It Could Happen Here Weekly 109

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Al Zone Media.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
you know this is a compilation episode, So every episode
of the week that just happened is here in one
convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
there's going to be nothing new here for you, but
you can make your own decisions, all.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
Right, Welcome to it could happen here a podcast about
things falling apart and also sometimes about how things have
been falling apart for a while now. And today we're
going to talk about how things were also bad in
falling apart in the two thousands, which a profoundly cursed
time period. And specifically we're going to talk about I

(00:52):
think a part of the anti war movement that does
not get much attention, which is the port militarization resistance
that happened and sort of two thousand and six, two
thousand and seven, and with us today to talk about
this is two people who were part of this movement.
If Juliana Neuhauser, Hello, hello, and Brendan Maslaska's done, Yeah,

(01:14):
both of whom were organizers and activists while this was
going on. Yeah, I think, thank you, thank you both
for being here.

Speaker 4 (01:22):
Yeah, thanks for having us so.

Speaker 3 (01:24):
Yeah, as I was saying a bit in the intro,
I think that this is a part of the anti
war movement that is not very well known. I think
I think a lot of people know about the initial
stuff that happened in two thousand and three, and people might
know about some of the stuff that was happening against
the war in Afghanistan, like right when it started, but
I don't think most people know that it like you know,

(01:46):
even after a two thousand and three sort doesn't work,
that it continues, and then it continues sort of informs
that are that are very interesting, and so I guess
I want you to to to start out, I want
to ask how we sort of got from the early
part of the anti war movement into this, and how
you she got involved.

Speaker 5 (02:07):
I would say that there's this narrative about the movement
against the word Iraq, that there is the largest protests
in human history, at least at that point. I don't
know if it's still true against the invasion, and then
it didn't work, and everyone kind of went.

Speaker 3 (02:24):
Home and ended there.

Speaker 5 (02:27):
And to a certain extent that's true. But like you said,
the people that didn't go home went an interesting direction.
And so at the time there were direct action was
not as acceptable as it is now. This movement was

(02:48):
largely dominated either by big liberal coalitions or PSL front
groups that were basically indistinguishable in what they actually did,
which was basically nothing and in the best of cases
and then the worst of cases kind of insurgency. But
then there were small groups of people that at when

(03:14):
we saw that it didn't work, and we saw that
these giant, peaceful marches from one part of town to another,
or voting for John Carey or whatever, it didn't work,
that we started to look for other options.

Speaker 4 (03:32):
Yeah, and you know, I got involved, you know, i'd
say with the anti war movement. That idea of how
wars unjust was really taught to me from a very
young age. I mean, my parents were, you know, children
of the sixties, and they had family members fighting in

(03:52):
Vietnam and you know, friends dying in Vietnam, and we're
against the protests back then. So I grew up here
in the stories and of course stories from family members,
particularly one of my grandfathers, both of them who were
veterans in World War Two. One of them was a
marine in the you know, in the Pacific Theater, and
still into his seventies, eighties and nineties until his final days,

(04:15):
was just dealing with horrific PTSD and had always taught
me from young age never to get involved. So I,
you know, and I remember when when the very clearly,
you know, I'm sure it's on everyone's minds now, and
when the invasion of Afghanistan started, when the invasion of
I Rock started, I was at that massive demonstration in Washington,

(04:37):
d C. That Juliana just mentioned, and I ended up.
I'm from Utica, New York. I went to a rural
high school just outside of Utica, you know, russ Bell
generally speaking, impoverished and also very conservative area of New York.
And you know, I had the recruiters bothering me, military

(04:59):
recruiters in high school, recruiting my friends, and they were
just everywhere in the hallways. So it was very present
with me when I was younger. I moved out to Olympia, Washington,
two thousand and six, and that's one a new student
activist group, Students for Democratic Society was launched. That's how

(05:22):
Julianna and I first met. We were both in separate
chapters of that new organization in the Pacific Northwest, and
the protests started just a few months after I moved
out there in Olympia in two thousand and six.

Speaker 3 (05:39):
So wait declared for this or second because I've never
quite been clear in this history. So there was a
second SD, like Students for Democratic Society that was like
unrelated to the first one.

Speaker 5 (05:52):
Born briefly at the end of the bushop Master.

Speaker 3 (05:56):
That explains a lot of things that are you.

Speaker 4 (06:00):
Baffling, We're not that old. Yeah, we're definitely in the
in the second you know, the rebirth of it, So
you know, I think it took on some things in spirit,
you know, but also was i'd say different in many ways,
and it was very active to me at least, it
was very exciting to be a member of the New

(06:20):
STS because they're over a dozen chapters in the Pacific Northwest,
and it was a great way to connect with young
activists all over the US.

Speaker 3 (06:29):
So SDS is emerging in this time period. One of
the other things I was interested about is something something
you were talking about in the early part of this,
which has to do with the way that these giant
both the sort of answer coalition PSL Frank Group and
I guess the ISO was still around back then coalitions
work versus how like anything else worked on. So was

(06:52):
was SDS sort of like consciously set up and in
opposition to those groups?

Speaker 5 (06:56):
I don't think it was conscious, but there was just
like I mean these days, I mean, like there's a
lot of controversy around PSL with like anarchist versus tanky politics.
None of that mattered at that time, Like, none of
that mattered. The only thing that mattered was the answer,
which was the PSL Front Group was completely fucking useless.
Like they completely indistinguishable from any peace police liberal Democratic

(07:23):
Front group. There was literally no difference, just in terms
of their esthetics maybe like is there a donkey or
a hammer and sickle on something. That's the only difference
we saw. So I don't I don't think there was.
It wasn't There wasn't like a conscious like political opposite
attention to it. It was just like they're not doing anything,

(07:45):
and so we had to look in another direction.

Speaker 4 (07:49):
Actually, you know, it's hard to keep track of the
alphabet soup of authoritary communist groups at times. But this
was actually answer for those who don't recall, it was
a front group for the Workers World Party the w which, yeah,
I mean it's it's hard to keep track, right, Yeah,
it's the same thing, like.

Speaker 3 (08:07):
I think, so okay, So for people who are sort
of unaware of this, there's a network of connected but
sometimes feuding like weird stalinist cults that kind of kind
of like they hold on through like the set of
the eighties and nineties and they start sort of rebuilding
again around the anti war movements in that period. That
that's the PSL's the WOP. That's answer like, and I

(08:28):
think that's like most like modern anti war groups are
also still these people, which is incredibly depressing.

Speaker 1 (08:37):
Something.

Speaker 3 (08:37):
Want to talk a bit about it towards the end
of this, but yeah, just for people who have not
spent like the last half decade the in the trenches
of extremely weird anti war politics. So yeah, so I
think we should get into how the sort of the
first action starts in a limb.

Speaker 4 (09:03):
Yeah. So, and there were actually a couple actions that
happened in the year preceding that, you know, before I
moved out to Olympia in two thousand and six. It
was not yet under the banner of PMR Port Militarization Resistance.
That was a name that was officially coined in you know,

(09:24):
in May and June of two thousand and six. And
so just to give you an idea, Olympias it's a
college town, or at the Evergreen State College is there.
It's also the capital of Washington State, so you have
that going on. It's also a military town. It's a
little over twenty miles south of what we called Fort Lewis.
It's now called JBLM j BLUM or Joint Base Lewis McCord.

