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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
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Speaker 2: Previously on our Town.
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Speaker 3: The first thing you see when it pops up is pioneers in Appalachia. Like what am I missing?
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Speaker 4: Christian nationalists who want to turn a small Middle Tennessee community into their base of operations.
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Speaker 5: It was like happening, and you didn't even realize it was happening.
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Speaker 2: I just was trying to figure out what I, personally, one person, could do.
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Speaker 3: This isn't a fly by nine LLC that will be shut down.
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Speaker 6: Come move here to be with us over the next few years.
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Speaker 7: We have so much plans to.
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Speaker 6: Ridge Runner, USA dot. Yeah, I got a question, why why are you?
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Speaker 5: And Jackson Kenny.
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Speaker 2: The winter of twenty twenty five was an anxious one in Gainsboro. It had been several months since news broke about the plan to build a quote aligned community in your town. Ridge Runner, the real estate developer behind the project, was buying up so much land that it now controlled more acreage than Gainesboro itself. Locals were uneasy, bracing for what might come next. Then on March thirty first, twenty twenty.
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Speaker 4: Five, So, Andrew, thank you for doing this.
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Speaker 6: You're so controversial.
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Speaker 4: I love that yeah, married band with six kids, who pays his taxes. You're so controversial, very but you are doing one thing that's pretty wild, which is participating in the building of a new town.
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Speaker 2: Tucker Carlson, the influential host, invited someone associated with Ridge Runner onto his.
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Speaker 8: Show You Can Have the American Small Town Experience once again.
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Speaker 2: It was Andrew Risker, the Christian nationalist podcaster who'd moved to Gainsboro the year before.
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Speaker 4: I want to get back to the Ridge Runner in the town that's being built, which I assume is a fascist Christian theocracy.
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Speaker 6: That's what the TV news is nation.
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Speaker 2: This was a stunning leap for Ander Risker and for Ridge Runner. Here he was chatting up Carlson and his massive audience about building this Christian town in Tennessee.
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Speaker 8: It's a you know, a real estate venture to build communities. It's large properties, you know, two three ten acre lots into into a place where they can have land, where they can have you know, have some chickens, maybe a cow like like live like Americans, you know.
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Speaker 4: I used to yeah, yeah, tell us the response to this this dangerous venture of yours.
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Speaker 8: Well, you know, like locally, the people that I that I've spoken to the people I have met in the town are are very you know, very enthusiastic.
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Speaker 1: Actually, it's just wasn't true.
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Speaker 2: Locals had watched the episode.
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Speaker 7: Not what I was seeing on the ground.
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Speaker 2: I was furious.
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Speaker 3: These people are a problem, not an asset.
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Speaker 1: I was pretty horrified. Is a national stage.
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Speaker 2: Isger was so excited. He was like a puppy that found a new bone. To Nancy Pruett, the retired art teacher, it seemed like this was just another workday for Tucker Carlson, but for Iskar.
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Speaker 1: For Iskar it was like I have made it to the top.
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Speaker 2: And for Ridge Runner, this was a walking billboard for.
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Speaker 6: People who are interested.
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Speaker 4: What's the name of it?
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Speaker 6: This again Ridge Runner.
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Speaker 8: The website is ridge Runner USA dot com.
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Speaker 2: On YouTube, this episode got almost eight hundred thousand views. How did Andrew Issker get on Tucker Carlson? This wasn't some local YouTube show.
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Speaker 4: And someone already bought the land?
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Speaker 6: Yes, yes, so Ridge Runners bought the parcels.
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Speaker 8: It's being divided up and sold, you know as we speak.
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Speaker 2: This was news to many in Gainsboro. Bridge Runner seemed to be moving quickly, already prepping lots for sale.
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Speaker 7: Everybody that was worried about this was doing their own stuff.
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Speaker 2: Locals were reading, listening, watching everything these guys were putting into the world.
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Speaker 9: They think they we're about dumb idiots, but we all have done our own little research.
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Speaker 7: I've sat there and took notes.
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Speaker 3: You know, it's hard to watch that stuff. They're tiring, it's hard to hate that much. I feel so like I created a script that went through all their videos and transcribed them, just so you don't zone out, or your soul is your body because you're listening to.
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Speaker 2: Hiscor they were all trying to answer some version of a question that had been left hanging so well, I.
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Speaker 10: Mean, what'd you do?
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Speaker 9: Ol buddy?
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Speaker 11: Who's your friends?
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Speaker 2: What's your deal? Clearly these guys had a plan, and who's your friends? Because they definitely had connections all across Gainsboro. A handful of small town amateur sluice went to work to figure out what their town was really up against and how far they were willing to go to protect it. M from Bloomberg News, I'm Marraba Knight reporting along with Susan Burfield, and you're listening to our town. This is chapter two. This dangerous venture of yours. Oh this is so gorgeous.
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Speaker 1: And he'll be going up for adoptions.
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Speaker 5: He's a bully.
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Speaker 2: Barry Naff has a soft spot for dogs. Somehow they always find him. His wife, Diana, is definitely an enabler.
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Speaker 12: This fella.
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Speaker 1: He showed up on the farm looking for help.
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Speaker 2: He with starving. You're just going to keep him. Barry and Diana's home is perched on the edge of a forested hill on the outskirts of Gainsborough. They've got one hundred and fifteen acres of land where they put walking trails and dirt roads for ATV.
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Speaker 9: So you designed this house.
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Speaker 5: I did it, filled it too. I did everything but the frame.
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Speaker 2: Barry's lanky, usually in jeans and a T shirt and always in motion.
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Speaker 1: Well, y'all make yourselves at home.
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Speaker 2: Diana's petite, with brown hair and bookish glasses. She's got a pink T shirt on that says be kind of a bit. Inside her dining table. She got down to business.
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Speaker 5: It's a serious computer.
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Speaker 1: It's called a tough book.
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Speaker 2: It's a massive laptop that could probably survive a mortar blast, filled with research. Can you just take me through again all of the literature and the things you consume.
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Speaker 5: We don't have enough time.
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Speaker 1: I do have a bibliography.
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Speaker 2: Barry is right, we don't have enough time for that. Because when Ridge Runner landed in Gainsboro, Diana was worried about what this all meant for her town. So she went into research mode, and of all the local sluice, she dug the deepest.
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Speaker 1: This has been on my mind.
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Speaker 2: It's on my mind every day. Yeah, hours and hours every day. For weeks and weeks. Diana searched the internet.
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Speaker 13: Well, now I got all my information from the reader and the listener here. If it's not something to do with hot rods or you know, welding.
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Speaker 5: Or dogs or dog I'm not reading it.
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Speaker 2: Barry jokes, but he was just as serious about the research as Diana. He grew up in Gainsborough, so he had a lot at stake.
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Speaker 1: Barry's family then asked the Drapers, they've been here forever.
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Speaker 5: Matt Draper, that's my great grandfather.
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Speaker 1: He pretty much built Jackson County for all he did.
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Speaker 2: Diana, though, is a transplant to Gainsborough. She came from Florida, where she owned a successful medical consulting firm twenty years ago she fell in love with Middle Tennessee.
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Speaker 1: It was like looking at paradise.
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Speaker 2: In two thousand and five, she bought a farm, and locals welcomed her.
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Speaker 1: We had some lovely folks that would invite us to, you know, Thanksgiving dinner, cookouts down by the river, marathon drinking sessions that involve moonshine.
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Speaker 2: But Gainsboro itself was flagging, and Diana wanted to help revive it. So she bought a building on the town square and fixed it up.
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Speaker 1: Just started talking to people about what did they wish they had.
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Speaker 2: They wanted a dress shop, so she opened a dress shop. And this is how she and Barry met.
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Speaker 5: I had a metal fab shop.
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Speaker 13: I just had my parking lot redone, and she drops a bucket.
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Speaker 5: Of paint my parking lot.
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Speaker 1: I was bringing it.
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Speaker 12: To him because it was the pain I wanted the dance to paint the sun.
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Speaker 2: For her new dress shop. She'd hired Barry to make it.
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Speaker 13: I'm on a big brown spot in the parking lot. So that's how we met.
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Speaker 2: Now years later, the two sat next to each other at their dining table in their dream house, facing a massive wall of windows that frame the rolling hills sunrise to sunset.
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Speaker 1: If he never had to leave this property, he'd be fine.
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Speaker 2: But now their peace had been punctured.
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Speaker 6: This country belongs to Jesus by Ridge.
