Inside the Rise of the Hmong Gang Menace Of Destruction (MOD)

How racial divide, brutality, and anger gave birth to the largest Hmong gang in America.

It was a scorching hot afternoon here in California when I picked up my cellphone and dialed the unfamiliar number. On the other end, a gruff but friendly voice answered, his Hmong accent thick but still had a touch of central-California mixed in, a throw-back to the state where he’d grown up. He’d been expecting my call, and though this was the first time we’d ever talked, he was warm and easily opened up. Under any other circumstances, this would have been a normal conversation, reliving experiences of his childhood past and detailing for me the journey of his life, but this was no ordinary man. On the other end of the phone was none other than one of the founding members of Menace Of Destruction (MOD).

John (not his real name) is a retired OG (original gangster) of the most fearsome and infamous Hmong gang to have ever existed in the United States. Still to this day, they are the only officially recognized Hmong gang by the US government.

I’d contacted him because as a historian and a writer, I wanted to know his story and the reasons why MOD came to be. Regardless of how uncomfortable it might make the Hmong Community, Hmong gangs and the…