(09:48):
It's an Army and Air Force base. Now it's one base.
So you had all these you know, different kind of
elements in you know, in tandem in that town and
the public port. The Port of Olympia is one of
about seventy or so public ports in the state of Washington,
some of which are I mean, they're used for all

(10:09):
kinds of things, you know, for our commercial, private industry,
but also the military and the US government. So, you know,
I heard from someone I don't even remember who that
the military was sending a ship to the Port of
Olympia in late May of two thousand and six, and

(10:29):
this happened for ten or so days, and it was
just kind of a natural instinct for a whole bunch
of us to go down to the Port of Olympia.
It was the war machine in our backyard, and the
idea was to just block the vehicles. It started out
with just like less than ten people, a number of

(10:52):
folks getting arrested, and that very rapidly culminated into larger
protests every single day, an act of blockades people those
of us like Julian and myself and other folks using
civil disobedience or what we preferred to call civil resistance
to try and stop or at the very le slow
down these striker vehicles and to give folks an idea

(11:15):
of what a striker vehicle is. You can look it
up online, but it's kind of halfway between. You know,
a tank in a hum vy doesn't have the slacks
you know that a tank would have. It's you know.
And they were being used in both Iraq and Afghanistan
for raids of residential areas. They were really on the
front lines of the war in both those countries, and

(11:39):
that's what we were trying to stop.

Speaker 5 (11:41):
I only got involved later because I wasn't living in
Olympia at the time. I was in another STS chapter,
but my roommate was from Olympia and he had been
involved in that first round of protests in Olympia before
moving up to Balingham. Yeah, and so like hearing his story,
it's got me very excited because just like, finally someone's

(12:05):
someone's doing something like someone's they're not.

Speaker 3 (12:08):
Just like.

Speaker 5 (12:10):
It's like everything else was just so liberal, like whether
it's marching from one place to another or writing to
your congress people or occupying their office. It was like
asking someone else to do something which you knew from
the beginning they were never going to do. Yeah, and
finally this is finally someone was like actually getting into it.

(12:35):
I think the first one of the things that happened
here was that they started to avoid that there's there's
kind of a geographical thing that I think for people
who either don't know was Washington or because they're normal
people don't know like the port.

Speaker 3 (12:58):
Areas of these news very.

Speaker 5 (13:00):
Well, because it's like like unless you're a long shoreman,
like why would you go down to like the port
of Tacoma. Yeah, yeah, but uh, they kept moving it
around because Olympia is also not very big and so
it's there's really only two roads into the port, which

(13:23):
is very small, and so it was it's very easy
to block it. And so then I think the first
time that I got involved was in two thousands seven
when they had moved it because they kept moving it
around to try and switch things up and.

Speaker 3 (13:43):
Wait before they're they're the ship around.

Speaker 5 (13:47):
Is No, it's like they had to make a military shipment.
They would It's like like once the ship wasn't the port,
they would just have to go through with it. Then
you know, it's like every every six months or so,
they had to make another military shipment and they would
change the port usually each time to try and let

(14:11):
basically to avoid us. It doesn't seem like this is
like normal past. Yeah. The first time I had gone
down was in the Coma, which is a much much
much more industrialized port than Olympia. It's you know, it's
like a big port, more normal port, I guess, And
that one was honestly pretty crazy because you're just trapped

(14:34):
in this giant industrial maze basically at the mercy of
the riot cops. The best success we had was definitely
at the Port of Olympia. I think the in two
thousand and seven in Olympia was definitely and it's like
the glory moment, which was when people were able to

(15:00):
on and off like actually hold the port and control
it in the a An exits.

Speaker 4 (15:04):
Yeah, and I want to, you know, just emphasize that
like the one the military changing their approach right to
avoid us so jumping from port to port with these
different shipments. They actually went so far because we were
so successful as a movement in the Pacific Northwest to
ship striker vehicles by rail out of the Pacific Northwest

(15:27):
and even going so far as to ports in Texas.
But you know, one thing that we did is that
we built up contacts with other activists with long short
workers all up and down the West coast in California.
There are other activists we are connected with in Texas, Hawaii,
New Jersey, and New York. There is a desire in

(15:48):
the anti war movement and you know, in some extent
maybe it's like it was small, but with some folks
in the labor movement, especially in Oakland where the ISLWU
the you know, longshore Workers Union. It's a lot more
militant than say in a place like Olympia. Yeah, but yeah,
I mean people wanted to replicate this model because, as

(16:10):
Juliana said, we wore successful in two thousand and seven,
we shut down the port of Olympia for a total
of it was essentially two days. They were not they're
not shipping anything in or out. We set up blockades.
We're willing to throw down with the police in the street.

Speaker 5 (16:27):
And one of the things that was cool about that
blockade is that one of the there's two entrances, like
I said, and one was completely blockaded, and then the
other one we had like a moving I don't really
know what it was, but something with wheels that we
could move in and out to open it up, and
so then we could allow like civilian cargo to move
in and out, but then like we would feel it

(16:49):
back in place to block military shipments.

Speaker 3 (16:53):
So we were you able to actually like stop them
from like wet while in that wanted to come, actually
like stop them from moving your stuff altogether, or do
you actually cleared up by the police and they moved it, it.

Speaker 5 (17:04):
Would eventually get cleared out by the police. It's like
we were never able to. It's like we were we
we held it for two days. That those protests took
place over a series of two weeks or more or less.
We were only able to fully hold it for two
days before eventually they would peer us out. But one

(17:26):
of the things is that this does it did create
problems for the army because when you work with a port,
you know, it's like you've got like a certain timeframe
that you've contracted with the port to do whatever it
is is you're going to do, and it's not too

(17:46):
happy if you take longer than you said.

Speaker 3 (17:50):
You would or yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 (17:52):
And the other thing I want to add is, you know,
I think the other really important element with this whole
movement going on is the Pacific Northwest was it is
specifically western Washington, where the two of us were living.
It was it was, uh, you know, the center and

(18:12):
in a sense it was the heart of the anti
war movement in the country at that time. One because
of this militant direct action that we were, you know,
we were building up in the streets and trying to
throw a wrench in the gears of the war machine
to to at the very least slow it down. Which
in some ways we did, but you know, we were

(18:33):
up against so much. But the other added element, of course,
is the g I resistance and the soldiers who are
resisting I've all also known as the Rock Veterans against
the War was very active there. They set up a
GI coffeehouse across you know, literally across the street, uh,
you know, the the gates for one of the entrances

(18:54):
for Fort Lewis. There are a whole bunch of soldiers
that were going a wall. We had friends who were
active duty soldiers who had fought in you know, Iraq
and Afghanistan that were a wall and they were hiding,
you know, refusing to go back into these striker brigades
that joined us in port militarization resistance. There are a

(19:15):
whole you know, long list of soldiers that were very
publicly saying, you know, I'm refusing to fight in Iraq
or Afghanistan for you know, various reasons. And so we
are very much connected with this movement too, and I
think the higher ups in the military they're they're hyper
aware of that. They studied us very well, you know,

(19:38):
to the point of actually spying on us. So that's
like a whole other element of the story too.

Speaker 3 (19:45):
So one of the things that I've heard from talking
to other people who were involved in this was that like, wow,
like during these protests, like the level of police militarization
just like skyrocketed, and like I remember, I was you
faid about this. It was like, you know, if you
go back and look at like old system of a
down videos, you know, they'll have these things, Yeah, and

(20:05):
you'll see these you see these riot police and like
you look at them and it's like these people they
look so much less armored than like the people that
we have now. And one of the things that I
thought was interesting about this was that like this is
I think one of the points where you start getting
the modern riot police showing up, but that are just like,
you know, completely concased in like armor. And yeah, I

(20:27):
want to talk about just like the police response to this,
because I think that's that's another thing I think. I
think there's no there's a kind of a tendency to
sort of project back what the police look like in
twenty twenty one, just onto the whole history of police,
and I think it's like it's it's it's gotten worse
even in the last twenty years.

Speaker 4 (20:46):
Yeah, I mean, so I live downtown in Olympia and
probably just like a six minute walk away from the
Port of Olympia and also very conveniently just a few
blocks away from the police station. So so lucky.