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Speaker 2: Runner and the men who came along with it. The podcaster and.
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Speaker 10: Heer Isker, do you otherquivocally renounce antisemitism, racism and Nazism.
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Speaker 6: I don't get down into the weeds of playing those games.
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Speaker 2: His co host cj Engele.
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Speaker 6: I don't unequivocally pronounce these things.
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Speaker 2: No, I don't punctured by Andrew Issker's talk of hate.
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Speaker 10: How do I impart that to my children? The same ethos? I'm like, well, I have to teach them what to.
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Speaker 2: Hate by cj Engles talk of slavery.
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Speaker 10: Existence of slavery itself is not a sin.
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Speaker 6: Now mistreating a slave, that would be simple.
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Speaker 2: Their views on women, God need men to rule period, and Jewish people.
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Speaker 8: Jews in the biblical sense, they do not exist anymore.
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Speaker 6: It's only Christians and non Christians.
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Speaker 2: And gay people.
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Speaker 10: The poor homosexuals are being oppressed and everyone's being mean to them, and so we need to be okay with gay marriage.
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Speaker 2: Diana, like many others, had never expected Gainsborough to attract newcomers like these.
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Speaker 1: So many people were working so hard to help this community and build up this community. I just couldn't stand to see it.
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Speaker 2: So the day after the TV report had broken the news, Diana decided to speak up. She went to the Bull and Thistle, the restaurant she'd opened a while back, and on the chalkboard outside, instead of the daily specials, she wrote a message.
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Speaker 1: It just said, if you're a person or a group that promotes the oppression discrimination against others, please eat somewhere else and you won't like it here.
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Speaker 5: May it work.
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Speaker 2: They never saw anyone from Ridge Runner step foot in the restaurant again. But even if Barry and Diana didn't see them at the restaurant, Ridge Runner was already starting to take up a lot of space in their life. Literally, it had purchased hundreds of acres on either side of their property in the Hills for its quote aligned community. Barry was consumed by anger.
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Speaker 5: I just I just I it just made my blood ball.
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Speaker 1: Poor Barry.
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Speaker 2: Diana is the yin to Barry's yang. She's cool headed.
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Speaker 1: You know you should never take anything on face value, right.
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Speaker 2: So she decided to take a beat step back and start at the beginning.
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Speaker 1: So myself a number of other folks were like, well could be could this be the whole story? And then the next question it was how bad is it really?
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Speaker 5: She was determined to say what they were about.
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Speaker 2: Who exactly were these guys and what did they really want? So Diana readied her laptop and went looking.
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Speaker 1: What did they do? Are they writing? Are they interviewing? Do they have books?
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Speaker 2: Yes, yes, and yes, substacks books, articles and podcasts, so many podcasts.
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Speaker 1: And then I'd follow the affiliations. It was like going through these tunnels that were all underground. You really kind of had to dig and follow things because you have to know, you have to really know.
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Speaker 2: And what Diana found was more than she ever expected.
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Speaker 1: It was so much deeper and wider and bigger than just Gainsbroke. This is a very widespread movement. It runs very deep and it runs very high.
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Speaker 2: The podcasters were among the first arrived to town that Diana knew of, and they talked excitedly about the prospects of their new life in Gainsborough.
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Speaker 10: Many of my friends online, right, well, we want to have that in real life, where instead of laughing at each other's jokes in a group chat, right, we want to be able to laugh at each other's jokes on our front porches.
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Speaker 2: Listening to them, it sure sounded to Diana like they'd been.
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Speaker 10: Recruited the ability of Ridge Runner to make that kind of thing happen, where now you could be with all of your friends in real life and do life together.
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Speaker 1: Have I understood that Josh Abbitoi brought them to our place, brought them to Jackson County Business.
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Speaker 2: Josh Abbatoy, the CEO of Ridge Runner. Diana had heard Abbatoy talking on a couple of podcasts about zeroing in on Gainsborough as the perfect place for his quote people.
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Speaker 1: He was bringing some really exciting people. You know, some really cool people are coming, and.
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Speaker 5: We've got some really cool people.
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Speaker 11: Lined up who are going to be joining the project moving there. The whole point of it is to plan a flag and.
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Speaker 1: He's talking about.
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Speaker 2: Iscarn Ankle, the podcasters who Abbatoy refers to as his customers.
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Speaker 11: This small town is where you know, our people are gathering.
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Speaker 2: And the question, but why her small town? It was the question Diana and so many others had been asking. Turns out, as Diana discovered Josh Abbatoy already knew the area. He'd grown up about thirty miles west of Gainsborough. He'd left to go to college, then grad school for medieval history in Harvard. For law, he worked as a corporate lawyer in Texas, but by his mid thirties he was ready for a change, and he moved back to Tennessee with his wife and young children. When we asked Abbatoy for an interview, he declined. Occasionally, Diana had seen him around town walking the square, or once at the Dollar General.
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Speaker 12: He was there in his hunting, in his boots, and he had his hang on the full regailion, and I thought about that. You know, he's playing a part, he's filling a.
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Speaker 1: Role, he's got a goal. So I really wanted to understand his connections and what was his end goal.
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Speaker 11: We need cities on a shining hill that exemplify and embody the healthy, natural human way of life, the Christian way of life, and demonstrate the superiority is that way of life.
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Speaker 2: This was a theme of his Diana came across often his desire to build a life away from chaotic, un Christian urban communities. Abatoi says he's not a Christian nationalist, but talks often about reviving America with conservative, economically vibrant Christian towns charter communities, he calls them. He envisions a rural and red revolution of conservative religious people moving to the countryside. Gainsborough, he hoped, would be one such place.
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Speaker 11: It's not a crazy place like a lot of urban areas are. You're not going to go there and see rainbow flags all over the place. But it's also pretty low crime.
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Speaker 2: It also had plenty of land.
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Speaker 11: Who's going to grab the land? Is it going to be you know, good based people who want to build something and he was excited about him three Or is it going to be you know, Bill Gates and black Rock and you know, hippies from California.
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Speaker 2: Occasionally, Abatoy would drop a detail here and there about the Gainsborough project's progress.
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Speaker 11: We have a lot more purchases under contract right now. So as of today, there are forty households in the target region who have bought or moved there as a result of our efforts.
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Speaker 5: You know, Nur've spending money, you know, fixing the road.
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Speaker 2: Running electorate, Barry had seen the landscape near his property change dirt roads where there hadn't been any markers for new lots, but otherwise he and Diana still weren't really sure what they'd be living next to, so they continued keeping close watch for any clues from their future neighbors. One came soon. The invitations went out via email. Elegant, slightly mysterious, A drawing of an eight point buck with the words Land, Liberty, Legacy, Ridge Runner's logo, and below a dropped pin revealing a location. Ridge Runner was hosting its first official open house, except there weren't any houses yet, and it wasn't really open prospective buyers only, no media. The invitation said so clearly. However, someone in town had gotten on Ridge Runner's email list by posing as a prospective buyer. I just entered a name in an email address, and of course I used a mail's name. It worked, and when the invite arrived, she quickly passed it around. Locals. Diana and Barry among them, were now able to see what Ridge Runner had planned. It was called the Highland Rim Project. On the invite there was a map showing a village with a community center, farmland and a farm store. They called it an agrahood. Potential buyers were encouraged to sign up for a thirty minute tour of available plots.
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Speaker 11: We have a lot of customers like this who have lived most of their life in the cities or suburbs, and they dream of a healthier, more natural way of life. Maybe they have a small little hobby farm, so when they're not working for Google or some other major employer, they can step outside and touch graphs and milk a cow.
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Speaker 2: And for some time away from the wives and kids.
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Speaker 11: One of the really exciting things that we're going to be announcing is called the Highland Rim Sporting Club. It's a men only club cultivating together excellence and virtue and where they can socialize with other interesting friends and hopefully shoots and deer as well.
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Speaker 2: This was Abatoy's vision for life in the Agorhood, healthy natural, Christian Superior. There were forty four plots going from fifty thousand to one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The prices were staggeringly high by Gainsborough standards. When locals looked more closely at the map, they also noticed something else right in the center, the very heart of the community was a church. A church it turns out that would be led by someone they were already familiar with.
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Speaker 6: This country belongs to Jesus.
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Speaker 2: Andrew Iskar, the Christian nationalist podcaster, that's what the gospel is, who is also a preacher.
