That’s David Ladwig. In the ‘90s, David was a white power skinhead. Today, he’s a husband, father, and grandfather, and a churchman active in prison ministry. That’s a real turnaround. David is also the first interview guest of my new season.
This season, I’ll be introducing each interview with a few notes on what I think is most important to listen for. We cover a lot, and I don’t want the important moments to slip past you.
In my introduction to this season, I told the story of a man who broke a commitment, then stood up in a room full of other men and was asked one question: “What did you choose to do instead?” A lot of men out there, many of them calling themselves Christians, have stopped being accountable to their Christian commitments. Some are also doing what’s called “hiding their power level,” which means concealing hateful beliefs in order to gain influence.
There’s another word for that. It’s called lying.
To confront this head-on, I’ve spent the last year reading, and I’m approaching 5,000 pages now. I’ve learned a ton. The people who wrote those books studied what’s called the white power movement from the outside. Lord willing, I’ll cover what the white power movement is in a future episode. It’s fascinating and frightening, and it reveals a lot about what’s going on today, especially in Christian circles.
Yes, you read that right, unfortunately.
So this season, I want to go straight to the source so you can know what I know and fight this in ways that are available to you. If you’re still reading, listening, and watching, my prayer is that you share my values. If you see this madness spreading around your family and community, I believe we can make an impact together.
But first, I want you to hear from a man who lived inside this movement, because David can tell you what happens after a young man says yes.
What Happens After Yes
David grew up in a home where, in his words, “alcohol and violence was a thing.” His father was an abusive alcoholic, so his mother started taking him to church. At 12, he professed Christ and was baptized. Then he joined the Marine Corps, and that’s when, as he puts it, “things fell off the rails.”
Around 1994, he started running with white power guys he met in the military. Sadly, that’s a common story, especially in the ‘90s. By his own account, David stayed in that world for about six years.
He didn’t get in through abstract philosophy about metapolitics or a European New Right tome. David had a lot of anger in him, and the movement gave it somewhere to go. The philosophy came later.
Before that, David describes something like an intake process. Nobody in his world would have called it that, but as he tells his story, a consistent pattern shows up. And as I’ve said many times, that road only travels in one direction.
There Was a Liturgy
It starts with a grievance that lands on something already broken. Or in David’s words:
Then come the meetings, and in those rooms, the same thing happened every time. David has a word for it that I think every pastor reading this needs to hear.
One man says what he believes, another says, yeah, that’s right, and it builds. “Ramp, ramp, ramp, ramp,” as David puts it.
There’s a password, too. It’s a band name that doubled as a battle cry: RaHoWa, short for Racial Holy War. And there’s a creed, the 14 Words, which says your people’s existence is under threat. I covered David Lane, who wrote those words, in my Black Sun book series, linked below. So think of RaHoWa and the 14 Words as two dots. You can draw a straight line between them, and that line gives all the ramping somewhere to go, and someone to go after. In David’s story, it ends with baseball bats and bicycle chains.
The Worldview Demands Action
Here’s what I said to David during the interview, and you’ll hear it from me many more times this season. If you believe the white race is being replaced or genocided, the logical conclusion is that you have to do something about it. I wrote an essay on exactly that for Fight Laugh Feast magazine, linked below.
If you genuinely believe your race is being systematically destroyed and you don’t act, I don’t know what to call that but cowardice. The worldview demands action. That’s why Norman Cohn called his book on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion Warrant for Genocide. If the Protocols really were the minutes of a meeting of rabbis hatching a plot to subvert and dominate the world, then eliminating the architects and agents of that plot would be the only logical conclusion. And guess what? The Nazis and the people who have inherited their legacy have reached that conclusion too, consistently.
Now thankfully, David says most of the men saying these things online today will never take action like the Nazis, but being a keyboard warrior in a group chat doesn’t let a man off the hook. David is very clear about who ends up paying when somebody finally acts on what all the bros have been talking about. Listen for that in the interview.
For years, David kept all of this locked away. He kept a shirt on at the beach to hide his tattoos, which would have said a lot to anyone who knew what they meant. He never planned to tell anyone. He hoped to bury it in the past like any of us might. What brought him back was hearing the jokes again. They were softer than the ones he used to tell, and this time they were in his own church. In his words:
As the late Voddie Baucham might say, if you can’t say amen, you gotta say ouch.
Some people have accused David of projecting his past onto them. Listen for his answer. It’s one of my favorite lines in the whole conversation. Also listen for the moment David starts noticing the hypocrisy and for how he found his way out. It may not be what you expect. Then David sees what he calls “the humor of God,” and that was a good one too.
Finally, at the end, I asked David what he’d say to his younger self. I’ll let him tell you that.
In the season intro, the smart man was the one who answered right away and owned it in front of everyone. That’s what you’ll hear in this conversation. David doesn’t evade. He stands up, owns it before God and men, and repents. Now, reluctantly, he tells the story in the hope of reaching the next man. There’s something to the idea of the reluctant warrior, the man who fights because he has to, not because he wants to. Maybe I’ll write about that soon.
One more thing before you hear from David: if anything he describes worries you, whether for yourself, your sons, or your friends, I want to give you something to do about it. On Veterans Day, November 11th, I’m starting a new book club. I know I’ve talked about Warrant for Genocide, and that’s still on the list, but I want to start with Walk the Narrow by Raven’s Anvil, written by Special Forces veterans. I think it’s the best inoculation against these ideas you can find.
Remember what David said. He started feeling like a victim because he’s white. Walk the Narrow names pride and victimhood as the enemy’s two chief tactics, and it deals with them inside us before we fight anybody else. That’s where a man has to start, and that’s where I want to start too. We meet live on Wednesdays at 3 PM Arizona time, with office hours on Fridays, for paid subscribers here on Substack. The link is below. I hope to see you there.
Early in our conversation, David named a song from one of his favorite bands, and he came back to it at the end. I’ll close with it too. No man is a lost cause.
Watch on YouTube:
Listen to the podcast:
In this conversation we talk about:
How grievance lands on something already broken (”I started feeling like a victim because I’m white”)
The meetings that ran like a liturgy, and how the talk would “ramp, ramp, ramp”
RaHoWa, the 14 Words, and the coded language still in the memes
Why the keyboard warriors stay home while young men end up with blood on their hands
Why the worldview itself demands action
Christian Identity and the hunt for biblical warrant
Why the jokes showing up in churches worry him, and what to do if you see it
What he’d say to his younger self, and why no man is a lost cause
Resources
- [Walk the Narrow book club] · live sessions plus weekly office hours for paid subscribers, starting Nov 11
- My Fight Laugh Feast essay on the Jewish question
- Black Sun book club on David Lane:
- Walk the Narrow by Raven’s Anvil
- Warrant for Genocide by Norman Cohn
Reach David Ladwig: timetoturnitoff@gmail.com
Stuck on something you can’t fix on your own? I mentor Christian men one-on-one for 12 weeks. [Book a call].
If you know a pastor, a father, or a friend who’s hearing those jokes in his own church, send him this conversation. And if you want to do something about it yourself, join me for Walk the Narrow starting Veterans Day.
Upgrade to paid to get the live sessions and office hours.