Speaker 1 (21:02):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (21:02):
So we actually saw, you know, we could see from
the front of down on the road, down on the
sidewalk from the front of our house. Uh, some of
the military shipments going by. And we we did see
that absolutely, and at times it was it was terrifying.
I mean I lived in an activist house we jokingly
called HQ because that's just you know, where it because

(21:25):
of its proximity to the port. That's where a number
of us were having meetings, uh, you know, around these
protests early on in two thousand and six. And yeah,
I mean we like they look like RoboCop and it's
something I had I you know, I hadn't like I
had been to like mass marches and demonstrations like the

(21:46):
RNC protests and DNC protests in Boston, New York and
like in Washington, d c uh and so I would
see these like riot cops, but they were I mean
ubiquitous in these port protests. It was like a whole
army of them that was sent out. I mean when
Juliana said that things got kind of crazy at the

(22:06):
Port of Tacoma protests, I mean there was like a
police riot, you know, like the cops went absolutely nuts there,
shooting people with tear gas and pepper balls and brutalizing people.
I had never before witnessed anything like that. And it
got to the point in you know, in Olympia where
we kind of knew early on that we were being

(22:27):
traced by the police to the extent where, you know,
one friend of ours was followed from our house to
the bus station to take a bus to school by
the police and then was stopped and essentially assaulted by
them on the street. And we had another fellow activists,
and you know, a roommate of mine who was going

(22:48):
out to driving out with a few friends, a few
fellow activists from Olympia to Aberdeen, about an hour's drive.
So Aberdeen, there's a port of grays Harbor there, pretty
conservative small town. It's where Kirk Cobain is from.

Speaker 5 (23:02):
Home of the famous Kurt Cobain teamed McDonald's.

Speaker 4 (23:10):
Uh, they served billions and and billions served in that
one McDonald's and Kirk Cobain's McDonald's. But yeah, I mean
they you know, they they were they were following. They
had orders the Washington State Patrol two, you know, pull
over a car ful full of known anarchists. There was
alert gone out to all the police departments. They pulled them,

(23:32):
They pulled them over, They made him walk the line.
He was hadn't you know, wasn't drinking at no drugs
like nothing in his system. But they he was driving
under like one mile per hour under the speed limit.
They arrested him for duh d W I you know,
eventually fought the chargers sued them, uh and you know
what a big settlement out of all that. But that's

(23:54):
just one example of many of the lengths that the
police would go to. It was pretty severe. Even there's
a house of a bunch of anarchist younger anarchists called
the pitch Pipe Info Shop in Tacoma, and that was
also a big target. The police were swarming around them
all the time.

Speaker 5 (24:12):
They had like cameras set up like specifically just outside
the info shop, like there weren't surrounds cameras there before.
But then there's like, oh well just conveniently put them
on this one specific street corner.

Speaker 3 (24:23):
Yeah, I think like those One of the things I
was reading about this is you have that stuff. And
then also I think one of the sturiest parts of
this is that like army intelligence gets involved and yeah,
do you want to talk about the man named quote
unquote John Jacob, who was in fact not.

Speaker 4 (24:39):
That Yeah, so you know, I'm curious what memories you
have of our our good dear friend John Jacob Juliana.
I don't think I ever actually knew him in person,
but he was the moderator of the list serve, wasn't he. Yes,
he's one of the moderators of our listsers.

Speaker 5 (24:57):
Now that I look back on it, I'm like the
apartmentalization resistance the SYRUP was always just like this dramatic
shit show. It's like, looking back on it, I was like, oh,
by a cop that did nothing, absolutely nothing to like

(25:18):
establish order or uh it was on purpose.

Speaker 4 (25:24):
Yeah, So I think there's definitely some things that happened, Like,
you know, looking back from our vantage point today, it's like, Okay,
things make a little more sense at the time though,
And we're in this movement, right, and so that means
like meeting people where they're at. We would find all
kinds of people that would like want to join the
movement like I like I said earlier, like active duty
soldiers that were joining. So I met this guy named

(25:46):
John Jacob and he sent an email out to me.
I was one of the contacts for the Olympia STS group,
and it's like, hey, you know there's kind of like
a parent organization that's some old like elder activists are
in to kind of mentor us called Movement for a
Democratic Society. Very small, never really took off, but like
I'm interested in getting involved. We met up in public

(26:09):
and he seemed like an alright guy. I mean he was,
you know, forty ish early forties. He told me had
like you know, been in the military for years, and
he actually still worked at Fort Lewis, so he was
always open about that, but it only went that far.
He didn't ever tell us what he actually did there,

(26:29):
and it wasn't abnormal for you know, we had many
folks that worked active duty you know, on base and
civilian civilian roles or soldiers. As I mentioned that, we're
in port militarization resistance. So he gets involved and he
gets really involved with port militarization resistance. He goes to protests,
he gets pretty close with this group of anarchists I

(26:50):
mentioned who lived in Tacoma, and he seemed like a
really solid guy to most of us. And you know,
things happens as we progress, and you know, as the
military responded to our you know how effective we were
in the anti war movement and the GI resistance movement

(27:11):
by changing their tactics. We noticed that, Okay, when we
first started the protests, we had the ability to catch
the police by surprise by setting up, you know, a
blockade here, or having a surprise action there at this
time or this port, et cetera, et cetera. And as
time progressed, we found out that, you know, we were

(27:33):
having these making these decisions for tactics in our strategy.
We thought that we're in private and then for whatever reason,
the police kind of knew about where we were going
to be before we even showed up. And that I
remember that clearly happening in two thousand and seven the
Port of Olympia.

Speaker 5 (27:51):
Yeah, in Takoma. There is a lot of things like that,
Like there was one time when there are like some
people who had a meeting in a closed room. Like
all their they had taken, like the batteries out of
their cell phones. They had simply written on the whiteboard
the time and place they were going to have their
next meeting, which is going to be in a diner

(28:11):
near the port. And so that way, if like if
for any reason the room was bugged, it wouldn't be
caught up because it was just written on a board.
And then it was like a small meeting too, so
it's like there weren't and then when they got to
that diner, there's like full of cops like clearly waiting

(28:33):
for them. Like at that point, it's like it was
very clear there was some level of infiltration involved.

Speaker 4 (28:41):
Yeah, and I think were from early on, like you know,
we we knew our history. I mean, you know, one
of our fellow activists in PMRS and a friend of ours,
Peter Bohmer, is a professor at the Evergreen State College.
He was in the original STS back in the sixties,
and you know, he was essentially a political prisoner for
a couple of years in both Massachusetts and California. I mean,

(29:03):
the Feds essentially tried to assassinate them back in the
seventies when he was active in the anti war movement
in San Diego. Like, we knew, you know, former Black Panthers,
and we read our history, so we knew about the
history of co intel pro the counterintelligence program of the
sixties and seventies, and the war on the anti war
and civil rights and black power, American Indian movements, et cetera.

(29:28):
So we knew, you know, just intuitively early on. But
there was one thing that happened in particular which prompted
some of us to file for a public records request
with the City of Olympia. And another activist is walking
down the street in Olympia. I'm a member of the
Wobblys and Dustal Workers of the World Union, and we
had like one of those metal newspaper boxes downtown and

(29:50):
it was locked to a poll, you know, with a
bike lock. And there are some city workers there with
a pickup truck and they're cutting the lock to the
paper box and they threw it in their pickup truck,
and so, you know, this friend of ours was there
was like, what the hell, what are you doing? What's
going on? And one of the workers just kind of
shrugged and was like, I don't know, the police told

(30:11):
us to do this, and they drove off like they
stole you know, our essentially like our union property or whatever.
So we had you know, our our lawyer friend Larry
Hildes and the National Lawyer's Guild you know, call and
kind of threatened the city and and then a number
of us got together were like, hey, you know, let's
do like a public records request with the City of

(30:32):
Olympia freedom of information law right, and so we did.
And the request was, you know, just requesting any all
information the city had any exchanges communications by email, et
cetera between the police and like other agencies about anarchists,
I WW students for a Democratic Society, And their initial

