S34 EP3: The Disappearing Nazi | Dirtbag Climber

Summary

Dirtbag Climber (Uncover, CBC)

S34 EP3: The Disappearing Nazi | September 22, 2025

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Overview of the Episode's Main Theme

In “The Disappearing Nazi,” investigative reporter Stephen Chua traces the dark and twisted reinventions of Davis Wolfgang Hawke—a.k.a. Jesse James, formerly Brit Greenbaum. This episode dives deep into Hawke’s transformation from a Jewish high schooler into a notorious neo-Nazi leader, the explosive unmasking of his true identity, his brief but flamboyant notoriety in the American far-right movement, and his abrupt disappearance from this world before resurfacing under new guises. The story not only examines Hawke’s shocking double life, but also offers a prescient look at how online hate flourished in the early days of the internet.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

The Washington D.C. Incident — 1999 White Pride Rally That Fizzled

• Opening Scene (01:04–01:59): Stephen Chua visits DC with documentarian Eddie Becker, recalling the heavy police presence during a 1999 white pride rally organized by Hawke.
• Eddie Becker’s Recollection: Highlights chaos and large expenditures of city resources, all stirred up by Hawke, then still in his early 20s.
• Detective Sergeant Richard Banks (03:33–03:59): Emphasizes the disruption caused by “somebody like that” gathering law enforcement from several states, shutting down Pennsylvania Avenue.

Hawke's Origins and Transformation

• Mother’s Perspective (05:02–05:22): Peggy Greenbaum describes her son as “a nice child” who underwent a “metamorphosis” in high school.
  • Quote, Peggy Greenbaum, 05:22: “He’s a big storyteller and all this kind of thing, you know, you can’t believe a thing he says, not a thing.”
• Hawke (born Brit Greenbaum) created the Knights of Freedom (KOF) in high school, then legally changed his name and moved to South Carolina for college, believing his white supremacist ideas might find resonance there.

The Move to Wofford College and Going Online

• Hidden in Plain Sight (06:24–07:26): Hawke stayed undetected at a liberal college, maintaining good grades and relationships.
• He set up the KOF as a web forum, charging $5/month, extending neo-Nazi outreach—featuring chat rooms, membership cards, even poetry.
  • Sample poem, 07:26: “On to the battlefield. We gallop with swastikas raised high...”

Public Unmasking and Fallout

• Exposure via a Student (07:37–08:09): Hawke outed himself by posting a photo in Nazi regalia; local press coverage led to student protests and police vigilance.
• Police and college officials surveilled him as a potential domestic threat (08:36–09:29).
  • Detective Sgt. Banks, 09:29: “And then here comes, of all things, a neo Nazi college student from Wofford… having meetings in the parking lot … with four different extremist groups that don’t get along.”
• Media attention snowballed, from Rolling Stone to a Fox Files interview with Chris Cuomo, which highlighted the burgeoning world of online hate.
• Peggy Greenbaum confronted her son after Columbine, worrying his rhetoric could radicalize others.
  • Quote, Peggy Greenbaum, 13:04: “How do you even know that these two crazed idiots at Columbine didn’t log on to KOF and your website might have spurred them on more…”

Was Hawke a True Believer or a Con Artist?

• Anonymous source: Claims Hawke played the role of Nazi for money and sensation, not out of conviction (14:26–15:20). He considered his followers gullible.
• Hawke’s online persona and real beliefs are debated throughout the episode.

Southern Poverty Law Center Investigation

• Mark Potok’s Perspective (16:36–19:43): The SPLC took a special interest in Hawke for his groundbreaking use of the web for hate-group organizing.
  • Mark Potok, 17:33: “He probably did have 100 to as many as 125 or even 150 people, meaning followers.”
  • Potok dismisses Hawke as a threat for violence, but notes he was “young, quite bright, and represented a real trend.”

The Big Reveal: The Jewish Neo-Nazi

• SPLC broke the story that Hawke—whose original name was Andy (Brit) Greenbaum—came from a Jewish family (19:51–21:57). This revelation spread quickly, shaming Hawke and shocking both the public and the neo-Nazi community.
• Hawke tried to deflect, even claiming his father wasn’t really his father, but the community and his own family reacted strongly.
  • Peggy Greenbaum, 21:57: “I was in such shock because it’s not the child that I knew.”
• The far-right turned on him, notably William Pierce calling him a “Hollywood Nazi” and dangerous groups like the World Church of the Creator threatening him (22:09–23:17).

