so all you really have to go by are what that user says.

I read through all of the posts that this specific user posted, looking for clues to help me prove that this person was not my friend. Except that all of the identifying information that she gave did line up--not enough to definitively identify her, but enough that, frustratingly, I couldn't definitively say it wasn't her, either. She posted pictures of her sheep. My friend has sheep. She posted a picture of a weaving that she'd done. My friend weaves. She posted the sexes and ages of her children. My friend has children of those ages and sexes. She posted a picture of her newborn. My friend's baby was born then. She posted about homeschooling. My friend homeschools.

At some point, although I was still looking for identification details that would prove that this Discord user wasn't my friend, I went back and also started taking screenshots of the upsetting, racist things that the Discord user was posting. She posted about taking the gentle children's world history curriculum, Story of the World, and supplementing it for her children with another book that purports to be a history just of white people, and is used as a call to arms by a LOT of white supremacists. She derided a particular self-help book as "anti-white." She claimed that there was no such thing as a Native American genocide, and that Native Americans could be prospering but "do not today for other reasons." She wrote these words: "Any Whites who have spent time living in a neighborhood or attending a school with a non-white majority know the strife that Whites endure."

You see where this is going, right?

But still, it wasn't definitive that this racist Discord user spewing upsetting, racist things was my friend, I mean, it wasn't definitive to me at the time. Until--and I don't remember if I found this link on the Discord leaks, or if it was another comment on the Facebook group that gave it to me--but either way, I learned that this person had a short-lived YouTube series. In it, she goes by her Discord handle, and tells us about plantain and yarrow and the benefits of bone broth.

Step 3: I clicked on the YouTube channel and played the first video, the one on yarrow. Twenty-two seconds in, my friend's voice says, "Greetings from the homestead. I'm Volkmom." Two minutes and 45 seconds in, she informs me that "race is sacred."

And that's it. She basically handed me the clearest way to identify her--I'd know her voice anywhere.

The Facebook gossip was absolutely correct. This Discord user really wasn't my friend, but only because I can't be friends with someone whose worldview is not just wrong, but abhorrently wrong. I feel sick to my stomach, wondering why she hid this about herself, why I could be so fond of someone who had such a rotten heart. She was one of my aspirational Facebook friends, you know those ones who you read their Facebook posts and you're all, "Gee, I wish I wanted to install a hoop garden and keep sheep! Aww, look at how pastoral they all are, sitting in the sun and eating blackberries!" My kids know her. My kids like her! I've now given my children memories of hanging out at the lake with a white supremacist.

I thought she was so great, you guys.

Unfortunately, this wasn't one of those things where everyone in the know could simply be all, "Hey did you know so-and-so is basically a neo-Nazi? We're not going to hang out with them again, okay? Okay!" That's because remember when I told you to hang onto the knowledge that this woman and her husband sell at the farmer's market?

They sell at the farmer's market. And this fact is blowing up my town.

My town apparently can't legally evict them, although another farmer's market, run not by the city but as a non-profit, did. The mayor says that sure, he super hates white supremacy, but the town also arrested a peaceful protester who was simply standing next to their booth holding a sign saying she'd been harassed by them. The town makes all of the anti-racism protesters stand outside the farmer's market, but the creepy dudes with the visible knives, who literally told a reporter that they were Three Percenters--you know, the actual right-wing militia that was active at the Charlottesville rally? Yeah, they get to hang out in front of their booth. On Saturday, less than half an hour after the peaceful protester was arrested, my kids and I walked past their booth and past a whole group of those guys laughing and chatting in front of it. I'd have had to push past them if I wanted to approach the booth. Most people were pretending like they didn't exist, but plenty of people were squeezing past to deliberately buy from them, as well.

It has been weeks and weeks of this mess, there's been a conflict there for the past two Saturdays, at least. And then on Monday, driving the big kid to horseback riding, I heard on the radio the breaking news that the city is SUSPENDING THE ENTIRE FARMER'S MARKET. They say that they're suspending it for two weeks, but who knows?

Are a bunch of farmers and producers going to lose a lot of money? For sure. The farmer's market here is bustling, even when white supremacists and their pet right-wing militias scare away a bunch of potential customers.

