Extreme Terrorism With Paul Hollis
Extreme terrorism is a longstanding problem that continues to plague various parts of the world, putting civilians at constant risk and crushing the freedom of many nations. John White discusses how this concept has changed since 1970 with
Paul Hollis, author of The Hollow Man Series. Paul looks back on his first-hand experiences investigating terrorist activities in Europe, which he immortalized in his fictional thriller story. He also explains how to properly consume information today where everything can be easily manipulated through technology.
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Listen to the podcast here
Extreme Terrorism With Paul Hollis
Terror in 1970
Our guest is Paul Hollis, writer of The Hollow Man Series. Paul is an American author of fictional terrorism and espionage. His bestselling and multi-award winning novels, The Hollow Man Series, follow a US government analyst in a trilogy of suspense across Europe. The inspiration for his storylines comes from a series of true incidents that occurred during the 1970s and perhaps continue today.
Valuable and free information from experts is contained in these short 7 to 15-minute episodes. We want to help people understand the various end-time threats, and provide real-time solutions along with the tools needed for friends, families, and businesses to survive. Followers of our channel can receive a free action guide on each topic weekly. We hope that these guides will help people prepare for the serious threats we all face at this time in history.
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We're going to talk about extreme terrorism in the lives of people with Paul Hollis. He's going to describe what happened in years past and how this may affect us today. I'd like to welcome Paul to our show and talk about extreme terrorism. How are you doing, Paul?
I'm doing great. Thank you, John, for giving me the opportunity to speak with your audience.
Investigating Terrorist Activities In Europe
This is cool because it's not often that we get to meet people who have traveled as much as you do, the great credentials you have, and the material you've written. I have one question to start with. What happened in your life to inspire you in the first place to get involved the way you did in understanding terrorism?
My whole life, I've always thought that showing up is 80% of the game. I tried to show up and do whatever I wanted to do. I majored in staying out of Vietnam in college. Right after that, within a year or so, I joined the Peace Corps and got the opportunity to go to East Africa in a place called Tanzania. There, I met a fellow who thought I was wasting my time digging latrines in East Africa for the Peace Corps, and he had a better offer for me. That is how I ended up in Europe for the first time. He wanted me to learn as much as I could about terrorism at the time, and go from there. I was a tourist until he needed me. Get out of the concept of me being any spy or anything like that. I was more like a redshirt guy in a Star Trek episode. The term that comes to mind is expendable.
You're expendable.
I didn't know or think about it at the time, but that was it. I was off the books. Nobody knew where I was or anything like that. It was an interesting time. That's how I got to Europe the first time.
What year was that roughly? What time in history?
That was from mid-1973 to 1976, sometime earlier in the year, but about three years or so.
At the end of the Vietnam War.
It was still going on.
Did that influence what was going on over in Europe as well?
Terrorism In Europe In 1970 Until Today
It did in certain ways. Let me give you a little background on that too. At that time, terrorism was on the rise in Europe, especially in other places, but not so much in the United States here. As I said, I was assigned to learn as much as I could about it. Most acts of terrorism in those days were specific and personal. The damage was focused on a distinct and definable enemy. Terrorism was beginning to change its strategy from that thing to more familiar senseless chaos that we recognize today.
That political figure no longer mattered to these people because they found out that by committing terrorist acts against innocent people, like our children, the targets of innocence there became preferable to these people because it hit the hearts of us much more. The fear inside of us grew with each one of those incidents while I was in Europe.
The death of a political figure no longer mattered to people today. What affects them the most are terrorist acts against innocent people and children.
America wanted to know if this was at all coming to our shores and if it was, how soon. That is the whole premise of what I was doing there. It is trying to research, follow people, and confirm that rumors were true in some cases. If they were, I would turn it over to experts who would resolve the situation. Let's not leave that three-letter acronym out there, but that's what the story was about here.
It's like an intelligence operation trying to figure it out.
In a sense, yeah. It was in the days when the NSA was saying that they did not have boots on the ground. They could say that because they had expendable people like me on the ground, taking money for researching in libraries, following people, and using disguises of all kinds of nature. Once they see you, they know who you are. I had to use disguises of all kinds to stop from being killed. I wore dreadlocks and hippie outfits at the time. In those days, I had blonde hair, not so much gray. I had to change the color of my hair with a couple of different methods, depending on what I had. Coffee grounds would do it to darken it up a little bit. The liquid shoe polish back in the day, you could use that and wash your hair with that. It came out as a brilliantly silvery shiny thing. You had to keep washing until it got down to the color that you wanted.