Collapse and Disappearance from the Nazi Scene

• Attempted Damage Control (24:12–24:30): Hawke sent a defiant email to supporters, denying the revelations and attacking his accusers, but the damage was irreversible.
• He called for a massive DC rally—which was a spectacular failure.
  • Event Recap (26:08–30:28): Police outnumbered Nazis; basically none of Hawke’s followers showed up, while thousands of counterprotesters dominated the scene.
    • Eddie Becker, 28:44: “And none of the Nazis, Neo Nazis showed up.”
  • The city considered suing Hawke for the million-dollar security bill.
    • Det. Sgt. Banks, 29:53: “I even think he filed suit against him for the cost of the security.”
• Hawke sent an online resignation letter, abdicating his “leadership” and effectively vanishing from the movement.
  • Letter excerpt, 31:12: “Almost all of you have let down the party and the white race itself… I must therefore resign my position.”

Endings and New Beginnings

• The radical right ousted Hawke, and he faded from extremist circles—a fugitive shunned by all sides, whose notoriety dogged him for decades.
• Chua muses on Hawke’s inability to fully escape his past in the digital era (32:11), leading straight into the next phase of his life: a pivot to massive internet fraud and spam.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Peggy Greenbaum, on her son's transformation (05:22):

  "He's a big storyteller and all this kind of thing, you know, you can't believe a thing he says, not a thing."

• Detective Sgt. Richard Banks, on the chaos Hawke created (03:33):

  "That young man caused all that ... you got law enforcement agencies from four different states, the District of Columbia, our United States Capitol Police closed down Pennsylvania Avenue for a protest."

• Peggy Greenbaum, confronting her son after Columbine (13:04):

  "How do you even know that these two crazed idiots, that Columbine didn't log on to KOF and your website might have spurred them on more than any other website?"

• Mark Potok (SPLC), on why they focused on Hawke (17:20):

  "He represented something that was really happening at that time...the use of the Internet."

• On Hawke’s dramatic unmasking (20:08):

  "Now, everyone in the US knew this Nazi was Jewish. The story went viral."

• William Pierce, neo-Nazi leader (22:09):

  Described Hawke as a “Hollywood Nazi, a teenage hobbyist.”

• Detective Sgt. Banks, on the planned rally's failure and city's reaction (29:53):

  "I even think he [the police chief] filed suit against him for the cost of the security."

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 01:04–03:23: Setting the stage in DC, with recollections of the failed white pride rally and introduction of Davis Wolfgang Hawke as the elusive provocateur.
• 05:02–06:24: Family background and Hawke’s beginnings with KOF.
• 07:26–08:09: Hawke exposes himself online; student journalists connect the dots.
• 09:29–10:25: Police surveillance and threat monitoring at Wofford College.
• 11:56–12:23: TV interviews, online hate, and the beginnings of media scrutiny.
• 13:04–13:44: Peggy’s emotional phone confrontation with her son after Columbine.
• 16:36–19:43: Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) focus on Hawke as a case study of online extremism.
• 19:51–21:57: Public exposure of Hawke’s Jewish identity and fallout from hate groups and family.
• 24:12–24:30: Hawke’s furious resignation to his followers.
• 28:05–30:28: The non-event in DC; description of the day by Becker and Banks.
• 31:12–31:30: Hawke’s online abdication and disappearance from the Nazi scene.

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Episode Flow and Tone

The episode maintains a probing, investigative tone, mixing shock, irony, and incredulity at Hawke’s audacity and tragic delusion. Family members vacillate between grief and harsh disbelief, while law enforcement and anti-hate activists reflect a mixture of professional concern and retroactive astonishment. The narration neatly weaves historical context, personal testimony, and audio from primary sources, creating an engrossing true crime narrative about identity, extremism, and the digital age.

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Final Notes

This episode sets up the next chapter in Hawke’s saga: massive internet spam fraud, suggesting that while Hawke the Nazi had disappeared, his compulsions to manipulate and disrupt simply found new venues.

Transcript

[Stephen Chua]

Hey, I'm Paige desorbo, and I'm always thinking about underwear.

[Hannah Berner]

I'm Hannah Berner, and I'm also thinking about underwear, but I prefer full coverage. I like to call them my granny panties.

[Stephen Chua]

Actually, I never think about underwear. That's the magic of Tommy John.

[Hannah Berner]

Same. They're so light and so comfy. And if it's not comfortable, I'm not wearing it.

[Stephen Chua]

And the bras? Soft, supportive, and actually breathable.

[Hannah Berner]

Yes. Lord knows the girls need to breathe. Also, I need my PJs to breathe and be buttery, soft and stretchy enough for my dramatic tossing and turning at night. That's why I live in my John pajamas.