Are they saving us from an incident in which people are going to get seriously hurt? It's starting to seem like it. I mean, I guess? If arresting peaceful protesters but letting avowed Three Percenters stand armed in the exact same spot is honestly the best that the city can do to keep its people safe at a farmer's market, of all places, then sure, I guess, just shut the damn thing down and we'll all be racist or not quietly inside our own homes.

You guys, I am not built for the soul-searching and internal conflict and Feelings that this has made me feel. The weird guilt that I was accidentally friends with a white supremacist. The upset that I really liked her, and the worry that maybe I should talk to her and tell her--I don't even know, that racism isn't okay?--and I'm doing the wrong thing by avoiding her, instead. Or should I join the protesters? I want to hate her and demonize her, but man, I can't get the picture out of my head of hanging out around a campfire with her, listening to her and the other hippy moms talking about orgone boxes (WHICH ARE ACTUALLY A THING AND NOW I HAVE TO GO RESEARCH THEM AGAIN TO MAKE SURE THEY'RE NOT RACIST, BECAUSE MY LIFE HAS BECOME ME QUESTIONING ALL OF MY MEMORIES), and how she was really nice and I liked her.

And who else do I know who's secretly racist? That's the thing. I don't trust my pleasant memories of pleasant times anymore. I don't trust all of my friends anymore. I don't trust myself to know who's a great person and who's a really, really, really terrible person.

ANYWAY... Apologies for the last few paragraphs basically being a bonkers, incoherent rant. I don't really have any summing up thing to say, or, like, some kind of profound insight or whatever. Mostly, I just wanted to tell you about this crappy thing that's been happening and how I'm feeling super crappy about it.

If you, too, were ever accidentally friends with a white supremacist for a while, let me know and we can start a club!

Kauai Day #7: Last Things

I feel like I have a habit, on practically every trip, of barely taking photos on our last day. And so it continued for this trip. For some reason, I took a photo of our condo TV, because although I'd never actually pay for cable (that's a lie, because we bought cable one year during football season, but now that I'm thinking of it that was probably, like, a decade ago, so do with it what you will), whenever we're on vacation the kids and I can watch the snot out of Animal Planet, Travel Channel, Discovery Channel, and the one that's always showing those ridiculous home improvement or nonsensical house hunting shows.

I'm guessing this is Animal Planet, since Will is completely immersed in a rerun of the Westminster Dog Show:

We didn't have anything really pressing on our to-do list for our last day on Kauai. One of the places that I'd been wanting to look at was Queen's Bath, which was practically in our neighborhood, but when we drove by it the neighborhood association had the gate access to it closed and locked. The neighborhood ostensibly put the gate up to keep people from endangering themselves at Queen's Bath in dangerous conditions, but even the guidebook that I used as my bible insisted that the neighborhood made it a habit of keeping the gate locked almost all of the time, regardless of conditions at Queen's Bath. The kind of obvious speculation is that they just want to keep people out of their neighborhood and away from the water access, leaving them with an unofficially private coastline. So then people just trespass around the gate, and it's turned into a Thing.

Interestingly, while we were on Kauai a story blew up in the local newspaper about a church youth group that had all gone to Queen's Bath that week, WHILE THE GATE WAS LOCKED--GASP! The plot thickens when you find out that the group actually entered the path to Queen's Bath through a friend's property that is part of the neighborhood and that abuts the path, so technically they didn't "go around" the locked gate, AND it highlights the fact that when the gate is indefinitely locked, apparently the only people who can legally access what's supposed to legally be a public right-of-way are the adjacent property owners. AND it's apparently a wealthy neighborhood, so the whole thing just gets more culturally charged.

AND the church youth group? It's the one made famous by its portrayal in Soul Surfer, the biopic about the girl whose arm got bitten off by a shark while she surfed near her home on Kauai. She's apparently super religious and the movie was more about religious stuff than shark stuff (Syd and I watched it through the shark attack, and then kind of fast-forwarded through the religious parts to get to the interesting parts about her recovery and further adventures), and her super religious youth group leader--I just have to tell you that there's this whole part of the movie in which the kid bails on a youth mission trip because she wants to get more competitive with surfing and wants to practice more, her youth group leader totally makes her feel like crap for making that choice, and then, you guys, the shark attack happens DURING THE TIME PERIOD OF THAT MISSION TRIP. I swear, the movie absolutely makes it seem like this kid got bitten by a shark as Jesus karma for not engaging in missionary tourism.