(30:58):
search that the city clerk did yielded something like thirty
thousand responses. So she's like, okay, I got to narrow
this down. And I don't know, I was working on
the request at the time, and for some reason, like
I don't know, we're port protests, we're near a military base,
communications between the army, not thinking anything, and so the

(31:18):
initial responses it actually got you know, maybe one hundred,
one hundred and thirty or so different documents, just copies
of emails, et cetera, that we're little puzzle pieces for
this massive puzzle. And it was just a few of them,
and it was, you know, there was an email talking
about our guy in the Navy going to a PMR

(31:42):
meeting to get some intel. There's you know, all kinds
of things like that. There were a few emails in particular,
and the email address was something like John John J.
Towery at you know, Army dot us whatever the email
address was. So there's a crew of active that got together,
put their heads together, did some research quietly for a

(32:03):
few months, and eventually found out by publicly accessible information
like voter registration records and also finding out something about
like a motorcycle club called like the I don't know,
like the Brown Butte Club or the Brown Butt Club
or something and the like. Found out that this John
Towery guy that was in this motorcycle club and had

(32:25):
his you know, was registered to vote outside of Tacoma
in this town there. It was actually John Jacob. It
was this guy that we thought was a fellow activist,
an anarchist and a friend, you know, I thought he
was a personal friend of mine. Turns out he was
actually essentially an Army intelligence officer working for something called

(32:47):
a Force Protection Unit at Joint Face Joint based Lewis McCord,
and also working with a whole list of different agencies
and what turned out to be like a man massive
surveillance network that was national in scope. This guy was
sent by the Army along with many others to infiltrate us,

(33:08):
to spy on us, and to disrupt us was huge.

Speaker 3 (33:12):
Yeah, And that's one of the things that I've always
thought it was really interesting about this is like, so,
like I learned about port militarization resistance basically because I
was like poking around the history of like informants and
I ran into this and I was like what because
And then that was what I thought. One of the
things I thought was really interesting about this is that like,
like I think that this chapter of the anti war
movement is even on the left, is like not very

(33:33):
well known, but like the serious dis is which the
Army seems to have taken it is really remarkable. Yeah,
I'm wondering what you think about that.

Speaker 5 (33:42):
One thing we have to emphasize is is that we
were not a large group of people. Yeah, Like the
number of people who are actively involved in Port military
I guess ressistance at its speak was at how many
people do you think it was, Brandon.

Speaker 4 (33:58):
Well, it depends. I mean I'd say they're proudbably like
at its peak, maybe probably four to fifty people that
would like consistently show up to things, you know, maybe
a slightly smaller, very core group, but we would have
demonstrations with like and then like four hundred people, you know.

Speaker 5 (34:14):
Yeah, and like that would be like the max like
there is It's like there were like the peaceful like
kind of like support actions, you know, you would get
like a couple hundred people, and then like for the
stuff like where it's like the first night that that

(34:36):
the part of the entrance to the part of Olympia
was occupied, it would be like like forty to fifty people.
These were not These were not very large groups of people.
I feel like, and like I said, it's like one
thing that we need to keep in mind was that
the peace police were much stronger back then than they
are now nowadays. Like as we saw last year, it's

(34:59):
like people of learned to throw down, but that was
not the case at the time. And so this is
a very very small group of people, and I think
we accomplished a lot from with how small it was.
If it had been larger, it would have accomplished way more.

Speaker 3 (35:19):
But even.

Speaker 5 (35:23):
That small core of like forty to fifty people with
maybe expanding out to like a larger group of a
couple hundred, had them that scared that they went that
far to try and disrupt it.

Speaker 3 (35:42):
Yeah, and this is one of the things I've been
thinking about a lot recently. Of this has seas to
be a very consistent thing, which is that like the
two things that are guaranteed to like just have a
hammer drop on you if you touch them is pipelines
and ports. And that was something you know, we've talked

(36:03):
a lot on here about pipeline protests, but I was
interested in what you two think about, because, Yeah, this
this is like a very particular moments right now in
which you're dealing with all these logistics chain failures, and
I was wondering if you do think there's anything that

(36:24):
we can learn from how your versions of the sort
of of port demonstrations worked for potentially trying to leverage
that in the future, especially with like contract negotiations for
port workers in Oakland coming up next year.

Speaker 4 (36:40):
Yeah, that's a great question. You know, it is this
old saying and the IWW, direct action gets goods, right,
And I think it really boils down to that it's
building up you know, mass movements and social movements from
below that rely on direct action, that rely on civil
is this civil disobedience? Yeah, and the pipeline protests that

(37:05):
have been ongoing where Indigenous people have been on the
front lines of that for many, many years now. I mean,
the kind of repression and surveillance that we face really
pales in comparison to the kinds of you know, surveillance
of repression that folks were facing at Standing Rock for example.

(37:26):
You know, I think, of course, one of the well
one of the main differences is that it was primarily
the military, you know, with us, right that was surveilling us,
because this was very specifically, you know, a war issue
and a military issue. But yeah, I mean I think,

(37:48):
you know, like I think there's a big questions like
what what do we have to do? That's that's new
And to me, I say, you know, for both that
kind of militant action, but also for the labor movements,
like it's not you know, we don't have to reinvent
the wheel. There are things that have a tried and
true track record of getting the goods, and that is

(38:09):
you know, these more disruptive kind of actions and movements,
and so one of them would be you know, I
guess my suggestion would be to like go back to
the basics, and even like I would say, now, you
know this, Remember this is at a time when like
Facebook was around, right, like, but we weren't really using

(38:30):
that for our organizing. We really relied on like face
to face meetings, you know, phone calls and building up
trust with people and building up our capacity to like
take actions and make change. You know, I think I'm
not saying throw out everything that you know, that at
least some of the good that social media has to offer,
but like I think going beyond that and going back

(38:52):
to these older tactics. And then for the labor movement,
like the big thing is you know, and it's just
like a bigger question for for mainstreaming in particular. I mean,
they're the whole idea of like union contracts is that
workers also lose a lot. Yeah, they get some things,
but business owners and bosses have rights carved out in

(39:15):
those contracts. And with the long shore workers, I mean
The difficult thing with that, of course, is like there
would be some symbolic strikes that, of course, like longshore
workers have done and continue to do, you know, around
like the Warren Rock historically supporting movement, Abu Jamal may Day,
et cetera, like in Oakland, but they have some things

(39:36):
for that written into their contracts, and you know, for
all these other like unions, it's like, well, you know,
we can't strike at all for the next two years,
the next three years, whatever the life of the contract is. Like,
I think it's a bigger question and challenge for the
labor movement to move beyond that and not be put
in this straight jacket of contracts like that.

Speaker 3 (40:00):
Yeah, I think that that, particularly, like the the no
strike clause part of contracts, I think is an interesting
thing because it I don't know, there's not I mean,
there are some unions that will actually do stuff around
fighting it, but mostly people just sort of don't care.
And I think you wind up in a situation where

(40:21):
it seems like you kind of have to plan your
tactics around when contract negotiations are happening, because otherwise you
can't actually get people to do anything more of in
like a one day symbolic strike.

Speaker 4 (40:31):
Yeah, and or you know, the challenge is, like, you know,
we have this great American tradition that's not unique to
the US. It's universal really, and it's one that resonates
with me breaking the law right and like we're you know,
we're like civil disobedience. That is that what we are
doing in the streets and blocking the ports. We were
breaking the law and we knew it. And that's what

(40:52):
the civil rights movement, the Black freedom movement did in
the nineteen sixties. But like we have recent exams samples
of workers breaking the law in mass like the West
Virginia teacher strikes that happened a few years ago, Like
teachers in every single county in that state went on strike.

(41:12):
They broke the law, and they want something out of that.
And I think that's what we really need to encourage people,
is this idea of breaking out of like the norm
and breaking the laws, which you know, the laws that
are in place, which are not there to you know,
expand our freedom, they're there to contract it.