[Stephen Chua]

Plus, they're so cute because they fit perfectly.

[Hannah Berner]

Put yourself on to Tommy John.

[Stephen Chua]

Upgrade your drawer with Tommy John. Save 25 for a limited time at tommyjohn.comfort. see site for details.

[Actor/Reader]

This is a CBC podcast.

[Detective Sergeant Richard Banks]

Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we're closing the whole park.

[Narrator/Reporter]

We're gonna have to move up to the 8th Street. Than.

[Stephen Chua]

We are in Washington D.C. trying to have a conversation with a man named Eddie Becker.

[Eddie Becker]

Why are you closing it? Why are you closing it?

[Stephen Chua]

Asking to meet Eddie here, across the street from the White House, seemed like the perfect place to walk down memory lane.

[Eddie Becker]

Now, why would they be closing the park? I mean, it's hard to say, right?

[Stephen Chua]

Everyone here, the tourists, the protesters, the guys who sell you water and pop, we're all being pushed north outside of Lafayette Square as Capitol police secure the area.

[Narrator/Reporter]

Guys, we gotta move up 3.

[Stephen Chua]

NATO is in town and security is tight. But that's not why we're here. And they not bullshit. So when they say you got to leave, you got to leave, they not bullshit. All of this commotion is oddly appropriate because we're asking Eddie to recall another moment that happened at this same spot 26 years ago.

[Eddie Becker]

I'm a documentarian. I documented the Dem that Davis Hawk organized. This Wolfgang Hawk.

[Stephen Chua]

Davis Wolfgang Hawk was the identity Britt Greenbaum chose to usher in the next chapter of his life. As soon as he turned 18, he legally changed his name, severing ties to his father's Jewish heritage. When we last left Hawk or Brit, it was 1996. He had just graduated high school and started a neo Nazi group called the Knights of Freedom. A far cry from the chaos he would cause here on the streets of Washington in 1999.

[Eddie Becker]

And the police had their cars, and on the cars were these amplifiers where they would, like, give instructions to people sort of remotely like the streets closed.

[Stephen Chua]

Sir, you are inside A police line.

[Narrator/Reporter]

You'Re gonna have to leave.

[Stephen Chua]

In just three short years, Davis Wolfgang Hawk would go from planning moves in chess club to plotting what he hoped would be the largest white pride rally in American. This is from the documentary that Eddie Becker made that day, August 7, 1999. Thousands of people are in attendance. Police are everywhere. The city of Washington was on high alert, reportedly spending over a million dollars on security.

[Detective Sergeant Richard Banks]

I've never experienced anything like it.

[Stephen Chua]

One of the hundreds of cops out there that day was Detective Sergeant Richard Banks, up from South Carolina.

[Detective Sergeant Richard Banks]

No, it was pretty serious anytime you think about it. Anytime somebody like that can organize and disrupt law enforcement to the point where you've got law enforcement agencies from four different states, the District of Columbia, our United States Capitol Police closed down Pennsylvania Avenue for a protest. That young man caused all that violating.

[Narrator/Reporter]

Our constitutional rights and you all going.

[Detective Sergeant Richard Banks]

To get sued you how just extensive that is. He calls that.

[Stephen Chua]

All of this chaos, all of this money and all these resources in Washington was because of Davis Wolfgang Hawk. In high school, people wrote him off. But Hawk found a way to be noticed. His ideas finally resonated with a wider and dangerous audience. I'm Stephen Chua and this is dirtbag climber from CBC's Uncovered. Chapter three, the Disappearing Nazi.

[Peggy Greenbaum]

He was really a nice child. And then I don't know what kind of some kind of metamorphosis occurred in high school.

[Stephen Chua]

This is Davis Hawk's mother, Peggy Greenbaum. Peggy has since passed away, but before she died, she spoke to reporter Brian McWilliams about her son.

[Peggy Greenbaum]

He's a big storyteller and all this kind of thing, you know, you can't believe a thing he says, not a thing.

[Stephen Chua]

While Hawk was in high school, he started a group called the Knights of Freedom, or KOF, as Peggy calls it.

[Peggy Greenbaum]

You have to remember the. I didn't even know about KOF until he was in college.

[Stephen Chua]

In 1996, after Brit Greenbaum changed his name to Davis Wolfgang Hawk, he headed off to Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina.

[Peggy Greenbaum]

Well, he told me it was the cold weather, but in hindsight, obviously it was because he thought his KoF ideas would be well received down there.