Okay, I got distracted. The kid's youth group leader from Soul Surfer is the same youth group leader who took these kids to Queen's Bath. So it was interesting to follow the story in the newspaper because of that connection, too.

ANYWAY... no Queen's Bath for us, so instead we spent the morning at Anahola Beach Park. It's part of the designated Hawaiian Homelands and while there were a lot of people camping, there weren't any other tourists:

The above photo is somehow the only one that I took of Syd at this beach. If you zoom in, you can see that she's wearing her expensive Snorkel Bob rented goggles perched carelessly on the top of her head.

Now speak to yourself, in an ominous voice, "...And those goggles were never seen again."

Sigh.

I didn't get any photos of our spectacular sand fortress, or the last of the boogie boarding, or the shave ice place that we went to afterwards, or the open-air church nearby where the entire congregation was singing hymns and it was awesome, or the beach with the giant playground next to it, or the man-made ocean pool where you could swim right next to pounding waves without getting pounded yourself, or the beach where it wasn't safe to swim but was full of driftwood just above the high tide line.

Instead, I just have these last two photos of Will in the water--

--so we have to just remember the rest of it all by ourselves.

As also seems to be typical of my trips, the way back home was pure misery--over 16 hours of travel time, with everyone getting progressively crankier, and I don't know what it is about Matt+Will but they cannot get through more than 12 hours of airport travel without being at each other's throats, although at least this time no kind stranger approached me and offered to call the police for me, but if that same kind stranger had seen Will not once, but TWICE just completely leave our family and walk away without a word to anyone so that when we notice she's gone we have no idea where she is until she saunters back several minutes later and offhands that she'd just gone to the bathroom and has no idea why we're upset, and one of the times that she did this she was actually supposed to be WATCHING OUR LUGGAGE while Matt was getting food and Syd and I were in the bathroom, ourselves, so that Matt came back who knows how much time later to find our entire pile of luggage completely unattended and Will nowhere to be found... well, the stranger would probably offer to call an ambulance, instead, because I have never seen Matt so close to having a stroke.

Anyway, I *think* we came home with all of our luggage regardless, although all of my clothes look the same so who can tell, and the dog and cats were glad to see us, and I'm finally over the jet lag, so yay!

And tonight we're actually cooking an authentic Hawaiian luau menu, consisting of crock pot pork, coconut pudding, and white cake covered in shredded coconut. And mai tais, of course, although probably the locals don't actually drink mai tais that much, but the fact that a local told us what type of rum to use is good enough for me!

Kauai Day #1: Kilauea Lighthouse, 'Anini Beach, and a Spectacular Sunset

Kauai Day #2: Shave Ice, Sugarcane Ditches, and Strangers Dispensing Good Advice about Rum

Kauai Day #3: Snorkeling, Swimming, and I am Not a Good Spy

Kauai Day #4: The Ethics of Rum, A Boat Tour of the Na Pali Coast, and How Many Dramamine Did I Take?

Kauai Day #5: Seven Chickens, Two Beaches, Three Shave Ices, and Six Mostly Legitimately-Obtained Mason Jars

Kauai Day #6: All the Interesting Rocks

P.S. Want to follow along with all of our weird and wonderful trips, big and small? Check out my Craft Knife Facebook page, where in a couple of weeks it'll be a few days of Cincinnati Zoo, fossil collecting, wildflower walks, bison, and Kentucky Horse Park!

Kauai Day #6: All the Interesting Rocks

Before we went on this vacation, I was telling some of my friends one day about all of the interesting sites that I hoped to see. There's an altar stone where some archaeologists theorize that human sacrifices may have taken place. Another heiau where it's easy to see the stone placed over the spot where a white dog was sacrificed and buried, marking the land as sacred. A couple of particular stones that royal woman had to give birth leaning on, or their children couldn't be chiefs, but if a commoner gave birth against them, her child WOULD be a chief. The remains of a fort that a kinda crazy German guy built for Russia, at the same time that he was low-key trying to take over the island and giving all the places German names. A canyon that's supposed to be a lot like the Grand Canyon.