You're like a Mission Impossible guy.
I wouldn't exactly call it that. My stories are not just another story about Jason Bourne and Jack Ryan. They're more about a clueless guy. Part of it was bumbling that I wasn't killed, and part of it was some of the friends that I had made there who protected me and that sort of thing. It was a much less complicated world than it is today in some of those activities.
Writing The Hollow Man Book Series
Please share with us what led you to write the books in The Hollow Man Series. Why is it called The Hollow Man Series?
What led me to write the books in the first place was that my son has been a lifelong gymnast. Parents would take the kids to the gym and they had four-hour practice, and so we went to the local pub, drank, told stories, and all that. One doctor friend of mine said, "You should write this down." I said, "I don't know." She says, "What else do you have to do? You're retired. What are you going to do?" I said, "Challenge accepted."
As it turned out, I got more and more into it. It was bringing back memories and things like that. That's where that came from. The Hollow Man part was a feeling that I had at the time. It was empty inside. I didn't consider myself to have a spine or a brain or muscles or anything like that. I was just a guy who was trying to stay alive in a situation that I volunteered myself into. Back then, when you're 25, you don't expect to live to your 30s anyway. Now you do, but back then it was like, "That's so old."
It's like, "I won't live to be that long anyway, so I might as well take advantage of it now." Without training, self-reliance, or self-esteem, I felt hollow inside. There was nothing. I didn't have a feeling inside that there was something there that would help me survive in any way or anything of that sort. That's where the original title came from.
Without any self-reliance or self-esteem, you will feel hollow and find it hard to survive.
I don't think people these days even understand the concepts that you're talking about because of social media and everything else. You were on your own, weren't you?
Yeah. There were no cell phones. There was no computer networking at that time. Everything was separate. If you want to look at someone in the past, you'd have to look at microfiche in the libraries. The younger guys won't even know what that is. It was like a manual internet at the time.
Relating The Concept Of Terrorism To Daily Life
How would you relate all that experience? You were talking about a little bit how terrorism changed during that time. How would you relate that terrorism to your life then, and what it looks like for people who are dealing with everything from 9/11 to false flags to what's next, like people putting on the internet the next nuclear bombs coming? How would you relate those concepts?
Back then, we expected and honored that news agencies were honest in telling you just the news, without opinion. Some of the networks now have said, "We're not giving you the news, we're giving you our opinion of it." I don't think a lot of people understand the difference. Back then, if it was in the newspapers or pretty much on TV, like Walter Kahnke or that thing, people believed it.
There was not that overshadowing of so much misinformation, although I can tell you that there was some misinformation out there. As far as the people I was following and investigating, there was only one attitude they get about them from the Western civilization outlook. I didn't mean to say that they're all Middle Eastern terrorists. There were terrorists in Western Europe, as per the IRA in Ireland, the French had their share, and so did the Spanish, etc.
There wasn't so much of a question of whether this was true or not. It was easy to look through some of that stuff to say this is impossible. In my situation, if I thought it was impossible, I'd go try it and see if it was true or not. That got me into a lot more situations than a normal analyst would have been in. I just couldn't let things go at that time without knowing an answer. It turns out that most of the people in Europe, Asia, wherever I was at, are just normal people. They want the same thing that everybody wants, peace and a hope for a better life.
Becoming More Critical In Consuming Information
With that vast experience in your life and now you've rolled this thing forward from the '70s, what do you think would be a good word to give them peace?
Honestly, I think that there are more threats these days than the sheer positivity that is going around. What you have to do is you want to be able to understand what's being said and how to say it. The most important thing is to look beyond my experiences back then and look at the people who are in the story. Use my books as a jumping off point to see the world and go beyond what's in the books.
You relied on your friends and you relied on the news people, which is hard to do these days. Get your news sources from multiple places, not just leaning left, leaning right, or those sort of things. Look for verification. Look for duplicity to get to a point where you can see people, not just in your own country, as human beings. You want to see the world that way, even from your enemies and our perceived enemies today. They may not be so tomorrow or vice versa. It's a hard world to live in today.
Look for verification for the information you get. Seek for duplicity to get to a point where you can see people as human beings.
To give people peace, what you're talking about is instead of just assuming everything that comes across the internet is gospel, cross-reference things and look at different concepts so they can analyze what's going on. Technology with AI and everything else, and we're going to talk about that one further in our future shows, is easily manipulated. I appreciate you taking the time to share your wisdom with us. We look forward to pointing people to your book so they can get that history.
Thanks for having me, John. It's been a pleasure.
Bye, Paul.