Speaker 5 (41:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (41:34):
One of one of my friends had a joke about
what was the exact line. It was, it's it's only
illegal if you get caught and it only matters if
you lose, which I think is a good way of
thinking about both. Yeah, and you know, yeah, I think
it's also like it's worth mentioning that like the other sides,

(41:54):
the law doesn't matter to them at all, Like they
just tear it up and like light it on fire constantly.
So don't don't bind yourself if you can, if you
can not get caught and not like go to prison
for the rest of your life. Don't bind yourself by
a bunch of like paper that the other side just
doesn't care about.

Speaker 4 (42:15):
Yeah, and that's an excellent point, because that's the big thing,
you know, with the army and law enforcement in general,
like surveillance of us. They were in the police just
their actions, their brazen actions on the street, like the
Ryot police, they were just breaking.

Speaker 1 (42:30):
The law all the time.

Speaker 4 (42:32):
They absolutely have a deep visceral hatred of the Bill
of Rights, of civil rights and civil liberties. And so
there were a number of, you know, court cases that
sprung out of you know, this movement. There was a
case called Panagoacas Vitari another Juliana Panagoacas was another PMR

(42:53):
member coplaintiff in that case. And you know, it was
a case against the Army that you know, we wage
and brought up to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals
and you know, eventually lost and it could have brought
it to the Supreme Court but didn't. But you know,
like the the other thing is like the violation of
the Posse Commentatos Act. It was a whole other thing.

(43:14):
You know, we don't have to get like so tied
up into like the legalistic I think, but like the
point your point is valid. Like they don't care about
the laws that are already there. They'll they'll just intentionally
break them, break their own laws that they have set up,
and you know, they'll just get a slap on the
wrist because that's really all that's all that happens to them.

Speaker 3 (43:36):
I think, I think I think that's a good note
to end on break the law. It's fake. It's also bad.
Do you two have anything you want.

Speaker 4 (43:44):
To plug other than that, other than you know, encouraging
people to break the.

Speaker 3 (43:47):
Law your local.

Speaker 4 (43:51):
Port Yeah, yeah, I mean I think it's you know,
I guess just encourage people to do as you know,
it sounds like what we're doing by having us on
the show, and like there are some in our very
recent history, you know, movements and wins that we all

(44:13):
as activists today can still learn from. And I think
part of that, you know, I don't want to call
us elders because we're not that old, but like one
part of that is like making sure like our movements
are still like multi generational and like we we learned
from each other and also as as Julianna and I did,

(44:33):
like I mentioned earlier, like we learned from the movements
of the past, SDS, the Black Panthers, the Black Freedom Movement,
et cetera. But there's a lot that you know, these
these struggles I think have to offer us today.

Speaker 3 (44:49):
All right, well, think thank you, thank you both for
talking coming on and talking with.

Speaker 5 (44:52):
Us, for having us.

Speaker 4 (44:54):
Thank you.

Speaker 3 (44:56):
Well, this is this has when it could happen here
I find us at have your pod on Twitter, Instagram,
and the rest of our stuff is a cause on
media at the same somewhat accursed social media places. I
don't know why I'm saying somewhat, they're just a cursed
yeah see you next time whenever.

Speaker 6 (45:17):
That is, Hey everyone, it's James.

Speaker 7 (45:30):
I am just recording an introduction for today's episode, which
we recorded on Sunday night. I'm recording this on Monday
night and you will hear this on Tuesday morning. That's Tuesday,
twenty eighth of November. I just wanted to include another
ask for donations right up front here, because we are tired,
broke and sad. I spent last night sleeping out by

(45:52):
the migrant camp in Nocumber, one of the camps. It
was extremely cold like and I had a good sleeping
bag right much much worse for people who have blankets.
I had a young woman completely breaking down and crying
this morning, understandably because it's terrible and people have been
there for five six days now. We ran out of

(46:14):
food all our distribution sites today. We just desperately need
more help and we need a much larger scale operation,
but we can't find that. So if you're able to help,
please please do. I know it's a difficult time of year.
I'm not asking you to give money that I wouldn't give.
I'm thousand plus dollars deep in this. I'm not asking

(46:34):
you to do things that I wouldn't do. Spending half
my week out there like, I'm not just preaching something
that I am not part of this is something I'm
very much part of. I think it's very important to
me and it would mean a lot to me if
people could help. However they can, either materially or with
their time. Thank you very much, and I hope you
enjoy the episode.

Speaker 3 (47:00):
Hi.

Speaker 7 (47:00):
Hello, it's me James, the guy who does podcast who
talks to you when you're driving to work, and today
on this podcast it Could Happen Here, which is about
the world falling apart and people who are putting it
back together. I am joined by two friends of mine.
We are in the desert in a Cumba at the
Cumba Hot Springs Hotel, which is open now thankfully. We've
just spent most of today and the last two months

(47:25):
doing mutual aid project out here. So if you guys
like to introduce yourselves in any way you think it's relevant,
that would be great to start off with, and then
we can talk about what's been going on here.

Speaker 1 (47:34):
I am Haval.

Speaker 8 (47:36):
I use their them pronouns. I live in San Diego
but now currently living in her cumber helping out with
the migrant crisis at the border.

Speaker 1 (47:49):
Hi.

Speaker 9 (47:50):
I'm Alo like alo Vera. I use she her pronouns,
and I've been doing mutual aid for a couple of
years now and recently have come into the scene of
helping with the refugee crisis at the border.

Speaker 3 (48:07):
Massive thank you.

Speaker 7 (48:09):
Okay, So I think to start off with, can one
of you or both of you describe just what we've
seen today. I think it's very hard for people to
get a grasp of like how the scale of what's
happening and how bad it is here.

Speaker 1 (48:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (48:24):
So today we are in the wake of a holiday
where CBP takes off, well most of them are taking
off for the holiday, and probably what is a iss
action as well, who picks up the migrants. So there's
a huge backlog of people not getting picked up, stuck

(48:45):
in these open air detention sites. And this is some
of the highest numbers that we've seen in a long
time since like the beginning of this what happened in September, right, Yeah,
And it's insane, like the amount of people that we've
were running out of food. Basically we barely made it
buy on peanut butter and jelly sandwich, the world famous
peanut butter.

Speaker 7 (49:06):
They're coming here because we feed them. They just want
the sandwich.

Speaker 3 (49:11):
And it was wild.

Speaker 8 (49:12):
It was it's it's like the desperation is getting worse
because as it gets colder, you know, people are suffering more,
they're you know, shivering more, so it's using.

Speaker 1 (49:23):
More energy, They're more hungry.

Speaker 8 (49:24):
When we show up, they're tailing our van as we
pull up, which doesn't didn't always happen, And yeah, the
desperation is real.

Speaker 3 (49:32):
We saw what like three sixty.

Speaker 8 (49:36):
I think at one camp Willows and then at another
camp it was one fifty at another camp totally what
seven math is hard?

Speaker 7 (49:46):
Yeah, and it varies throughout the day. Right, Like, I'm surprised.
We should explain, maybe ALA can do this. What is
it open at detention site?

Speaker 1 (49:55):
Right?

Speaker 7 (49:55):
OADS is yacronom we use. What does that look like?

Speaker 9 (49:59):
So an opener to tension center. From what I've seen,
is literally just people left out in the desert with nothing.
The shelter that they have has either been built themselves
by the shrubs and you know the manzanita bushes that
they find around there that they also burn which creates
awful smoke, as well as what we provide them in

(50:22):
terms of tarps, blankets, tents. What I've seen in the
open air detention centers is Essentially, when Border Patrol has
the start of a quarter, they have the money to
really get people out of there. You have a lot
of people just processed very quickly. It doesn't pile up.
And then because of that, all the infrastructure that we

(50:44):
put into these places, and all of you know, the
infrastructure that these refugees build themselves, right this is not
provided by Border Patrol, gets basically ruined. And so you
have soiled blankets that have become the tops of tents
because that's their only use at this point, have not
enough shelters, so people are sleeping just among the rocks

(51:04):
and trees because it's the best they can. Yeah, and
I think one of the most notable points of these
open air detention centers is legally speaking, Border Patrol gets
around this by not really calling them detention centers, saying
that they're not detained and that technically they're free. But
the reality is there's nowhere for them to go without

(51:26):
getting you arrested or deported. But because of this loophole,
Border Patrol has no obligation to feed them, and so
when they do feed them at the start of the quarter,
when they have the budget at which they blow it's oranges,
it's crackers. It's not enough to live off of when
you're stuck there for five days. I spoke to a

(51:49):
Kurdish migrant today who had been there for five days.
And you know, we've heard of people staying there for
an entire week, just stuck in these camps as they
overflow with people because they're not cleared due to whether
it be a holiday season or whatever it might be
that puts us in this circumstance.

