The Spam Nazi - A Life in Four Chapters (Premium E281) Sample
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If you're hearing this, well done. You found a way to connect to the internet. Welcome to the QAA podcast, premium episode 281, The Spam Nazi, A Life in Four Chapters. As always, we are your hosts, Jake Rogatansky, Julian Field, Brad Abrahams, Liv Aker, and Travis View.

This is an episode about an S-tier asshole. One of the most innovative douchebags of our modern era. A genius conman at the vanguard of every scam. A man who could have been anything he wanted and chose to be the bad guy. If he wasn't so eminently hateable, you'd probably be in awe of his inventiveness and vision. He's every kind of guy we've ever covered on the QAAPod, melted into a soup and reconstituted. This is a classic villain origin story with as many twists, turns, and hooks as a soap opera.

Before we begin, my main sources were two fantastic features for Rolling Stone by Eric Hedegaard, the book Spam Kings by Brian McWilliams, and reporting by Stephen Chua of the Squamish Chief newspaper. Prologue is not the end. No one like me has ever existed. No one like me has ever died. It was June 14th, 2017. Three hikers trudged through the densely forested, picturesque backcountry of British Columbia, just seven miles north of Squamish in western Canada.

The Douglas firs are heavy with dew. The mist from the morning rains evaporates in the summer sun. The hikers emerge from the forest into a small clearing and are confronted by a most unusual sight. There, in the center of the clearing, is a large SUV, completely burned out from a fire. It was like a scene out of Twin Peaks. The hikers approach the SUV, cautious, uneasy. The closer they got, the uneasy feeling grew until it turned macabre.

In the driver's seat sat a charred human body, burnt to the bone. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police were quick to the scene, and the investigation commenced. From the start, it was a mystery. The deceased did not die from the fire, but a gunshot wound to the chest. Though the body was too thoroughly burned to identify, locals knew the vehicle. A red 2000 GMC Yukon XL belonged to a man named Jesse James.

His girlfriend, Evan McLennan, who had been camping a few miles away, confirmed he'd been missing for a few days. Here is Sergeant Frank Jang, who headed up the case. It is truly a mystery. It is truly a case of whodunit. A major finding that spurred more questions than answers. We have a name. We have an age.

We have a photograph. - So that was it. Extremely quintessential Squamish man in that photo. - Canadians cannot be real. This is so funny. - There were like two people at that press conference also. - Like an empty room. - We're supposed to take this shit seriously?

That's the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. He's like, we have a picture of this man and he holds up like a headshot basically, like his Instagram profile pic. Like it's like we're literally the Mounties. Like the aura of the police is that we still use horses. It's not a very serious institution.

At first, the RCMP floated the theory that Jesse had been accidentally shot by hunters and that the fire was also accidental. Awesome. That's like awesome, like small town police. Like maybe we just don't have to do anything. Like maybe it was like an oops situation. That feels right for the Canadian police versus American police where it's like, you know, it's like clearly foul plays afoot. And they're like, you know what?

Maybe an accident where, like, here it's like an accident happens. They're like, it's got to be foul play. Like, who can we throw in jail for this? People were just simply hunting bipedal toque-wearing guys.

But after sufficient ridiculing, they dropped this theory, saying both were likely intentional, with an accelerant being used to start the fire. They could find no connections to gang activity or drug-related violence. The problem was, Jesse James was an unlikely candidate to be brutally, premeditatively murdered. It just didn't make sense. The picture locals painted of him was that of a rock-climbing-obsessed vegan nomad with a penchant for philosophizing. I'm sure. Live! Yeah.

Liv likes rock climbing. Liv likes philosophizing. And that pretty much sums up everyone in Squamish, BC. So I've never been there, but Liv, you've spent time in the area. So could you sort of describe it for us and your relationship to it?

-Yes, I lived in Squamish for a year, maybe a bit more than a year, and that is legitimately just every single man in Squamish. I came up for rock climbing, and I also do philosophy, so I'm no better, I guess, by definition.