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Speaker 10: Jesus has conquered, He is king, he has a kingdom.
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Speaker 2: The Kingdom is here and more after the break. The open house was late June, just a few months after Tucker Carlson had helped promote Bridge Runner on his show. The day did not go as planned. It was particularly hot and muggy, a big storm was rolling in. The invite to the open house had provided very specific driving instructions to the Ridge Runner property. It directed guests to take Highway fifty six, a route that would take them right past downtown Gainsboro and offer them a glimpse of what makes it special. They'd pass rolling hills and vibrant local businesses like Nana's Place and Helen's Restaurant, home to legendary banana pudding. Then, as guests approached town, the first inkling that all was not well in Gainsborough. A big solitary billboard welcoming drivers to town, but a welcome with a warning. Here nasty notions play no part then after entering downtown, if guests turned down Main Street, they'd see Gainsborough's patriotism on full display.
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Speaker 1: A little love festival on the square. It's fantastic. Happened to be the same day as that open house.
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Speaker 2: It was the annual fourth of July celebration, which the town celebrates at the end of June. American flags fluttered, locals chatted in the town square. But this year there was something new right in the middle of it all, a tent with a sign Christian nationalism in Jackson County.
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Speaker 1: I said, do you mind if we put up a tent and I have these information sheets that we can give out to people if they're interested.
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Speaker 2: Barry and Diana had printed out dozens of fact sheets she'd compiled from her months of research.
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Speaker 1: And what did it say?
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Speaker 13: Well, it was eight pages long, most of them aw awesome and I know, so I just came over saying, well, you know.
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Speaker 2: As folks sambled by, they could grab Diana's packet, which contained direct quotes, footnotes, citations, and biographical details of Josh Abbottoy, the podcaster's Ridge Runner. Once Ridge Runner's guests were passed downtown, they'd get back on the highway. Drive another eight miles over a bridge with stunning views to the last stretch of road before the meeting spot. It was lined with trees, but also.
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Speaker 7: Small signs on the telephone poles.
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Speaker 2: That's Mark Dudney, the historian. Every sign had the familiar rebuke hat has no Home in Gainsborough while Ridge Runner had been preparing for its first big event, so at some of the locals in the middle of the night, they'd hung dozens of those signs, and at the entrance to the Ridge Runner property there was a huge banner stuck into the grass like the finish line at a race. Hate has no Home in Jackson County.
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Speaker 7: Put up back concerned citizens.
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Speaker 2: Who also happened to be Mark's friends. Eventually one of the podcasters drove out and blocked the banner with his truck.
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Speaker 14: I guess they didn't want that to be seen by their prospective buyers, and some of my friends went back and moved it.
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Speaker 7: It's like a high school thing or something. Yes, somebody's told you about what I'd done.
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Speaker 2: Mark's friend grabbed the banner and just set it up across the street.
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Speaker 5: So they'd have to see it when they turned in.
00:23:18
Speaker 2: And one more detail about the day.
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Speaker 14: Coincidentally, there were two fugitives on the run and the police were over there chasing them. Yeah, and that Saturday was when they got caught.
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Speaker 2: The day of the open house. Turns out two people had escaped from a nearby jail and fled into the woods, the woods next to Ridge Runner's property. There were police cars flashing lights, and in the middle of the open house, officers apprehended the fugitives, a shirtless man and a pantsless woman.
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Speaker 14: So again it was really hot and human that day. You had hate has no home signs, and then you had the two mud covered fugitives on the run out there with the law enforcement.
00:24:08
Speaker 7: Presence on that very road in that community.
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Speaker 14: So I don't know how that went for them.
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Speaker 2: Mark and the others never found out for sure if the open house was a success for Ridge Runner or if their efforts had managed to turn off any buyers. Regardless, Diana and Barry could see that Ridge Runner kept hard at work clearing and prepping land, and they kept promoting. Ridge Runner rented a billboard of their own right on the other side of the Nasty Notions one, the one on the way into town. Ridge Runners said God bless Jackson County. We're proud to call it home. For Diana and Barry, it was yet another provocation. Ridge Runner was taking its claim to the land.
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Speaker 1: They have the right to live however they want to live, and believe how they want to believe, but they cannot brand us.
00:25:02
Speaker 2: Then Diana got a tip Ridge Runner's lease on the billboard would be up in six months, so she swooped in before Ridge Runner could renew, booked it for a whole year, ten thousand dollars, paid for by a generous neighbor. Meanwhile, Buried did his own thing. He got into his truck and drove across the state line.
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Speaker 13: Went to the courthouse and talked to Van about you know, Abbatoi and the proper that he bought.
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Speaker 2: Records confirmed Ridge Runner had also scooped up land in Kentucky five hundred and fifty acres, close enough to Gainsborough that it could someday come together into one huge community, one big highland rim project.
00:25:43
Speaker 1: I mean, the whole landscape's going to change, y'all.
00:25:45
Speaker 2: For Barry and Diana, the scale of what Ridge Runner was doing and what Gainsborough was caught up in was coming into focus.
00:25:53
Speaker 1: They're pouring money into this.
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Speaker 2: It seems so much larger than Diana suspected, especially after or she heard Josh Abbatoy talk about the venture, comparing it to the New World.
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Speaker 11: I mean, this is what the Pilgrims did, you know, getting persecuted in England, and so they ended up taking this swing where you know, it was this partnership of pastors and community leaders and financiers who funded like the Mayflower to go found the Plymouth Colony.
00:26:21
Speaker 2: Pilgrims, colonies, pastors, financiers. If this was the comparison, who was ridge Runner's financier who had enough wealth and ambition to back this whole endeavor. More after the break to find the financier, Diana of course followed the money behind Abbatoy and ridge Runner, and that led her right to the source.
00:26:50
Speaker 1: Ridge Runner, Josh Abbatoyd. Then from there that takes you to new Founding.
00:26:54
Speaker 2: And that takes remember new Founding.
00:26:56
Speaker 3: We are forging an alliance to revitalize American civilism, bringing builders, creators, and concerned citizens together.
00:27:04
Speaker 2: That other company Brian Allen had come across while trying to meddle detect it is a venture capital firm It's also Ridge Runner's partner in the Highland Rim Project. Newfounding's website is striking images of cowboys, the Great Planes, a Gothic cathedral, astronauts. The company aimed to solve quote critical civilizational problems.
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Speaker 1: If you follow a new Founding and that takes you to Nate.
00:27:30
Speaker 2: Fisher, who is Nate Fisher?
00:27:33
Speaker 1: Okay, good old Nate. I can tell you about Nate.
00:27:37
Speaker 2: Diana clicked around opening some documents on her laptop. Nate Fisher is the head of new Founding, the man at the top of all of this who Diana found also goes on a lot of podcasts.
00:27:50
Speaker 9: To build that city on the hill or set an example, or come together in ventures that can actually shape the country.
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Speaker 2: He's someone with grand plans.
00:28:00
Speaker 1: And wide scale personal agendas.
00:28:02
Speaker 2: Yes, wide scale agendas. Fisher didn't respond to our requests for comment. Fisher is in his early forties and lives in Dallas. He's got a real Alex p Keaton vibe, sweater vests, an aggressive side part. He speaks almost robotically. Fisher, like Josh Abbatoy, graduated from Harvard Law School. After graduation, Fisher made millions buying and selling distressed homes in Florida in the wake of the two thousand and eight financial crisis.
00:28:32
Speaker 9: Business was good, investing was good. But I started thinking about sort of drawn back to the political questions.
00:28:40
Speaker 2: Then he traveled the world, studying societies and flux. He returned to an America that he believed was in distress that needed Christian leaders and Christian ideas to help restore it.
00:28:51
Speaker 1: You are Christian?
00:28:53
Speaker 9: I am.
00:28:54
Speaker 2: This is Fisher on a podcast called The Fallen State.
00:28:58
Speaker 5: And while are you a.
00:28:59
Speaker 9: CHRISTI believe that it means I was chosen by God. My broader mission is to fulfill that Genesis one dominion mandate, fill the earth and subdue it. Take dominion.
00:29:10
Speaker 2: Dominion. You hear that word a lot in these circles. Dominion is the belief that Christians are called to have absolute authority over society, over the world. It's an essential idea behind Christian nationalism.
00:29:24
Speaker 9: What excites me most about the discussions around Christian nationalism, for instance, is that is really a proposed as a true alternative, positive vision for where we need to go.