Speaker 7 (52:07):
Yeah, and obviously most people won't have been here. You
can look on a map or Google Maps that you
want to, but all of this is happening like literally
in the shadow of the border wall in some cases,
or right next to the border wall. Sometimes it's a
little bit next, a little bit further away. And just
to explain why there are these locations where they are,
you guys want to explain like how people are getting

(52:27):
to the because cucumber. If you've got Google Maps, if
you're not driving, like, you can put it up and
you can look right, we're like an hour and a
bit east of San Diego, about seventy miles east of
San Diego, closer to our centro than San Diego. So
can you explain how people are ending up here by
the hundreds or thousands.

Speaker 1 (52:43):
Yeah, so.

Speaker 8 (52:45):
Talk to many migrants and they stay in a hotel
in TJ.

Speaker 1 (52:49):
I have no idea which one, and wouldn't give.

Speaker 8 (52:51):
The information if I did, but yeah, they stay in
a hotel in TJ, and they get separated by nationality.
So they take their passports from them and put them
in stacks and separate them by their nationalities. So you'll
get you know, Chinese nationalists together, you'll get people that
are from Turkey together, mostly Kurdish, and then you'll get

(53:11):
whatever their nationality is. And I'm sure the outliers get
just lumped into whatever is the most you know, like yeah,
language group exactly. And then they get in the morning,
I guess at like five or six am. They drive
all the way out from TJ to Hakamba and get
dropped off at there's three points where there's breaks in

(53:32):
the walls, and these walls obviously they don't go over
the mountains because Trump was trying to build distance rather
than actual stopping people, and so these breaks in the
walls are very easy to cross. It's literally just walking over.
There was some remnants of concertina wire or bob wire
like in the area, but it's all ripped and super

(53:53):
easy to cross, and so the coyotes will drop them
off near or bits away from that point and have
them walk in when that's where border patrol. After they cross,
border patrol will intercept them give them wristbands for the
day they arrived.

Speaker 1 (54:09):
We actually just saw this last week.

Speaker 8 (54:10):
They must have ran out of wristbands because they were
giving like Sunday wristbands when it was like a Wednesday.

Speaker 7 (54:16):
Yeah, everybody said fuck, like and that makes.

Speaker 8 (54:19):
Our job more complicated too, not only their job, I'm sure,
because they're trying to process them in order, but our
job because we're trying to record how long have people
been here. I remember I was talking to a Chinese
nationalist and had to call a translator just to see
like because they had a Sunday wristband and I think
it was Tuesday or something already, and I was like, wait,
you got you've been here for two days. And they

(54:39):
were like like trying to explain what the language barrier wants.
The translated like, no, we got here three hours ago.
We kept thinking they got here three days ago. They
kept showing the number three on their hands and so yeah,
they give them these risk bands and then tell them
to wait in these areas that are very close to
where they are intercepted, and border patrol will tell them
there's cameras all over the dead that we're watching you,

(55:01):
so don't leave, and if you leave, it'll mess up
your migroprocess or your asylum process, and so they most
of them stay. We've actually have seen a lot of
people walking on the eighty here trying to get to
town because they're desperate, they're cold, they're hungry, and they're.

Speaker 1 (55:16):
Probably just like fuck this, you know.

Speaker 8 (55:19):
But it's interesting too, how like border patrol in all
media aspects denies the existence of these camps.

Speaker 7 (55:25):
Yeah, they're not explicitly to me right later, they don't exist,
or they don't detain people, people that they what they'll
say to people aren't detained here, that they're free to go.

Speaker 1 (55:33):
Which technically they are and they can walk.

Speaker 8 (55:35):
But I had a Kurdish friend that I met at
one of the camps that we call Moon Camp, and
twenty year old from Turkey, and he said that him
and a bunch of friends that he was traveling with
just walked to the subway up the street got a
subway sandwich, and then border patrol showed up after they
had ordered their food, yeah, and said you have to

(55:56):
go back with us, but finish your food here, because
imagine that walking in was being taken back with some
way be like, oh, we can just leave and get
out of here. Like so they finished their sandwiches and
then he took them straight back. So that is detention.
If you can't leave, then you're in detention.

Speaker 1 (56:12):
That's the debt. By definition.

Speaker 7 (56:13):
I feel like, yeah, and I don't think people think
they are free to leave. And I don't think people
certainly they're not told what situation they were in, right
and think so maybe they would assume that, but there's
also not very many places for them to go.

Speaker 3 (56:27):
We are in the middle of nowhere.

Speaker 9 (56:30):
So from what I've talked to different people, you know,
on top of just like crossing the border, there's also
an entire period where these people are traveling and all
of them travel in different ways, and some of them
are traveling all the way from South America through Panama
through the jungle, and you know, people are dying on

(56:50):
the route over here, and some of them are lucky
enough to just fly in.

Speaker 7 (56:54):
And and you know, right, Yeah, they have to fight
to Cancun.

Speaker 9 (56:57):
Fly into Cancun, and then make their way over to
TJ and make it through the border. And I have seen,
like for myself with my own eyes, you know, burns
from motorcycle exhaust from you know, the different methods that
they've used to get here. And I've seen spider bites,

(57:18):
I've seen, you know, injuries that are infected that have
been infected for a long time because they've been that
way since they were in the jungle, and it's inadequate.
I had a woman that I was helping give medical
care to whose ankles were swollen from a steroid that
she was given that she should not have been given
and that she had a bad reaction to. And yeah,

(57:42):
that's just been their reality traveling here and trying to
get here. On top of that, I think that speaking
of medical issues and speaking on what you were saying
earlier about the threats of becoming undocumented, the threats of
you know, being forced to stay in these camps, there's
even fear of having a medical emergency. So like when

(58:04):
EMS comes out, when we call nine to one one
or Border Patrol calls nine one one, right they're not
like working in connection with border patrol. They're just going
to a hospital as if it was you know, someone
house person on the street going to the hospital. And
so they end up there, and if they're not given
the proper information to get a court tape, to finish

(58:27):
their asylum process and to really like be submitted properly
into the country, they are at risk of becoming undocumented.
And I think that fear has spread among people, and
I've definitely noticed personally that there is fear to have
nine to one one call to be taken away in
an ambulance because they fear you know, becoming undocumented or being.

Speaker 3 (58:46):
At risk or separated.

Speaker 9 (58:48):
Separated has been a big thing because if they end
up having their process either take longer or just be
stuck in the hospital or whatever it may be, they're
away from their family, they have to go through a
different process. They're not processed at the detention center is
the same way or at the same time. So it's
just it's a it's a there's a lot of fear,
and I think that's led to a lot of unnecessary harm.

(59:11):
And we do our best in terms of medical care,
but there's you know, we're limited. We you know, it's
over the counter, it's you know, it's we can't do much.

Speaker 7 (59:20):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and it's a street medicine really, yes, exactly. Yeah,
Like we have some doctors and nurses and other qualified
medical people come and help, but they don't have the
diagnostic tools that they need. Right, Like today we headed
somebody who had clearly some high issues and like the
best we can do is say this person needs to
go to hospital. But then in this case, they were

(59:40):
able to take the person's partners. Sometimes they won't take
the person's partner. Sometimes a person could be separated from
their children, and so they're obviously very afraid of that.
And and to compound that, I think like the release
that they're not released in the way they had previously
been released, that they're dumped onto the street at certain
transit centers, right and then and again it falls onto

(01:00:01):
volunteers nonprofits to help them get to.