[Hyman Greenbaum]

He wanted to go to Wofford College.

[Stephen Chua]

This again is Hyman Greenbaum, Hawk's father.

[Hyman Greenbaum]

We were never quite sure why. It's like a small Southern liberal arts college. But later we figured that it must be because he thought he could influence his classmates and he thought that they would be more into the conservative politics.

[Stephen Chua]

To the Greenbaum's point, It's a little mind boggling as to why Haack chose Wofford, a college well known as a liberal, progressive campus. It was never going to be a place that would embrace Hawke's racist views. But those views weren't out in the open initially. For two years, he lived on campus undetected. He kept good grades, got a girlfriend, and blended pretty seamlessly into the student body. While at Wofford, Haack studied German and history. But more significantly, it was where he moved the Knights of Freedom online. The forum became a place where he could spew hate and lean into his evolving white supremacist beliefs. It was also a place where he could reach a lot of people. It's clear that Haque had an instinct early on that the Internet could be a moneymaker. For a membership cost of $5 a month, he made the website an active place for Neo Nazis across the Internet to visit, with a chat room, a membership portal, and even poetry.

[Actor/Reader]

Onto the battlefield. We gallop with swastikas raised high. We are four horsemen for race and blood and we watch our enemies die.

[Stephen Chua]

It was ultimately an act of hubris that uncovered his alter ego. In his third year, Hawk, or Commander Bo Decker as he was known online posted a photo of himself in Nazi regalia to the KOF website. A fellow student connected Commander Decker to the skinny kid with a Hitler mustache and called the local paper. An article in the Spartanburg Herald Journal appeared exposing the Nazi hiding in their midst. Wofford's student runs neo Nazi website watchdog.

[Narrator/Reporter]

Group has followed 20 year old junior since high school.

[Stephen Chua]

This prompted about 300 Wofford students to organize a candlelight protest against Hock. When the administration got wind of the student whose dorm room was covered in posters of Nazi leaders and whose evening activities were making racist speeches or arranging gatherings with other Southern white supremacists, they called the police.

[Detective Sergeant Richard Banks]

I was notified for the Directorate of Public Safety to report to his office and the Chief of Police. Wofford College was there and I was briefed on a case. The assignment was made that I was placed in charge of the investigation.

[Stephen Chua]

This is Richard Banks, retired detective from the Spartanburg Police Department. He investigated Davis Wolfgang Hawk extensively during this period. Although it was news to him as to how things finally ended up for the Wofford Nazi.

[Detective Sergeant Richard Banks]

So are you telling me that he's deceased?

[Peggy Greenbaum]

Yeah.

[Narrator/Reporter]

So he was murdered.

[Detective Sergeant Richard Banks]

Okay. Well, I'm surprised it took that long.

[Stephen Chua]

Detective Banks says that hawk was under 24 hour surveillance because of the the.

[Detective Sergeant Richard Banks]

Threat to the college number one and the Threat to the community, number two, and the threat of him bringing those different violent extremist groups into the city of Spartanburg. We had pretty good eye on the Ku Klux Klan. We had pretty good eye on a lot of the bootleggers and the drug dealers. We had our eye on all of those groups. And then here comes, of all things, on neo Nazi college student from Wofford and having meetings in the parking lot of Wofford College with four different extremist groups that don't get along. I mean, we spent an awful lot of time having to watch him, not to have some sort of mass casualty because it's nonsense.

[Stephen Chua]

The news of this Nazi living in plain sight got traction. The dean of Wofford told the Boston Globe reporter that it was an embarrassment to his small college that Haack was a student. While Haack was not kicked out of college, the administration was eager that he leave campus. So Haack moved to a nearby town and set up shop in a trailer.

[Detective Sergeant Richard Banks]

He was a domestic terrorist threat that had to be watched.

[Stephen Chua]

Others were watching, too. Rolling Stone magazine did a profile on him with the headline, the Rise and Fall of the Campus Nazi. The magazine gave Hawke a lot of ink. The story was more than 5,000 words, and it followed Hawk and his girlfriend as they went about building the kof. And during the first ever Knights of Freedom Party Congress in Chesney, South Carolina, the TV news program Hard Copy was there. And not long after that, Hawke sat down for an interview with Chris Cuomo on Fox Files. Brand of hate still exists, and it's thriving on the Internet as pictures of Nazi symbols and Holocaust victims flash across the screen. Cuomo's warning about the proliferation of online hate is eerily prescient. In 1995, at the time of the Oklahoma City bombing, there was only one identified hate site on the World Wide Web. Today, there are over 250. Among them is this one that advocates the revival of the Nazi party.