00:29:35
Speaker 2: For Fisher, there's a clear path to dominion, a path that begins at home.
00:29:40
Speaker 9: That's achieved through having kids, having a family.
00:29:43
Speaker 2: Fisher has five children, and he says, a strict family order.
00:29:48
Speaker 5: And your wife obey you.
00:29:51
Speaker 7: Yes?
00:29:54
Speaker 1: Right?
00:29:54
Speaker 9: I mean you ask the question, yes she does.
00:29:57
Speaker 1: When you say he obey you, what does that mean to you?
00:30:02
Speaker 9: It means that she recognizes my leadership and the family. I'm the ultimate leader. I'm the ultimate decision maker subject to God.
00:30:14
Speaker 2: There are other steps to achieving dominion.
00:30:16
Speaker 9: Success in business, and I would say, for me now, it's a step beyond that.
00:30:21
Speaker 2: Fisher imagined an array of businesses, businesses that could build and sustain a future Christian society. That Diana came to understand was why Fisher had created new funding to fund and foster that ecosystem of companies.
00:30:37
Speaker 9: I've put millions of dollars into it. I've built networks, I've built teams, I've built other things.
00:30:43
Speaker 1: Even though the industries might differ, they're still following businesses and investing in businesses that are in line with that ideology.
00:30:52
Speaker 2: The venture capital firms investments are far ranging, laser weapons, private security, drones, ammunition, aisissstems, education software, even snacks with no seed oil. Diana learned that there was one final part to Fisher's vision for a Christian led world. This new society, or civilization as he often refers to it, it will only rise up after our existing institutions collapse. Fisher said, that's already begun.
00:31:23
Speaker 9: Many people are pessimistic. They see disturbing cultural changes, no clear path to change these widely collapsing trust in society.
00:31:31
Speaker 2: In a letter laying out his strategy, Fisher wrote that the coming years will bring quote turmoil and peril, but also great opportunity. We are quote at the end of a civilizational cycle.
00:31:44
Speaker 1: I took that to mean that the old order, everything from how authority and law is established and a forced was all coming to an end.
00:31:58
Speaker 2: Part of being ready for the end of the civilizational cycle is building communities of Christendom, places to a mass power and to seek shelter from all the turmoil and peril that's to come.
00:32:11
Speaker 1: They have talked about how they intend to start with one state in the Union and establish that as the state for that ideology, and then branch out from there over time. But they will start with one state, and they have chosen Tennessee as that state.
00:32:32
Speaker 2: Diana started looking into Fisher's investors and connections.
00:32:36
Speaker 1: The people backing these developments are very wealthy. They're pouring money into this and they have a lot more to pour.
00:32:44
Speaker 2: Who Fisher has brought in to help back the Highland Rim project is hard to know exactly, but his network of conservative power and money is vast. The Devas family and the Heritage Foundation, a crypto investor interested in Christian cause, and a Silicon Valley billionaire Mark Andresen, whose venture firm is now the Republican's biggest donor. When we reached out to them all for comment, we heard back from the crypto investor, Nick Carter. He said he liked New foundings unabashed focus on America. No one else responded, So.
00:33:21
Speaker 1: What does that mean for us? It makes it scary to stand in opposition to the ideology an ideology.
00:33:30
Speaker 2: New Founding was strategically spreading through its own media. It had podcasts, of course, and a journal called The American Reformer. It was founded to quote promote a vigorous Christian approach to the cultural challenges of our day. It's run by Ridge Runner CEO Josh Abbatoy, and it too has some powerful connections. A director at American Reformer is Chris Buzzkirk, a close ally of Vice President JD. Vance. Buzzkirk is also in business with Donald Trump Junior. Buzzkirk didn't respond to our requests for comment. This was a lot for Diana to take in and the town.
00:34:12
Speaker 1: Too, because they feel like they're not just opposing what's being planned for here. They feel like they're standing in opposition to an entire administration and that scares them.
00:34:26
Speaker 2: Here's my reporting partner, Susan.
00:34:29
Speaker 1: And what did that make you think about where Gainsbor fits into that. You know, our town is small, small taters by most standards, right, but to the people who grew up here, it's everything. It's always been everything. And you know, they've seen good times come and good times go, and they've seen flourish and they've seen destitution. They've seen it all, but they've never seen anything like this.
00:35:00
Speaker 2: The residents of Gainsborough seemed outmatched by newfounding and Ridge Runner in every way. Diana and Barry of course realized this, but they were tenacious and she don't mess around.
00:35:11
Speaker 5: I mean it comes to our ag and a.
00:35:14
Speaker 1: Lot of people here still read the newspaper in Gainsborough.
00:35:17
Speaker 2: People like to know the facts about everybody, so Diana wrote a series of articles.
00:35:24
Speaker 1: Has Christian Nationalism Come to Jackson County in November twenty twenty four.
00:35:29
Speaker 2: She knew the paper's reach was modest, nothing compared to The American Reformer, which Abbatoy ran, or to the Federalist, which Abbatoy also contributed to, But the newspaper reached her people. She also deployed yet another billboard in town to send a different.
00:35:46
Speaker 1: Message, to make it clear that this isn't who we are.
00:35:50
Speaker 2: For about five hundred dollars a month, she rented a billboard at the entrance of town, a black background with bold white lettering that said just love everyone. I'll sort them out later God. But the town square, the heartbeat of Gainsborough, was where Diana decided to carry out her boldest act yet, where she would take Abbatoy on directly. There was a building on the square with the only coffee shop in town, and the building's owners were looking to sell.
00:36:21
Speaker 1: We knew that Josh Abbatoy was talking to the owners about buying it.
00:36:25
Speaker 2: Diana worried about the coffee shop, which was run by a mom and her daughters, and about Ridge Runner getting a foothold in downtown.
00:36:33
Speaker 1: We cared about what happened to them, and then we cared about what happens on the square.
00:36:38
Speaker 2: So Diana and Barry rushed and made their own offer, four hundred and twenty thousand dollars, which was more than the asking price. The building was hers. Then Diana stumbled upon someplace else, thousands of miles away from Gainsborough, glimpse into one possible future for her little town. What she saw shook her, but she thought it might also hold some answers. Next on Our Town, Chapter.
00:37:12
Speaker 7: Three wanted young men to rebuild Western civilization. Takeover sounds militaristic exhaustion guarantee. I would just say organic growth, conflict.
00:37:24
Speaker 9: We didn't take them seriously in the beginning guarantee.
00:37:27
Speaker 6: Back then it was such a French.
00:37:29
Speaker 5: Yeah, he was a joke.
00:37:30
Speaker 4: Are you afraid of anything?
00:37:33
Speaker 7: Afraid of me?
00:37:36
Speaker 1: It certainly gives you a prescient vision of what this could become.
00:37:43
Speaker 2: Our Town is written and reported by me Marraba Knight, and Susan Burfield. Rebecca Lax is our senior producer. Ken Armstrong edited the show with additional editing from Rebecca Lax. Original score and sound design by Alex Sugira. Fact check Bionica Robbins. Additional production and editorial support from Julia Weaver, David Fox, and Laura Newcombe. Special thanks to Bloomberg's Elana Sussnow, Bob blow, Kristen Powers, Anthony Mancini, the Big Take podcast team, and Will Pearson at iHeart podcasts. Our executive producer is Nicole beemster Born
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
00:00:11
Speaker 2: Previously on our Town.
00:00:13
Speaker 3: The first thing you see when it pops up is pioneers in Appalachia. Like what am I missing?
00:00:19
Speaker 4: Christian nationalists who want to turn a small Middle Tennessee community into their base of operations.
00:00:25
Speaker 5: It was like happening, and you didn't even realize it was happening.
00:00:28
Speaker 2: I just was trying to figure out what I, personally, one person, could do.
00:00:33
Speaker 3: This isn't a fly by nine LLC that will be shut down.
00:00:36
Speaker 6: Come move here to be with us over the next few years.
00:00:39
Speaker 7: We have so much plans to.
00:00:40
Speaker 6: Ridge Runner, USA dot. Yeah, I got a question, why why are you?
00:00:43
Speaker 5: And Jackson Kenny.
00:00:48
Speaker 2: The winter of twenty twenty five was an anxious one in Gainsboro. It had been several months since news broke about the plan to build a quote aligned community in your town. Ridge Runner, the real estate developer behind the project, was buying up so much land that it now controlled more acreage than Gainesboro itself. Locals were uneasy, bracing for what might come next. Then on March thirty first, twenty twenty.