Speaker 3 (01:00:03):
Where they're going to go.

Speaker 7 (01:00:06):
The scale of the mutual aid operation is really impressive,
and it's something that I don't think is like we
don't talk about it enough, people don't really understand it.
So could maybe we just start, like literally what we
do every day in a day. I've got to have
volity here every day.

Speaker 8 (01:00:24):
Yes, yeah, One thing I forgot to mention is I
am here every single day now full time, ten plus
hours a day.

Speaker 1 (01:00:32):
It's eight days a week. And so yeah, every day
we wake up, I wake up.

Speaker 8 (01:00:38):
Around like six am, and we try to get to
the first camp, which is down the street from where
I'm staying, around seven thirty or eight.

Speaker 1 (01:00:47):
O'clock in the morning.

Speaker 8 (01:00:48):
And the previous night we have loaded the van up
with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches because they have a
good hold. You don't need to keep them really refrigerated
much or you know, the YadA YadA, and so it's
just peeb and j's water and fruit and we give
them each one at least sometimes more if we have
the capability, and then we another person who is also

(01:01:13):
here full time will hit another camp on their way
because it's on their way to meet up at a
central location we call the Youth Center or the YC
where all of our donations end up, whether it's clothes, blankets,
food items, non perishables, perishables. We have a fridge and
in that place, once we get there, we'll assess what

(01:01:34):
we need to do is do we need to make
more food? Do we have enough to go feed the
third camp, which we call one seven seven, which is
all the way in Boulevard a little outside of Hakamba,
And if we have enough, we'll just hit we'll leave
and hit that spot and then come back and start dinner.
And in the meanwhile, we have a lot of volunteers
that will show up and make peanut butter and jelly

(01:01:54):
sandwiches because that is our easy go to staple.

Speaker 1 (01:01:57):
It's quick to give out.

Speaker 8 (01:01:58):
It's you know, not a whole lot of prep time
to make, you know, five hundred sandwiches, which seems like
a lot, but we've gone through probably tens of thousand
those sandwiches by this point.

Speaker 7 (01:02:10):
So he gave out a thousand PB ANDJS today.

Speaker 1 (01:02:13):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.

Speaker 8 (01:02:15):
Yeah, we ran out like today, I gave out everything
and there was even people where like the two we
got everybody in the line, which was I think I
think that was around three sixty. No, no, it was
three sixty when we did account and so in the morning, yeah,
and we ran out, and but we had two So
like a lot of the times, especially the micros that

(01:02:36):
have been there multiple days, they'll jump in. There's like
always two people or three people that are like, I'm
here to help Kurdish people, our amazing help and are
always willing to step up. But yeah, this morning at
Willow one of the camps, we had two guys that
were kind of controlling the line and helping keep them back,
and one of them like send them to us one
at a time. And at the very end of it,

(01:02:56):
I had nothing for them, and I was like going
to hook them up with a cop sandwiches and a
little have anybody who helps, I'll cook them up with
a cups of extra sandwiches or food items or water
or cigarettes even, And yeah, I had nothing for them
except for kids sandwiches or kid sandwiches kid packs. So
we make these little sandwich bags full of like different
candies and you know, granola bars and things that kids

(01:03:20):
would like to eat and give them a lot of
nutrition and stuff. So I just gave them extra that.
And once other migrants saw me giving those things out
that I had been holding and telling other people know,
these are for kids, then everybody swarmed and it was
just like, Okay, well I'm giving all the kid whoever's there,
whoever's arm is there. They're getting you know, a kid's
pack and got rid of literally all of our food.

(01:03:41):
And I think we put in like twelve plus cases
of water, forty packs, and they were all gone except
for maybe like ten or fifteen waters. It was one
of the more dire mornings that we've had, especially, Yeah,
at these camps.

Speaker 9 (01:03:56):
I know that three sixty was the the number that
you guys got in the morning, but I believe that
by the time that we were working in the evening,
at least when I was doing medical check, the number
that I was getting told either around the camp or
from Border patrol was five hundred at Willows. So and
this is you know, these are numbers that even Border
Patrol is like freaking out over. They are, you know,

(01:04:19):
worried because they can't deal with this quantity of people
and keep them processing while there's still a consistent flow.
And that's you know, it puts a lot of strain
on us because, like you were saying, we're running out
of food. We don't have enough to feed five hundred people,
you know, every day, even though we're just doing you know,

(01:04:40):
two meals a breakfast and as best we can a
dinner and trying to make sure that that dinner is
a hot meal because it is frigid out here. I
slept in my van and I kept having to wake
up to try and warm up and do something to
keep myself from freezing. And I, you know, I can
only a imagine what it's like for them with what

(01:05:03):
minimal equipment they have. Some of them don't even have tents.
So it has been a lot. I know that today,
running medical, I've seen a lot of people with colds,
and I am suspicious that that perhaps there is COVID
running around, that perhaps there is, you know something, there's

(01:05:23):
definitely something, some kind of very severe illness. Going through
the camps and being in this freezing cold is not
helping anyone's immune system. And on top of that, I've
seen broken fingers and some other stuff. And that's that's
been my today has been treating that and then helping
out with dinner, which I will say I tried a
little bit of the lentils and rice, and I can
say we are feeding them well.

Speaker 3 (01:05:43):
It is delicious, delicious food.

Speaker 9 (01:05:48):
Thank you, Sam Schultz, an amazing cook and an amazing
helper for us making sure that we, you know, are
able to do this for like you were saying, for
a long time, you know, this was put on you know,
one family of locals to really, yeah, one family of
Quakers to really take care of these people day in

(01:06:12):
and day out. And it wasn't until you came here
and were able to actually like be here full time
that there was even just an extra hand around. And
you know, right, volunteers are here during the week. But
the reality is is we are all still stuck at work,
we all still live in this healthscape. We're all still

(01:06:32):
stuck grinding those gears and making ends meet. And so
coming out here for a lot of us is you know,
like for me, is a weekend task. It's you know,
it's what we can do. It's what we have the
ability and the time and the gas money for. And
on top of that, a lot of us spent a
lot of our own money. I know that I've spent

(01:06:52):
like at least a grand and a half on just
like supplies for these runs, on supplies for whatever I can.
And you know, sometimes we get we're able to get
reimbursed by our mutual aids, and sometimes the money runs
dry and we just you know, we need a lot
of support out here that we don't have, that we
don't get and I feel like we really felt that

(01:07:13):
today running out of food.

Speaker 3 (01:07:15):
Yeah, it was bleak today.

Speaker 7 (01:07:16):
And of course the thing is like we can feed
five hundred people and do this gug gantu an effort,
and then we have to feed the same number tomorrow.
And like if we clear out us that we on
top of like those of us who are able to
go out to do medicals, to do feeds, sometimes some
of us go out and construct shelters or to check
that there aren't people who are sick and the shelters

(01:07:37):
who aren't getting care that they need, et cetera, et cetera.
Like you said, people have to cook, right, people have
to make pbjs. People have to resupply our stuff and
drive it up from San Diego, which is an hour
and fifteen minutes away. Like it's a gargantu an effort
that it's exclusively taken on by volunteers, and like a
relatively small group of volunteers considering the scale of the

(01:08:01):
task at hand. I wonder like if you would like
talk about your volunteering experience a little bit. I think
it's been great, Like it's a very diverse group of people.
We've had so many. We have the Schultz family who
are Quakers who are amazing, who have been like spearheading
this since the start. We have like obviously a lot
of anarchist people, and a lot of people from various

(01:08:23):
migrant advocacy and aid groups. Uh, that's what we have,
the Black Panthers the other day. That's probably a ton
of people I'm missing.