[Narrator/Reporter]

The Jewish world conspiracy is destroying us.

[Hyman Greenbaum]

We have no choice but to defend ourselves.

[Narrator/Reporter]

It's just that simple.

[Stephen Chua]

Sitting in front of a huge red flag with a massive swastika emblazoned on it, Haque is dressed in a full Nazi uniform. He's immersed in his rule.

[Narrator/Reporter]

I think 4,000 years of prejudice against the Jews and hatred of the Jews tends to indicate that there's a problem with the Jews.

[Stephen Chua]

Watching this old footage, it's easier to understand why Hawk's father downplays his son's Nazi ears. The truth is, he looks utterly ridiculous, like a child playing Dress up. You can see how Hyman Greenbaum would feel like Hawk is just playing a role for attention. But Hawk's mother, Peggy, took it a lot more seriously.

[Peggy Greenbaum]

I called him and I said, are you happy now? And of course, I was yelling.

[Stephen Chua]

It's important to understand when this all happened. The Fox files interview aired two days after the deadly Columbine massacre, where two young men shot and ultimately killed 14 of their fellow students and one teacher.

[Peggy Greenbaum]

I yelled, are you happy now, Brit? And he said, what do you mean? And I said, well, don't you think some of your followers maybe these two guys even. How do you know? Even if you're not for violence and you claim and you tell other people that you're not in favor of violence? And how do you even know that these two crazed idiots, that Columbine didn't log on to KOF and your website might have spurred them on more than any other website. How do you know? I said, are you happy now? And I slammed the phone down.

[Stephen Chua]

It's probably a stretch to think that Hawk had any connection to Columbine, but Peggy's remarks show that she did not play around when it came to talking to his son about his online hate mongering. One person who knew him well during his years at Wofford but wanted to remain anonymous told us that Hawk never really held Nazi beliefs, that all he cared about was making money. He saw he could create a buy in membership group and they would pay him for nothing but a card and a fake Nazi title. He had no real idea how hard it would hit others, how deep some hated Nazis. This person added that Davis liked the symbols and uniforms. They were strong and military and so gave him a sense of power that he didn't think much of. The members, if anything, he considered the people that paid him to be mostly stupid. Basically, according to this person, Davis was not a racist, but rather played one for money. The question surrounding the authenticity of Britt's beliefs was something we asked throughout this investigation, because at the end of his life as Jesse James, he was known to post on social media about the importance of inclusiveness. But back in 1999, all anyone knew of Hawk was that he was online selling his version of an America free of Jews and other minorities. At least that was until someone at a national and influential civil rights organization decided to look a little bit deeper.

[Hannah Berner]

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[Narrator/Reporter]

Arrive at Juliana Redding's house in Santa Monica, California.

[Detective Sergeant Richard Banks]

There was no pulse.

[Stephen Chua]

We knew that it wasn't an accident.

[Narrator/Reporter]

An alleged murder for hire fraud to the tune of $150 million.

[Peggy Greenbaum]

I need to see the doctor and I need to see the doctor right frickin now.

[Narrator/Reporter]

Do what he says or else. From Sony Music Entertainment and Western Sound, this is doctor's orders available now on the binge search for doctor's orders wherever you get your podcast to start listening today. We understood very much, very far in advance of most people that the radical right was an extremely dangerous development in society and that it was growing and growing fast.

[Stephen Chua]

Mark Potok and the Southern Poverty Law center had been keeping their eye on Haack when he was still Brit from Westwood High School, handing out flyers. But their focus on him ramped up when Haack went to college and took his group online.

[Narrator/Reporter]

I was editor in chief of our magazine Intelligence Report, which was an investigative magazine, and, and that is where we published the first big story of ours about Hawk. The reason for our interest wasn't simply that here was a kid who was a sophomore in a pretty spiffy college who was self identified as a Nazi, but that he represented something that was really happening at that time and was very much on our agenda to look at. And that was, you know, the use of the Internet.

[Stephen Chua]

It's easy today to see the connection between the Internet and the actions of radicals, be it the far right or others. But in 1999, there wasn't social media and the world of recruiting online was still in its infancy.

[Narrator/Reporter]

So it was in that context that we really got interested in Hawk and you know, because there were many, many, many people we could have written about. But Davis Wolfgang Hawk was a kid who it seemed, and it turned out to be essentially true, had really managed to build a group of some size via the Internet entirely. You know, he claimed to have a thousand members when we met him in 1999. That was absurd, ridiculous, bullshit. But he probably did have 100 to as many as 125 or even 150 people, meaning followers.