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Speaker 4: Five, So, Andrew, thank you for doing this.
00:01:20
Speaker 6: You're so controversial.
00:01:23
Speaker 4: I love that yeah, married band with six kids, who pays his taxes. You're so controversial, very but you are doing one thing that's pretty wild, which is participating in the building of a new town.
00:01:34
Speaker 2: Tucker Carlson, the influential host, invited someone associated with Ridge Runner onto his.
00:01:39
Speaker 8: Show You Can Have the American Small Town Experience once again.
00:01:44
Speaker 2: It was Andrew Risker, the Christian nationalist podcaster who'd moved to Gainsboro the year before.
00:01:50
Speaker 4: I want to get back to the Ridge Runner in the town that's being built, which I assume is a fascist Christian theocracy.
00:01:57
Speaker 6: That's what the TV news is nation.
00:02:03
Speaker 2: This was a stunning leap for Ander Risker and for Ridge Runner. Here he was chatting up Carlson and his massive audience about building this Christian town in Tennessee.
00:02:14
Speaker 8: It's a you know, a real estate venture to build communities. It's large properties, you know, two three ten acre lots into into a place where they can have land, where they can have you know, have some chickens, maybe a cow like like live like Americans, you know.
00:02:29
Speaker 4: I used to yeah, yeah, tell us the response to this this dangerous venture of yours.
00:02:34
Speaker 8: Well, you know, like locally, the people that I that I've spoken to the people I have met in the town are are very you know, very enthusiastic.
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Speaker 1: Actually, it's just wasn't true.
00:02:48
Speaker 2: Locals had watched the episode.
00:02:50
Speaker 7: Not what I was seeing on the ground.
00:02:52
Speaker 2: I was furious.
00:02:53
Speaker 3: These people are a problem, not an asset.
00:02:56
Speaker 1: I was pretty horrified. Is a national stage.
00:02:59
Speaker 2: Isger was so excited. He was like a puppy that found a new bone. To Nancy Pruett, the retired art teacher, it seemed like this was just another workday for Tucker Carlson, but for Iskar.
00:03:13
Speaker 1: For Iskar it was like I have made it to the top.
00:03:16
Speaker 2: And for Ridge Runner, this was a walking billboard for.
00:03:19
Speaker 6: People who are interested.
00:03:20
Speaker 4: What's the name of it?
00:03:21
Speaker 6: This again Ridge Runner.
00:03:23
Speaker 8: The website is ridge Runner USA dot com.
00:03:28
Speaker 2: On YouTube, this episode got almost eight hundred thousand views. How did Andrew Issker get on Tucker Carlson? This wasn't some local YouTube show.
00:03:37
Speaker 4: And someone already bought the land?
00:03:38
Speaker 6: Yes, yes, so Ridge Runners bought the parcels.
00:03:40
Speaker 8: It's being divided up and sold, you know as we speak.
00:03:43
Speaker 2: This was news to many in Gainsboro. Bridge Runner seemed to be moving quickly, already prepping lots for sale.
00:03:50
Speaker 7: Everybody that was worried about this was doing their own stuff.
00:03:53
Speaker 2: Locals were reading, listening, watching everything these guys were putting into the world.
00:03:59
Speaker 9: They think they we're about dumb idiots, but we all have done our own little research.
00:04:04
Speaker 7: I've sat there and took notes.
00:04:06
Speaker 3: You know, it's hard to watch that stuff. They're tiring, it's hard to hate that much. I feel so like I created a script that went through all their videos and transcribed them, just so you don't zone out, or your soul is your body because you're listening to.
00:04:21
Speaker 2: Hiscor they were all trying to answer some version of a question that had been left hanging so well, I.
00:04:27
Speaker 10: Mean, what'd you do?
00:04:28
Speaker 9: Ol buddy?
00:04:28
Speaker 11: Who's your friends?
00:04:30
Speaker 2: What's your deal? Clearly these guys had a plan, and who's your friends? Because they definitely had connections all across Gainsboro. A handful of small town amateur sluice went to work to figure out what their town was really up against and how far they were willing to go to protect it. M from Bloomberg News, I'm Marraba Knight reporting along with Susan Burfield, and you're listening to our town. This is chapter two. This dangerous venture of yours. Oh this is so gorgeous.
00:05:39
Speaker 1: And he'll be going up for adoptions.
00:05:43
Speaker 5: He's a bully.
00:05:46
Speaker 2: Barry Naff has a soft spot for dogs. Somehow they always find him. His wife, Diana, is definitely an enabler.
00:05:55
Speaker 12: This fella.
00:05:55
Speaker 1: He showed up on the farm looking for help.
00:05:58
Speaker 2: He with starving. You're just going to keep him. Barry and Diana's home is perched on the edge of a forested hill on the outskirts of Gainsborough. They've got one hundred and fifteen acres of land where they put walking trails and dirt roads for ATV.
00:06:15
Speaker 9: So you designed this house.
00:06:16
Speaker 5: I did it, filled it too. I did everything but the frame.
00:06:21
Speaker 2: Barry's lanky, usually in jeans and a T shirt and always in motion.
00:06:27
Speaker 1: Well, y'all make yourselves at home.
00:06:29
Speaker 2: Diana's petite, with brown hair and bookish glasses. She's got a pink T shirt on that says be kind of a bit. Inside her dining table. She got down to business.
00:06:42
Speaker 5: It's a serious computer.
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Speaker 1: It's called a tough book.
00:06:46
Speaker 2: It's a massive laptop that could probably survive a mortar blast, filled with research. Can you just take me through again all of the literature and the things you consume.
00:06:58
Speaker 5: We don't have enough time.
00:07:02
Speaker 1: I do have a bibliography.
00:07:05
Speaker 2: Barry is right, we don't have enough time for that. Because when Ridge Runner landed in Gainsboro, Diana was worried about what this all meant for her town. So she went into research mode, and of all the local sluice, she dug the deepest.
00:07:18
Speaker 1: This has been on my mind.
00:07:19
Speaker 2: It's on my mind every day. Yeah, hours and hours every day. For weeks and weeks. Diana searched the internet.
00:07:27
Speaker 13: Well, now I got all my information from the reader and the listener here. If it's not something to do with hot rods or you know, welding.
00:07:37
Speaker 5: Or dogs or dog I'm not reading it.
00:07:40
Speaker 2: Barry jokes, but he was just as serious about the research as Diana. He grew up in Gainsborough, so he had a lot at stake.
00:07:48
Speaker 1: Barry's family then asked the Drapers, they've been here forever.
00:07:52
Speaker 5: Matt Draper, that's my great grandfather.
00:07:54
Speaker 1: He pretty much built Jackson County for all he did.
00:07:57
Speaker 2: Diana, though, is a transplant to Gainsborough. She came from Florida, where she owned a successful medical consulting firm twenty years ago she fell in love with Middle Tennessee.
00:08:08
Speaker 1: It was like looking at paradise.
00:08:11
Speaker 2: In two thousand and five, she bought a farm, and locals welcomed her.
00:08:15
Speaker 1: We had some lovely folks that would invite us to, you know, Thanksgiving dinner, cookouts down by the river, marathon drinking sessions that involve moonshine.
00:08:25
Speaker 2: But Gainsboro itself was flagging, and Diana wanted to help revive it. So she bought a building on the town square and fixed it up.
00:08:33
Speaker 1: Just started talking to people about what did they wish they had.
00:08:37
Speaker 2: They wanted a dress shop, so she opened a dress shop. And this is how she and Barry met.
00:08:45
Speaker 5: I had a metal fab shop.
00:08:47
Speaker 13: I just had my parking lot redone, and she drops a bucket.
00:08:51
Speaker 5: Of paint my parking lot.
00:08:52
Speaker 1: I was bringing it.
00:08:53
Speaker 12: To him because it was the pain I wanted the dance to paint the sun.
00:09:00
Speaker 2: For her new dress shop. She'd hired Barry to make it.
00:09:04
Speaker 13: I'm on a big brown spot in the parking lot. So that's how we met.
00:09:08
Speaker 2: Now years later, the two sat next to each other at their dining table in their dream house, facing a massive wall of windows that frame the rolling hills sunrise to sunset.
00:09:19
Speaker 1: If he never had to leave this property, he'd be fine.
00:09:24
Speaker 2: But now their peace had been punctured.
00:09:28
Speaker 6: This country belongs to Jesus by Ridge.