But yeah, Squamish is like if you took all the annoying things about Vancouver outdoorsy granola people and just intensified it. It's like people who weren't satisfied with how annoying outdoorsy Vancouver was. They're like, I need to move an hour away to get even more of that. Yeah. I don't know. When that funny cop held up the photo, I saw you kind of like instinctively reach for the screen and swipe right. Yeah.

So yeah, Squamish is known as the outdoor recreation capital of Canada. There's endless forests, rivers, and oceans, towering granite cliffs loved by climbers from around the world, and filled with outdoor enthusiasts, nomads, raw vegans, old head hippies, hermits, and off-the-grid minimalists. But it's mostly climbers that make Squamish their home.

Jesse was an eccentric but likable member of this tight-knit community. He lived as a minimalist out of his Yukon, sometimes sleeping outside in a tent with his girlfriend. He was described as mostly charismatic and cheerful, though with a big ego, and sometimes a little distant and evasive. He made for a fantastic climbing partner, though, with an infectious enthusiasm that just got you psyched.

He was also safety conscious. No one ever got injured climbing with Jesse. Really want to emphasize like platonic ideal of Squamish man. This is like all of them lumped up into a guy.

He was active on climbing forums and started a few himself, along with a blog about vegan diet and nutrition. On one of these forums, he called out a high-end outdoor gear company for not sponsoring any minority athletes. There are tons of super strong minority climbers, far stronger than some of the assholes that Arcturic sponsors. They simply choose not to sponsor one single minority climber, despite the abundance of such climbers. Instead, looking at their athletes page, they want young, buff, white dudes and gals as the face of Arcturic's.

For them, it seems appearance even takes precedence over both climbing ability and personality. And, you know, for just a small sum, we can edit this out. If ArcDirects wants to contact us, we can replace this with any name that you choose. Yeah, and wear their thousand dollar jackets.

To add to the praise, his long-term girlfriend said this of their relationship. There were a couple of weird things, though. He had a tendency to shut his laptop right away when someone approached, and he never allowed himself to be photographed.

Jesus Christ. But those aren't glaring red flags, especially for a community known for folks with a tendency towards solitude. Okay. And it still begs the question, who would murder this passionate, nature-loving, vegan, minority-championing, perfect boyfriend in such a horrific fashion? Okay. Chapter One, Commander Duck. A sense of historical mission is something you're born with, like an instinct.

The year is 1998. From over the shoulder of a 20-year-old man, we see a flickering 15-inch CRT monitor running a fresh install of Windows 98. After waiting for Netscape Navigator to load, he enters "kof.net" into the URL bar. This is what loads.

It's about as Nazi a webpage as you can get. We have an Aryan chat. Aryan poetry. And then links with a picture of a tank. So they're not Aryan links, I guess. Just general links, yeah. Sausage links. You've been listening to a sample of a premium episode of the QAA podcast. For access to the full episode, as well as all past premium episodes and all of our podcast miniseries, go to patreon.com slash QAA. Try

Travis, why is that such a good deal? Well, Jake, you get hundreds of additional episodes of the QAA podcast for just $5 per month. For that very low price, you get access to over 200 premium episodes, plus all of our miniseries. That includes 10 episodes of Man Clan with Julian and Annie, 10 episodes of Perverts with Julian and Liv, 10 episodes of The Spectral Voyager with Jake and Brad, plus 20 episodes of Trickle Down with me, Travis View.

It's a bounty of content and the best deal in podcasting. Travis, for once, I agree with you. And I also agree that people could subscribe by going to patreon.com slash QAA. Well, that's not an opinion. It's a fact. You're so right, Jake. We love and appreciate all of our listeners. Yes, we do. And Travis is actually crying right now, I think, out of gratitude, maybe? That's not true. The part about me crying, not me being grateful. Oh.