[Stephen Chua]

Even with a small audience. If he charged them five bucks, he was probably able to generate about $750 a month. Not bad for a college student in the 90s. Certainly enough to make Mark want to know more. And Hawke was open to being interviewed.

[Narrator/Reporter]

We played it completely straight with him. We explained to him this is for a magazine. It's called the Intelligence Report. It's published by the Southern Poverty Law center and so on. But, you know, he wasn't interested in that at all. He was just interested in being, you know, world famous, gonna be the dictator of America or the entire globe or whatever it was gonna be.

[Stephen Chua]

Haack opened up his door to the Southern Poverty Law center, offering them an unfiltered view.

[Narrator/Reporter]

When we said that Davis Wolfgang Hawk was a neo Nazi, we weren't kidding, right? I mean, this is a guy who literally dressed up in SS outfits. He had a whole collection of SS knives, you know, Mein Kampf on his bookshelf and went on and on and on about the Jews. They were the principal enemies. The Jews needed to be either murdered wholesale or at the very least, every last one of them sterilized, you know, along the lines of Hitler's wishes.

[Stephen Chua]

Marx says that he and his colleagues did not view Hawk as a deadly threat. They didn't think that he would be going out to kill people.

[Narrator/Reporter]

But he represented something real. He was young, he was quite bright. So Hawk was interesting to us more from the point of view of what he represented than, you know, this guy is going to blow up a federal building one of these days.

[Stephen Chua]

This was all laid out in Mark's article. But there was another detail that they reported on that would spell the end for Hawk, the Nazi king.

[Narrator/Reporter]

And the shocker, of course, was that Davis Wolfgang hawk, you know, Mr. Super Nazi sounding name guy, had once been named, had been named at birth as Andy Greenbau.

[Stephen Chua]

People close to Hawk who were aware of his background knew that his father was half Jewish, but the wider world did not. So when the Southern Poverty Law center published its story on Hawk, it was a barn burner. The headline read, Hyman Greenbaum's Son Hard at Work with Neo Nazi Group. Now, everyone in the US knew this Nazi was Jewish. The story went viral.

[Narrator/Reporter]

So it became a story of, my God, look at this person. He's running around in these outfits saying that his. His father needs to be sterilized or perhaps killed because he was Jewish. And by the way, Hawk told us that's not really my father. He says he is, but my mother had an affair with a visiting German businessman. And, you know, I am the product of that liaison.

[Stephen Chua]

This part of the story feels Especially hurtful. But when we asked Hyman about it, he didn't see it that way.

[Hyman Greenbaum]

My wife and I used to joke sometimes that they gave us the wrong baby. I mean, I guess I finally found out they didn't because they were able to finally identify my son through DNA analysis.

[Stephen Chua]

It seems as though Peggy Greenbaum found her son's claims a lot less funny.

[Narrator/Reporter]

You know, I talked to Peggy Greenbaum a couple of times. She called him a coward and some other sort of choice words. But, you know, I. I guess all I can say, you know, I. I've read that PAC has described his mother as being not very smart and so on. And I just say I have to. I beg to differ. You know, I found her a very bright woman. Interesting. But, you know, deeply, deeply shocked at what her son had become.

[Peggy Greenbaum]

I was in such shock because it's not the child that I knew.

[Stephen Chua]

You know who else was deeply shocked? The Nazis.

[Narrator/Reporter]

William Pierce, the head of the national alliance and really the most important neo Nazi leader of his day, described him as a Hollywood Nazi, a teenage hobbyist. There was this enormous kickback against Hawk, and it very quickly got to the point where, you know, he couldn't go to a skinhead rally again. Right. If he'd go, he would have gotten beaten up, very likely. So, you know, we had pushed him right out of the scene.

[Stephen Chua]

According to Hawk's FBI file, one of the more serious threats Hawk received was from a group called the World Church of the Creator, one of the most notorious hate groups of the 1990s. After Hawk's real identity was made public, the hate group created what they called an anti kof resource center. Online. They wrote about Hawk being a fraud and warned that he should, quote, quit now. Leave, disappear from the scene completely. You will end up being smashed under the hand of vengeance. Aside from this group, Detective Banks remembers another very angry follower of Hawk's.

[Detective Sergeant Richard Banks]

Fellow that came all the way from Kansas. And he was so mad because Hawk had promised him something. And I drove all the way here and, oh, I would kill that motherfucker. And he was there to kill him. He didn't know we were in plain clothes. He just thought we were one of them. And I had stopped him, and I said, oh, well, she knows something. Police officers of the Department of Public Safety. So you're not going to come here and kill anybody. That's just how. How big a mess he had himself in.