00:09:31
Speaker 2: Runner and the men who came along with it. The podcaster and.
00:09:34
Speaker 10: Heer Isker, do you otherquivocally renounce antisemitism, racism and Nazism.
00:09:39
Speaker 6: I don't get down into the weeds of playing those games.
00:09:41
Speaker 2: His co host cj Engele.
00:09:43
Speaker 6: I don't unequivocally pronounce these things.
00:09:46
Speaker 2: No, I don't punctured by Andrew Issker's talk of hate.
00:09:50
Speaker 10: How do I impart that to my children? The same ethos? I'm like, well, I have to teach them what to.
00:09:56
Speaker 2: Hate by cj Engles talk of slavery.
00:10:00
Speaker 10: Existence of slavery itself is not a sin.
00:10:02
Speaker 6: Now mistreating a slave, that would be simple.
00:10:05
Speaker 2: Their views on women, God need men to rule period, and Jewish people.
00:10:11
Speaker 8: Jews in the biblical sense, they do not exist anymore.
00:10:15
Speaker 6: It's only Christians and non Christians.
00:10:17
Speaker 2: And gay people.
00:10:18
Speaker 10: The poor homosexuals are being oppressed and everyone's being mean to them, and so we need to be okay with gay marriage.
00:10:26
Speaker 2: Diana, like many others, had never expected Gainsborough to attract newcomers like these.
00:10:32
Speaker 1: So many people were working so hard to help this community and build up this community. I just couldn't stand to see it.
00:10:39
Speaker 2: So the day after the TV report had broken the news, Diana decided to speak up. She went to the Bull and Thistle, the restaurant she'd opened a while back, and on the chalkboard outside, instead of the daily specials, she wrote a message.
00:10:53
Speaker 1: It just said, if you're a person or a group that promotes the oppression discrimination against others, please eat somewhere else and you won't like it here.
00:11:06
Speaker 5: May it work.
00:11:07
Speaker 2: They never saw anyone from Ridge Runner step foot in the restaurant again. But even if Barry and Diana didn't see them at the restaurant, Ridge Runner was already starting to take up a lot of space in their life. Literally, it had purchased hundreds of acres on either side of their property in the Hills for its quote aligned community. Barry was consumed by anger.
00:11:30
Speaker 5: I just I just I it just made my blood ball.
00:11:35
Speaker 1: Poor Barry.
00:11:37
Speaker 2: Diana is the yin to Barry's yang. She's cool headed.
00:11:41
Speaker 1: You know you should never take anything on face value, right.
00:11:46
Speaker 2: So she decided to take a beat step back and start at the beginning.
00:11:50
Speaker 1: So myself a number of other folks were like, well could be could this be the whole story? And then the next question it was how bad is it really?
00:12:02
Speaker 5: She was determined to say what they were about.
00:12:05
Speaker 2: Who exactly were these guys and what did they really want? So Diana readied her laptop and went looking.
00:12:12
Speaker 1: What did they do? Are they writing? Are they interviewing? Do they have books?
00:12:16
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, and yes, substacks books, articles and podcasts, so many podcasts.
00:12:24
Speaker 1: And then I'd follow the affiliations. It was like going through these tunnels that were all underground. You really kind of had to dig and follow things because you have to know, you have to really know.
00:12:40
Speaker 2: And what Diana found was more than she ever expected.
00:12:44
Speaker 1: It was so much deeper and wider and bigger than just Gainsbroke. This is a very widespread movement. It runs very deep and it runs very high.
00:12:57
Speaker 2: The podcasters were among the first arrived to town that Diana knew of, and they talked excitedly about the prospects of their new life in Gainsborough.
00:13:07
Speaker 10: Many of my friends online, right, well, we want to have that in real life, where instead of laughing at each other's jokes in a group chat, right, we want to be able to laugh at each other's jokes on our front porches.
00:13:18
Speaker 2: Listening to them, it sure sounded to Diana like they'd been.
00:13:22
Speaker 10: Recruited the ability of Ridge Runner to make that kind of thing happen, where now you could be with all of your friends in real life and do life together.
00:13:30
Speaker 1: Have I understood that Josh Abbitoi brought them to our place, brought them to Jackson County Business.
00:13:37
Speaker 2: Josh Abbatoy, the CEO of Ridge Runner. Diana had heard Abbatoy talking on a couple of podcasts about zeroing in on Gainsborough as the perfect place for his quote people.
00:13:48
Speaker 1: He was bringing some really exciting people. You know, some really cool people are coming, and.
00:13:53
Speaker 5: We've got some really cool people.
00:13:55
Speaker 11: Lined up who are going to be joining the project moving there. The whole point of it is to plan a flag and.
00:14:03
Speaker 1: He's talking about.
00:14:06
Speaker 2: Iscarn Ankle, the podcasters who Abbatoy refers to as his customers.
00:14:11
Speaker 11: This small town is where you know, our people are gathering.
00:14:16
Speaker 2: And the question, but why her small town? It was the question Diana and so many others had been asking. Turns out, as Diana discovered Josh Abbatoy already knew the area. He'd grown up about thirty miles west of Gainsborough. He'd left to go to college, then grad school for medieval history in Harvard. For law, he worked as a corporate lawyer in Texas, but by his mid thirties he was ready for a change, and he moved back to Tennessee with his wife and young children. When we asked Abbatoy for an interview, he declined. Occasionally, Diana had seen him around town walking the square, or once at the Dollar General.
00:14:58
Speaker 12: He was there in his hunting, in his boots, and he had his hang on the full regailion, and I thought about that. You know, he's playing a part, he's filling a.
00:15:09
Speaker 1: Role, he's got a goal. So I really wanted to understand his connections and what was his end goal.
00:15:19
Speaker 11: We need cities on a shining hill that exemplify and embody the healthy, natural human way of life, the Christian way of life, and demonstrate the superiority is that way of life.
00:15:32
Speaker 2: This was a theme of his Diana came across often his desire to build a life away from chaotic, un Christian urban communities. Abatoi says he's not a Christian nationalist, but talks often about reviving America with conservative, economically vibrant Christian towns charter communities, he calls them. He envisions a rural and red revolution of conservative religious people moving to the countryside. Gainsborough, he hoped, would be one such place.
00:16:05
Speaker 11: It's not a crazy place like a lot of urban areas are. You're not going to go there and see rainbow flags all over the place. But it's also pretty low crime.
00:16:13
Speaker 2: It also had plenty of land.
00:16:15
Speaker 11: Who's going to grab the land? Is it going to be you know, good based people who want to build something and he was excited about him three Or is it going to be you know, Bill Gates and black Rock and you know, hippies from California.
00:16:31
Speaker 2: Occasionally, Abatoy would drop a detail here and there about the Gainsborough project's progress.
00:16:37
Speaker 11: We have a lot more purchases under contract right now. So as of today, there are forty households in the target region who have bought or moved there as a result of our efforts.
00:16:47
Speaker 5: You know, Nur've spending money, you know, fixing the road.
00:16:49
Speaker 2: Running electorate, Barry had seen the landscape near his property change dirt roads where there hadn't been any markers for new lots, but otherwise he and Diana still weren't really sure what they'd be living next to, so they continued keeping close watch for any clues from their future neighbors. One came soon. The invitations went out via email. Elegant, slightly mysterious, A drawing of an eight point buck with the words Land, Liberty, Legacy, Ridge Runner's logo, and below a dropped pin revealing a location. Ridge Runner was hosting its first official open house, except there weren't any houses yet, and it wasn't really open prospective buyers only, no media. The invitation said so clearly. However, someone in town had gotten on Ridge Runner's email list by posing as a prospective buyer. I just entered a name in an email address, and of course I used a mail's name. It worked, and when the invite arrived, she quickly passed it around. Locals. Diana and Barry among them, were now able to see what Ridge Runner had planned. It was called the Highland Rim Project. On the invite there was a map showing a village with a community center, farmland and a farm store. They called it an agrahood. Potential buyers were encouraged to sign up for a thirty minute tour of available plots.
00:18:23
Speaker 11: We have a lot of customers like this who have lived most of their life in the cities or suburbs, and they dream of a healthier, more natural way of life. Maybe they have a small little hobby farm, so when they're not working for Google or some other major employer, they can step outside and touch graphs and milk a cow.
00:18:44
Speaker 2: And for some time away from the wives and kids.