One of my friends started laughing and said, "Everything that you want to see is some kind of rock!"

Indeed, it was, and on this day in Kauai, I got to see them all.

Note: Syd wrote in her travel journal that on this day "we drove around a lot and looked at a lot of boring stuff." Poor, sweet, child, forced to sightsee in paradise. Look closely at all the photos of her, and I'm sure you'll see that she was just absolutely miserable, the little lamb. And this is on top of the fact that our VERY FIRST STOP was to find the best bakery for malasadas on the entire island so we could buy them for her.

There are several heiau along the Wailua River, and although I wanted to see them all, I restrained myself. We've already seen a city of refuge on the Big Island, the solstice rocks are apparently buried in weeds, as is the bellstone, much of my company likely wouldn't appreciate the phallus stone, etc.

But Poli'ahu is well-mown, and best of all, it was built by the Menehune!

The Menehune are to Kauai something like what the Celts are to the United Kingdom: they're a historical first people that had contact with a later wave of settlers, whose descendants prospered and stayed and still exist, but because it happened so long ago and they had no written language at the time, folk storytelling has made them into an ahistorical people more magical than real.

Historians tend to get caught up in the part of the myth that portrays the Menehune as a little people, and will then claim that the Menehune couldn't have existed because there's no skeletal evidence of little people. But there is evidence of Hawaiian civilization that predates the settlers who became the native Hawaiians; for one thing, there are several structures on Hawaii built with engineering methods that the native Hawaiians didn't use, and several similarities between artifacts like these and what's been found on the Marquesas Islands. So it's reasonable to theorize that the Menehune were just people who did existed, were exterminate or just out-competed, and are now mainly legend.

Oh, another cool thing: in an 1800-era census, sixty-five entire people claimed Menehune as their race!

So did the Menehune build this? I'm going to say YES!

What was it for? WE DON'T KNOW! How cool is that?

There's a lovely lookout on the Wailua River here--

--as well as plenty of the obligatory feral chickens:

We went far enough upriver that we could see 'Opaeka'a Falls, but alas, you can't go all the way to the final, most important heiau, the one that's located directly on top of the wettest place on the planet. Ancient Hawaiians used to go there, slogging uphill through over 430 inches of rain a year, but it's a pretty impossible trek just to see a very interesting rock (with accompanying phallus stone, of COURSE), so instead we just looked at the pretty waterfall and then headed back to another set of very interesting rocks along the river, Holoholoku heiau:

Many historians theorize that humans were sacrificed here! Generally, it was supposed to be prisoners of war, but if there weren't any handy prisoners about the theory is that the executioner could sneak into some citizen's house at night and strangle him and there you go! Sacrifice!

Take a left and walk up the hill past this heiau, and you'll soon arrive at the Birthstones:

Here's where a little white dog was sacrificed and they put a rock on top of it to show that this is a holy place:

Here's Will showing disapproval of every single thing that I just said, because killing dogs is horrible:

Fun fact: the little white dogs were bred as sacrifices and as food, but they could also be companion animals, and sometimes THEY WOULD BREASTFEED FROM HUMANS.

And now you, too, know this. May you unknow it as quickly as you can.

Hey! Look at the Birthstones!

You could put your newborn's umbilical cord in a big crack there, and if a rat stole it before it had completely decomposed, then your baby would grow up to be a thief!

I can't tell what Will is looking at here. It's possible that she's simply trying to unknow all of these fun things that I've just told her:

I wanted to see something else built by the Menehune, so we drove to an overlook for the Menehune Fishpond:

It's an artificial pond blocked off from the river and used for aquaculture in ancient times:

Here we are right in front of it so you can't even see it!

On the way from Wailua River and towards the Spouting Horn, you can drive through the Tree Tunnel:

Once upon a time, a guy was landscaping his property with a zillion eucalyptus trees (this is an example of an introduced species, something that Hawaii is super vulnerable to and suffers from a LOT; the kids and I just studied this yesterday, and everything those islands have gone through with invasive species is absolutely bonkers), and when he had over 500 leftover after his project, he donated them to the county. They're supposedly a little worse for wear after a couple of hurricanes, but they're beautiful.

And now, Spouting Horn!