[Stephen Chua]

In an attempt to get ahead of the blowback, Hawk blasted out a long email to his followers calling the accusations false and Slanderous. He coined it the Greenbaum incident. This is an actor reading from that email where he also calls his mother a race traitor.

[Actor/Reader]

Let them slander me, attack me, and invent even more lies about me. Let them call me a Jew, a queer, a mixed blood, and whatever else their twisted minds can produce. Cowardly tactics will never work. When the smoke clears, we'll see who is left standing on the battlefield.

[Stephen Chua]

Hawk knows the articles pointing out his heritage have done him harm. But instead of backing away, instead of going dark until the chatter fades out, Hawk, in what will become a recurring pattern, doubles down.

[Hyman Greenbaum]

I think he had delusions of grandeur or whatever, but eventually he decided to organize a big March in Washington D.C. you know, he thought it was going to be bigger than what was then the Million Man March or something like that.

[Narrator/Reporter]

Hawk called for this massive demonstration in Washington as a response to our article about him and his way of saying, by God, you know, I really am, you know. The next day, Adolf Hitler was to promise a massive March on Washington D.C. in late 1999.

[Stephen Chua]

Hawk pulled the right paperwork, filed it with the right departments, and sent the call out to his followers to march their views down to the White House.

[Actor/Reader]

We must spread our message onto the streets to any white man or woman who will take the time to listen.

[Stephen Chua]

In a message to his followers, Haque penned a manifesto he called the Millennium Plan.

[Actor/Reader]

The party is generally perceived as a paramilitary neo Nazi group with an element of Hollywood Nazism mixed in. Since our goals are political in nature, we must dispel our image as a militia and ensure that the public sees us for what we are. A legitimate National Socialist political party dedicated to defending white rights. Mass recruitment and mass propaganda will be the goal.

[Stephen Chua]

And one part of meeting that goal involved rallying a ton of Nazis to march on Washington. The night before that event, Hawke set up a staging area at a farm outside the Capitol. This would be the place where he would assemble his legions of fellow race warriors for their glorious march. The next day, journalist Brian McWilliams reported a camping area had been set up in the back of the farmhouse. Porta potties had been rented and two vans were parked in the driveway waiting to taxi the hordes of fellow neo Nazis into Washington. It was also on a property owned by a group of domestic terrorists. We know this because the police had been watching him. Detective Richard Banks colleagues trailed him there.

[Detective Sergeant Richard Banks]

They surveilled him to a farm that was owned by another group in Virginia. That was their staging area that was completely sealed. 14 foot chain link fence Barbed wire across at the top of was a dirt road, big gates, and yet they had guards standing out front. Machine guns, which is legal. It was private property.

[Stephen Chua]

Banks declined to give details about the group running the camp, but it's clear these were dangerous people. Whatever you think of Hawk, you gotta admit this guy had balls. Here he was a neo Nazi, recently outed as a Jewish kid, now teaming up with a group of gun toting domestic terrorists, preparing for a show of force in the nation's capital. Would people show up the next day? And how much could he trust the group he was with? It must have been a very long night.

[Eddie Becker]

And I was on the bicycle so I would like just go from one spot to another sort of as the police randomly went around.

[Stephen Chua]

We are back with documentarian Eddie Becker.

[Eddie Becker]

Well, there was supposedly like a thousand cops who were like special assignment and a thousand cops on duty so they would show up.

[Stephen Chua]

Becker and others had learned about the planned march from an article in the Washington.

[Eddie Becker]

There were a couple of thousand people who were chanting, who were marching, who were, you know, making speeches.

[Stephen Chua]

The thing is those thousands of people, those speeches, they weren't spouting hate.

[Eddie Becker]

There was one guy, hillbillies. Hillbillies hate Nazis. I was very impressed with him. Yahweh, we don't like Nazis.

[Stephen Chua]

The Nazis brought me out.

[Narrator/Reporter]

I wanted to let them know we.

[Stephen Chua]

Don'T need them anymore.

[Narrator/Reporter]

Hillbillies hate Nazis. Ain't no good to the Nazis.

[Stephen Chua]

Trust me.

[Detective Sergeant Richard Banks]

Not a bit of good.

[Narrator/Reporter]

Color is beautiful. Difference is beautiful. Racism sucks. Why do we want.

[Detective Sergeant Richard Banks]

It? Well, sir, I am out here because I'm opposed to any kind of injustice against anybody.