00:18:47
Speaker 11: One of the really exciting things that we're going to be announcing is called the Highland Rim Sporting Club. It's a men only club cultivating together excellence and virtue and where they can socialize with other interesting friends and hopefully shoots and deer as well.
00:19:01
Speaker 2: This was Abatoy's vision for life in the Agorhood, healthy natural, Christian Superior. There were forty four plots going from fifty thousand to one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The prices were staggeringly high by Gainsborough standards. When locals looked more closely at the map, they also noticed something else right in the center, the very heart of the community was a church. A church it turns out that would be led by someone they were already familiar with.
00:19:34
Speaker 6: This country belongs to Jesus.
00:19:37
Speaker 2: Andrew Iskar, the Christian nationalist podcaster, that's what the gospel is, who is also a preacher.
00:19:43
Speaker 10: Jesus has conquered, He is king, he has a kingdom.
00:19:46
Speaker 2: The Kingdom is here and more after the break. The open house was late June, just a few months after Tucker Carlson had helped promote Bridge Runner on his show. The day did not go as planned. It was particularly hot and muggy, a big storm was rolling in. The invite to the open house had provided very specific driving instructions to the Ridge Runner property. It directed guests to take Highway fifty six, a route that would take them right past downtown Gainsboro and offer them a glimpse of what makes it special. They'd pass rolling hills and vibrant local businesses like Nana's Place and Helen's Restaurant, home to legendary banana pudding. Then, as guests approached town, the first inkling that all was not well in Gainsborough. A big solitary billboard welcoming drivers to town, but a welcome with a warning. Here nasty notions play no part then after entering downtown, if guests turned down Main Street, they'd see Gainsborough's patriotism on full display.
00:20:59
Speaker 1: A little love festival on the square. It's fantastic. Happened to be the same day as that open house.
00:21:05
Speaker 2: It was the annual fourth of July celebration, which the town celebrates at the end of June. American flags fluttered, locals chatted in the town square. But this year there was something new right in the middle of it all, a tent with a sign Christian nationalism in Jackson County.
00:21:24
Speaker 1: I said, do you mind if we put up a tent and I have these information sheets that we can give out to people if they're interested.
00:21:32
Speaker 2: Barry and Diana had printed out dozens of fact sheets she'd compiled from her months of research.
00:21:38
Speaker 1: And what did it say?
00:21:39
Speaker 13: Well, it was eight pages long, most of them aw awesome and I know, so I just came over saying, well, you know.
00:21:45
Speaker 2: As folks sambled by, they could grab Diana's packet, which contained direct quotes, footnotes, citations, and biographical details of Josh Abbottoy, the podcaster's Ridge Runner. Once Ridge Runner's guests were passed downtown, they'd get back on the highway. Drive another eight miles over a bridge with stunning views to the last stretch of road before the meeting spot. It was lined with trees, but also.
00:22:17
Speaker 7: Small signs on the telephone poles.
00:22:19
Speaker 2: That's Mark Dudney, the historian. Every sign had the familiar rebuke hat has no Home in Gainsborough while Ridge Runner had been preparing for its first big event, so at some of the locals in the middle of the night, they'd hung dozens of those signs, and at the entrance to the Ridge Runner property there was a huge banner stuck into the grass like the finish line at a race. Hate has no Home in Jackson County.
00:22:48
Speaker 7: Put up back concerned citizens.
00:22:50
Speaker 2: Who also happened to be Mark's friends. Eventually one of the podcasters drove out and blocked the banner with his truck.
00:22:58
Speaker 14: I guess they didn't want that to be seen by their prospective buyers, and some of my friends went back and moved it.
00:23:05
Speaker 7: It's like a high school thing or something. Yes, somebody's told you about what I'd done.
00:23:11
Speaker 2: Mark's friend grabbed the banner and just set it up across the street.
00:23:14
Speaker 5: So they'd have to see it when they turned in.
00:23:18
Speaker 2: And one more detail about the day.
00:23:23
Speaker 14: Coincidentally, there were two fugitives on the run and the police were over there chasing them. Yeah, and that Saturday was when they got caught.
00:23:37
Speaker 2: The day of the open house. Turns out two people had escaped from a nearby jail and fled into the woods, the woods next to Ridge Runner's property. There were police cars flashing lights, and in the middle of the open house, officers apprehended the fugitives, a shirtless man and a pantsless woman.
00:23:57
Speaker 14: So again it was really hot and human that day. You had hate has no home signs, and then you had the two mud covered fugitives on the run out there with the law enforcement.
00:24:08
Speaker 7: Presence on that very road in that community.
00:24:11
Speaker 14: So I don't know how that went for them.
00:24:17
Speaker 2: Mark and the others never found out for sure if the open house was a success for Ridge Runner or if their efforts had managed to turn off any buyers. Regardless, Diana and Barry could see that Ridge Runner kept hard at work clearing and prepping land, and they kept promoting. Ridge Runner rented a billboard of their own right on the other side of the Nasty Notions one, the one on the way into town. Ridge Runners said God bless Jackson County. We're proud to call it home. For Diana and Barry, it was yet another provocation. Ridge Runner was taking its claim to the land.
00:24:55
Speaker 1: They have the right to live however they want to live, and believe how they want to believe, but they cannot brand us.
00:25:02
Speaker 2: Then Diana got a tip Ridge Runner's lease on the billboard would be up in six months, so she swooped in before Ridge Runner could renew, booked it for a whole year, ten thousand dollars, paid for by a generous neighbor. Meanwhile, Buried did his own thing. He got into his truck and drove across the state line.
00:25:22
Speaker 13: Went to the courthouse and talked to Van about you know, Abbatoi and the proper that he bought.
00:25:28
Speaker 2: Records confirmed Ridge Runner had also scooped up land in Kentucky five hundred and fifty acres, close enough to Gainsborough that it could someday come together into one huge community, one big highland rim project.
00:25:43
Speaker 1: I mean, the whole landscape's going to change, y'all.
00:25:45
Speaker 2: For Barry and Diana, the scale of what Ridge Runner was doing and what Gainsborough was caught up in was coming into focus.
00:25:53
Speaker 1: They're pouring money into this.
00:25:55
Speaker 2: It seems so much larger than Diana suspected, especially after or she heard Josh Abbatoy talk about the venture, comparing it to the New World.
00:26:06
Speaker 11: I mean, this is what the Pilgrims did, you know, getting persecuted in England, and so they ended up taking this swing where you know, it was this partnership of pastors and community leaders and financiers who funded like the Mayflower to go found the Plymouth Colony.
00:26:21
Speaker 2: Pilgrims, colonies, pastors, financiers. If this was the comparison, who was ridge Runner's financier who had enough wealth and ambition to back this whole endeavor. More after the break to find the financier, Diana of course followed the money behind Abbatoy and ridge Runner, and that led her right to the source.
00:26:50
Speaker 1: Ridge Runner, Josh Abbatoyd. Then from there that takes you to new Founding.
00:26:54
Speaker 2: And that takes remember new Founding.
00:26:56
Speaker 3: We are forging an alliance to revitalize American civilism, bringing builders, creators, and concerned citizens together.
00:27:04
Speaker 2: That other company Brian Allen had come across while trying to meddle detect it is a venture capital firm It's also Ridge Runner's partner in the Highland Rim Project. Newfounding's website is striking images of cowboys, the Great Planes, a Gothic cathedral, astronauts. The company aimed to solve quote critical civilizational problems.
00:27:27
Speaker 1: If you follow a new Founding and that takes you to Nate.
00:27:30
Speaker 2: Fisher, who is Nate Fisher?
00:27:33
Speaker 1: Okay, good old Nate. I can tell you about Nate.
00:27:37
Speaker 2: Diana clicked around opening some documents on her laptop. Nate Fisher is the head of new Founding, the man at the top of all of this who Diana found also goes on a lot of podcasts.
00:27:50
Speaker 9: To build that city on the hill or set an example, or come together in ventures that can actually shape the country.
00:27:57
Speaker 2: He's someone with grand plans.
00:28:00
Speaker 1: And wide scale personal agendas.
00:28:02
Speaker 2: Yes, wide scale agendas. Fisher didn't respond to our requests for comment. Fisher is in his early forties and lives in Dallas. He's got a real Alex p Keaton vibe, sweater vests, an aggressive side part. He speaks almost robotically. Fisher, like Josh Abbatoy, graduated from Harvard Law School. After graduation, Fisher made millions buying and selling distressed homes in Florida in the wake of the two thousand and eight financial crisis.