There used to be an even bigger blowhole next to Spouting Horn, but a sugarcane plantation owner had one of his employees bomb it with blasting powder because the salt spray was stunting just a few acres of his thousands of acres of sugarcane.

Asshole.

You can't really see it, even in my oh-so-impressive photo, below, but there were so many sea turtles happily swimming around here in the crazy-rough sea:

Here at Fresh Shave, we ate some very disappointing, and yet very hipster, shave ice:

They didn't have enough syrup, but they did have little mustaches attached to their paper straws, so I guess there's that.

And the adjacent hipster boutique had this, which made Will VERY happy:

The next thing on my list was a beach whose claim to fame is that it's near the location of a former dump.

That location means that lots of bottles got swept out to sea (sigh) and broken up and polished, and they wash ashore here. Look closely, and many of the little pebbles underfoot are actually pieces of sea glass:

You're not meant to take the historical artifacts, but apparently people do anyway, so the kids buried all of our best finds to keep them from looters, mwa-ha-ha:

Next up: Will's favorite place on the island!

And now she can say that she owns a book bought in the United States' Westernmost bookstore. AND it's Good Omens, which she has been wanting to read for several months but the waitlist for it at the library is super long on account of that Amazon Prime series.

Double win!

I got my own double win a little bit later, when it turned out that I could see Captain Cook's landing point AND Fort Elizabeth at the same stop!

And some chickens, because of course there are chickens:

Here is where Captain Cook first made landfall onto the islands of Hawaii:

And here is where this super-crazy German guy came to trade on behalf of Russia but instead got caught up in a hare-brained scheme to overthrow the Hawaiian monarchy and rule Kauai himself. He renamed a bunch of places with ridiculous German names and built a fort named after the Russian Empress Elizabeth, who was mostly notable for sleeping around a lot on her husband, who also slept around a lot.

You can hike inside the foundation--

--and up and over!

And look! Here we are back in sight of Niihau!

From here, we drove up a windy mountain road to the top of Waimea Drive and into Waimea Canyon State Park:

We're now on the other side of that mountain range from the morning, with the wettest spot on the planet between where we are now and where we began.

Here are our two people who dislike heights, sitting as far away from the edge as they can get and griping about us, most likely:

Here's my brave girl!

During our inner tubing adventure, the tour guides had told us that some of the best food on the island could be bought from the illicit food stalls at the entrance to the Waimea Canyon Lookout. Unfortunately, what with all my pit stops we didn't get there until late afternoon, when all the banana bread was sold out (ALAS!!!), but instead, they had a delicacy that I wouldn't have imagined in my wildest dreams.

They sold us fresh sugarcane!

To eat it, you chew it and it kind of collapses, releasing all its delicious juice:

It's VERY woody, so you chew and chew and chew and chew:

And then you spit the crushed, desiccated wood chunk into the paper bag that they gave you for just that purpose:

Seriously, the kids have been wanting to taste sugarcane since back before the last time we went to Hawaii! The reality was thrilling.

Also thrilling was the reality of these banana fritters:

Portrait of a picky girl:

On the way back down from the canyon overlook, the grandparents wanted to show us a spot that they'd discovered the last time they were in Kauai with my brother- and sister-in-law. It's a little stream that runs down red dirt hills, and it's the most beautiful thing on the island:

It is also possibly, as I might have discovered on a sign that I swear that I did not see until I was literally walking away from this place and back to the car, a man-made ditch and you're not supposed to be there. So... you know what, though? Whatever. It's the best place on the island and we all loved it and none of us got so much as a touch of rotovirus afterwards:

All that iron in the dirt--this is what it looks like on Mars!

Kauai Day #1: Kilauea Lighthouse, 'Anini Beach, and a Spectacular Sunset

Kauai Day #2: Shave Ice, Sugarcane Ditches, and Strangers Dispensing Good Advice about Rum

Kauai Day #3: Snorkeling, Swimming, and I am Not a Good Spy

Kauai Day #4: The Ethics of Rum, A Boat Tour of the Na Pali Coast, and How Many Dramamine Did I Take?

Kauai Day #5: Seven Chickens, Two Beaches, Three Shave Ices, and Six Mostly Legitimately-Obtained Mason Jars