[Stephen Chua]

In Becker's documentary you see crowds of people, you see police on foot, in cars and even on horseback. They are controlling people's movements and moving others along. But what you don't see are Nazis.

[Eddie Becker]

And none of the Nazis, Neo Nazis showed up.

[Stephen Chua]

And the city officials who reportedly ponied up a million dollars on security measures were pissed. Here's Sergeant Richard Banks again.

[Detective Sergeant Richard Banks]

And Chief Ramsey was the police chief of the Washington D.C. i even think he filed suit against him for the cost of the security.

[Stephen Chua]

Are you serious about suing them for this?

[Detective Sergeant Richard Banks]

Oh yeah, absolutely.

[Hyman Greenbaum]

Now whether or not the city does it or not, I don't know, but.

[Detective Sergeant Richard Banks]

I think we ought to. It was a million and something dollars that he cost the city to prepare for that.

[Stephen Chua]

What none of the counter protesters, none of the police knew, was that Davis Hawk was Nowhere near Washington D.C. on August 7, 1999, at the end of.

[Narrator/Reporter]

The day, four of Davis Wolfgang Hawke's followers showed up in Washington. Four, not a thousand, not ten thousand, not fifty thousand. And Hawk was not among them.

[Stephen Chua]

When the counter protesters realized that the Nazis were no shows, they rejoiced. Instead of showing up to lead his followers into the next phase, Hawk had slinked away. He was in his car, heading back down south. All that anyone ever heard from Wolfgang Hawk again was this letter that he posted on his website.

[Actor/Reader]

Whether through laziness, cowardice, or lack of commitment, almost all of you have let down the party and the white race itself. The party has failed to achieve the standards that I set forth one year ago. And as a man of honor, I must therefore resign my position as leader and party chairman.

[Narrator/Reporter]

That was essentially the end of Davis Wolfgang Hawkins as a Nazi careerist.

[Stephen Chua]

Neo Nazis and white supremacists aren't exactly known for settling their differences by peaceful means. He had pissed off some pretty violent people.

[Narrator/Reporter]

Our story made it impossible for Hawke to attend really any events of the radical right. Certainly if he had gone to like a Hammer Skin concert, he might have been killed. That's quite possible now. You know, there were other more sort of polite radical right venues where he probably wouldn't have been killed, but he certainly would have been kicked out.

[Stephen Chua]

I'm thinking it's pretty far fetched to believe that a neo Nazi would have held onto a grudge for 20 plus years only to find Hawkins squamish and kill him. But this was a part of Hawk's life that he could never drop. It was becoming easier to Google someone and harder to truly escape one's past. And if you ran up against Hawk, as many people did over the next few years and you found out that at one time he had been a leading neo Nazi, well, it sure didn't help him seem like any less of an asshole. And in the next stage of his life, Hawk would piss off millions and millions more people.

[Narrator/Reporter]

When we next heard about Davis Wolfgang Hawk, a story crossed the wires telling how America Online AOL had just won a massive default judgment, $12.8 million against Davis Wolfgang Hawk. Why penis enlargement bills?

[Stephen Chua]

That's next time on Dirtbag Climb. Can't wait for more binge all episodes early on the CBC True Crime YouTube channel at YouTube.comccpodcasts. for early and ad free listening, subscribe to CBC True Crime Premium on Apple Podcasts at Apple Co CBCTrueCrime. Dirtbag Climber is a production of Lark Productions and Kelly and Kelly for CBC Podcasts. The show is hosted by me, Stephen Chua. It's written and produced by Kathleen Goldhar and Chris Kelly. The showrunner is Kathleen Goldar. Producers are Karen Bracken and Tina Apostolopoulos Moniz associate producer Hadil Abdel Nabi sound design by Paul Tedeschini and Chris Kelly. Tamara Black is our coordinating producer. Original music by Chris Kelly. Our senior producer is Jeff Turner. Our digital producer is Roshni Nair. The series was developed by Ainslie Vogel, Gene Parsons and Kristin Boichuk. Additional reporting by Yvette Brand for Kelly and Kelly Executive producer Chris Kelly executive producer Pat Kelly business affairs producer Lauren Berkovich for Lark Productions executive producer Aaron Haskett, vp, Business affairs, Tex Antonucci for cbc. Executive producers are Cecil Fernandez and Chris Oak. Tanya Springer is the senior manager and Arif Narrani is the director of CBC Podcast Podcasts.

[Actor/Reader]

For more CBC Podcasts, go to CBC CA Podcasts.