00:28:32
Speaker 9: Business was good, investing was good. But I started thinking about sort of drawn back to the political questions.
00:28:40
Speaker 2: Then he traveled the world, studying societies and flux. He returned to an America that he believed was in distress that needed Christian leaders and Christian ideas to help restore it.
00:28:51
Speaker 1: You are Christian?
00:28:53
Speaker 9: I am.
00:28:54
Speaker 2: This is Fisher on a podcast called The Fallen State.
00:28:58
Speaker 5: And while are you a.
00:28:59
Speaker 9: CHRISTI believe that it means I was chosen by God. My broader mission is to fulfill that Genesis one dominion mandate, fill the earth and subdue it. Take dominion.
00:29:10
Speaker 2: Dominion. You hear that word a lot in these circles. Dominion is the belief that Christians are called to have absolute authority over society, over the world. It's an essential idea behind Christian nationalism.
00:29:24
Speaker 9: What excites me most about the discussions around Christian nationalism, for instance, is that is really a proposed as a true alternative, positive vision for where we need to go.
00:29:35
Speaker 2: For Fisher, there's a clear path to dominion, a path that begins at home.
00:29:40
Speaker 9: That's achieved through having kids, having a family.
00:29:43
Speaker 2: Fisher has five children, and he says, a strict family order.
00:29:48
Speaker 5: And your wife obey you.
00:29:51
Speaker 7: Yes?
00:29:54
Speaker 1: Right?
00:29:54
Speaker 9: I mean you ask the question, yes she does.
00:29:57
Speaker 1: When you say he obey you, what does that mean to you?
00:30:02
Speaker 9: It means that she recognizes my leadership and the family. I'm the ultimate leader. I'm the ultimate decision maker subject to God.
00:30:14
Speaker 2: There are other steps to achieving dominion.
00:30:16
Speaker 9: Success in business, and I would say, for me now, it's a step beyond that.
00:30:21
Speaker 2: Fisher imagined an array of businesses, businesses that could build and sustain a future Christian society. That Diana came to understand was why Fisher had created new funding to fund and foster that ecosystem of companies.
00:30:37
Speaker 9: I've put millions of dollars into it. I've built networks, I've built teams, I've built other things.
00:30:43
Speaker 1: Even though the industries might differ, they're still following businesses and investing in businesses that are in line with that ideology.
00:30:52
Speaker 2: The venture capital firms investments are far ranging, laser weapons, private security, drones, ammunition, aisissstems, education software, even snacks with no seed oil. Diana learned that there was one final part to Fisher's vision for a Christian led world. This new society, or civilization as he often refers to it, it will only rise up after our existing institutions collapse. Fisher said, that's already begun.
00:31:23
Speaker 9: Many people are pessimistic. They see disturbing cultural changes, no clear path to change these widely collapsing trust in society.
00:31:31
Speaker 2: In a letter laying out his strategy, Fisher wrote that the coming years will bring quote turmoil and peril, but also great opportunity. We are quote at the end of a civilizational cycle.
00:31:44
Speaker 1: I took that to mean that the old order, everything from how authority and law is established and a forced was all coming to an end.
00:31:58
Speaker 2: Part of being ready for the end of the civilizational cycle is building communities of Christendom, places to a mass power and to seek shelter from all the turmoil and peril that's to come.
00:32:11
Speaker 1: They have talked about how they intend to start with one state in the Union and establish that as the state for that ideology, and then branch out from there over time. But they will start with one state, and they have chosen Tennessee as that state.
00:32:32
Speaker 2: Diana started looking into Fisher's investors and connections.
00:32:36
Speaker 1: The people backing these developments are very wealthy. They're pouring money into this and they have a lot more to pour.
00:32:44
Speaker 2: Who Fisher has brought in to help back the Highland Rim project is hard to know exactly, but his network of conservative power and money is vast. The Devas family and the Heritage Foundation, a crypto investor interested in Christian cause, and a Silicon Valley billionaire Mark Andresen, whose venture firm is now the Republican's biggest donor. When we reached out to them all for comment, we heard back from the crypto investor, Nick Carter. He said he liked New foundings unabashed focus on America. No one else responded, So.
00:33:21
Speaker 1: What does that mean for us? It makes it scary to stand in opposition to the ideology an ideology.
00:33:30
Speaker 2: New Founding was strategically spreading through its own media. It had podcasts, of course, and a journal called The American Reformer. It was founded to quote promote a vigorous Christian approach to the cultural challenges of our day. It's run by Ridge Runner CEO Josh Abbatoy, and it too has some powerful connections. A director at American Reformer is Chris Buzzkirk, a close ally of Vice President JD. Vance. Buzzkirk is also in business with Donald Trump Junior. Buzzkirk didn't respond to our requests for comment. This was a lot for Diana to take in and the town.
00:34:12
Speaker 1: Too, because they feel like they're not just opposing what's being planned for here. They feel like they're standing in opposition to an entire administration and that scares them.
00:34:26
Speaker 2: Here's my reporting partner, Susan.
00:34:29
Speaker 1: And what did that make you think about where Gainsbor fits into that. You know, our town is small, small taters by most standards, right, but to the people who grew up here, it's everything. It's always been everything. And you know, they've seen good times come and good times go, and they've seen flourish and they've seen destitution. They've seen it all, but they've never seen anything like this.
00:35:00
Speaker 2: The residents of Gainsborough seemed outmatched by newfounding and Ridge Runner in every way. Diana and Barry of course realized this, but they were tenacious and she don't mess around.
00:35:11
Speaker 5: I mean it comes to our ag and a.
00:35:14
Speaker 1: Lot of people here still read the newspaper in Gainsborough.
00:35:17
Speaker 2: People like to know the facts about everybody, so Diana wrote a series of articles.
00:35:24
Speaker 1: Has Christian Nationalism Come to Jackson County in November twenty twenty four.
00:35:29
Speaker 2: She knew the paper's reach was modest, nothing compared to The American Reformer, which Abbatoy ran, or to the Federalist, which Abbatoy also contributed to, But the newspaper reached her people. She also deployed yet another billboard in town to send a different.
00:35:46
Speaker 1: Message, to make it clear that this isn't who we are.
00:35:50
Speaker 2: For about five hundred dollars a month, she rented a billboard at the entrance of town, a black background with bold white lettering that said just love everyone. I'll sort them out later God. But the town square, the heartbeat of Gainsborough, was where Diana decided to carry out her boldest act yet, where she would take Abbatoy on directly. There was a building on the square with the only coffee shop in town, and the building's owners were looking to sell.
00:36:21
Speaker 1: We knew that Josh Abbatoy was talking to the owners about buying it.
00:36:25
Speaker 2: Diana worried about the coffee shop, which was run by a mom and her daughters, and about Ridge Runner getting a foothold in downtown.
00:36:33
Speaker 1: We cared about what happened to them, and then we cared about what happens on the square.
00:36:38
Speaker 2: So Diana and Barry rushed and made their own offer, four hundred and twenty thousand dollars, which was more than the asking price. The building was hers. Then Diana stumbled upon someplace else, thousands of miles away from Gainsborough, glimpse into one possible future for her little town. What she saw shook her, but she thought it might also hold some answers. Next on Our Town, Chapter.
00:37:12
Speaker 7: Three wanted young men to rebuild Western civilization. Takeover sounds militaristic exhaustion guarantee. I would just say organic growth, conflict.
00:37:24
Speaker 9: We didn't take them seriously in the beginning guarantee.
00:37:27
Speaker 6: Back then it was such a French.
00:37:29
Speaker 5: Yeah, he was a joke.
00:37:30
Speaker 4: Are you afraid of anything?
00:37:33
Speaker 7: Afraid of me?
00:37:36
Speaker 1: It certainly gives you a prescient vision of what this could become.
00:37:43
Speaker 2: Our Town is written and reported by me Marraba Knight, and Susan Burfield. Rebecca Lax is our senior producer. Ken Armstrong edited the show with additional editing from Rebecca Lax. Original score and sound design by Alex Sugira. Fact check Bionica Robbins. Additional production and editorial support from Julia Weaver, David Fox, and Laura Newcombe. Special thanks to Bloomberg's Elana Sussnow, Bob blow, Kristen Powers, Anthony Mancini, the Big Take podcast team, and Will Pearson at iHeart podcasts. Our executive producer is Nicole beemster Born