Speaker 1 (01:08:31):
But yeah, in church groups, church career, I.

Speaker 8 (01:08:35):
Mean, the whole the YC was kind of given to
us and I think now we're renting it to my knowledge,
but that was given to us by the what's the
church Methodist church here in Hukumba. And then there's a
group of Mormons and they're just kind of unaffiliated from
their church in a way, like they're not. There was
just a family that saw the need and some of

(01:08:57):
the elders were helping load up the beans that they've
the other day. You know from the house that the
lady that makes it and then another lady Mormon lady
makes us these roles and we'll just like give us
like hundreds and hundreds of bread rolls, which everybody loves,
even the volunteers.

Speaker 1 (01:09:14):
Yeah, I've been eating the bread homemade roles. Yeah, it's
super good.

Speaker 8 (01:09:18):
So that Yeah, like you said, mutual aid groups, anarchists,
just individuals. Random people will show up they heard it.
We had a couple people show up that heard it
on National, NPR, KPBS, and you know, then they orgs
border kindness. I'll look Gelato will come out here and
send volunteers and whatnot. But it's hard to really rely

(01:09:39):
on volunteers. Like we have a sign up sheet and
everything so we can kind of gauge what the day
is going to be like. But sometimes people don't show up,
and sometimes especially around the holiday times, it gets really
thin because everybody's got their own lives and things to do.
And but yeah, I mean I started volunteering just on
my weekends when I was working full time at my
dead end jup back at home in San Diego, and

(01:10:03):
I would, you know, saw the need. I was down
at Whiskey eight in San de Sidro pretty much every
day after work and on the weekends, and then when
they started doing street releases at IRIS station in San Diego,
I would just be there full time and on my
weekends just be there until in Deaf and Haitian Bridge
started showing up and kind of took in Detention Resistance

(01:10:25):
and they kind of took over that scene, and so
I the need was like, oh, Jakamba needs help.

Speaker 1 (01:10:31):
So I just would come.

Speaker 8 (01:10:32):
After that, I just started coming out here every weekend
from I would get off on a Thursday at like
two pm, take care of my cats at home for
a second, then drive out, help out whatever I could
by the time I got here, spend the night somehow
either I never had to sleep in my car, but
I would be ready to.

Speaker 1 (01:10:51):
And then I have some friends.

Speaker 8 (01:10:53):
Here that would put me up for the night and
stay Thursday night to Friday, call day Friday, and all
day Saturday until I had to go home because I
worked at five am on Sunday. And then all that
week I would just be at w Wait going down
after work. And so I haven't had a day off
since this really started. I mean, I think I got

(01:11:13):
the flu for a week five days right am.

Speaker 1 (01:11:16):
I had a fever four or five fucking.

Speaker 8 (01:11:17):
Days in a row, which is horrible, but so not
really a day off technically, but yeah, and then I
since I had been coming out here every weekend and
dedicating my time to Hukumba and had so many ties
with like the locals and I know, the people who
owned the hotel out here that we are currently at,
and just you know, showed face and it showed a

(01:11:40):
strong work ethic, I guess to help feed these people,
and the passion of you know, and the amount of
care that I gave and attention to these people and
listening to them, and the Schultz family, who are like
the main on the ground people since day one were like, yeah,
this this person needs to be out here. We want
to have all out here full time, and I'll love

(01:12:01):
Clado got a grant to to basically fund that, and
so once that money came through, I just took a
sabbatical from my nine to five and I was like, peace,
I got more important things to do than give Jeff
Bezos more money. You know, so he needs more yachts, clearly, Yeah, clearly, yeah,

(01:12:23):
and more space trips you know. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:12:28):
So yeah.

Speaker 8 (01:12:28):
So ever since then, I've just you know, I'm lucky
enough to have that, and you know, showed that, you know,
dedication to where I can be out here. And honestly,
like some people may think like, oh, because I'm getting paid,
I'm a boss or I'm a lead and like to me,
it's like, no, we're all leading, and I'm still just
doing the same work.

Speaker 1 (01:12:44):
I'm just now able to be here.

Speaker 8 (01:12:48):
Well on payroll forty eight hours a week, but in
reality it's ten hour days, eight days a week.

Speaker 3 (01:12:53):
Yeah, it's all the time.

Speaker 7 (01:12:55):
And like, yeah, I think it's really important that people
know actually that we have a very very verseque group.
It's not everybody is necessarily like committed to horizontal organizing
as the be all and end all, but that's how
we operate and it works really well.

Speaker 8 (01:13:07):
Yeah, especially Sam and the Quakers, they're very good at listening.
There's the American Friends Society.

Speaker 3 (01:13:13):
Right, Yeah, it works so well.

Speaker 7 (01:13:16):
Like when I was thinking the other day, I was
out here and it was the day before the holiday,
and first of all, we had this moment where this
lady pulled up and she was like, hey, who's in charge.
We were all like everyone's in charge, and the lady
was like what how does that? How did you? And
then but then like another time, we had a bit
of a crisis. We ran out of balls when we're
trying to feed people, and like one of us came up.

Speaker 3 (01:13:38):
With yeah, and the zip blocked back.

Speaker 7 (01:13:41):
Yeah, we made so we were like, we didn't have bowls,
we had sandwiches, So we gave them a sandwich and
then took the zip block back back and filled it
with beans and like it. You know, it wasn't the
person who'd been here for the longest or done the
most sessions, but it was a great idea and it
got us out of a difficult situation. And like, I think,
because we organize with respect for each other, we can
listen to each other and incorporate those ideas and that

(01:14:02):
you had something to say.

Speaker 9 (01:14:04):
Oh yeah, I just I want to highlight the community
that I've seen build here. I know that in terms
of nine hierarchical organizing, I personally have seen you know,
everyone step up and lead, even people who are there
their first day. Right if there is a task to

(01:14:25):
be done and they say they know how to do
it and they have a good idea, they're leading it,
they're spearheading it. There is you know, there's no second
guessing or egos that I've seen, at least not to
such a degree that it's been harmful. And I think
that that has given us a lot of power and
has allowed sort of our creativity to get us through this.

(01:14:49):
I think it's a testament to what non hierarchical organizing
means and how you know, lack of hierarchy and lack
of a dedicated leader doesn't mean a lack of leadership.
I think it falls on all of us to lead.
It falls on all of us to bring what we

(01:15:10):
know to the table, whether that be from the experience
that we've had coming here and working here and knowing
the details and the minutia of what's going on specifically
here in Hakamba with this project, or what we bring
to the table from our past experiences. And I think
that that has really beautifully coalesced into a really efficient

(01:15:31):
system as best as we can do, as best as
we can manage. You know, we've really made do and
kept people alive in a huge way.

Speaker 7 (01:15:40):
Yeah, And I think kept people alive is right, Like
if if I don't know how this would have gone
down if we weren't here, because I don't know if
they would have kept doing it, but certainly more people
would have been very unwell or passed away. Like I
think we can all think of a different medical emergency
what we've had to intervene to stop it getting much worse.

Speaker 8 (01:16:01):
Yeah, like just last week, I think, did you come
out the day after something? It rained on all of
us and there was like a heavy downpour.

Speaker 1 (01:16:09):
We weren't even ready.

Speaker 8 (01:16:10):
We thought it was, oh, it might be like a
little drizzle or it might be light rain here, and
they're scattered.

Speaker 3 (01:16:15):
But then we set up and.

Speaker 8 (01:16:17):
We're cooking and getting ready for to do lunch or
after breakfast and getting ready to do our dinner and stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:16:22):
And it just started downpouring on us.

Speaker 7 (01:16:24):
And I was driving and I told.

Speaker 8 (01:16:25):
You, oh, yeah, you shut up that day and literally
like we in as we got to we were like,
oh fuck, we got it, Like move now. So we
just got all the ponchos that we had a bunch
of ponchos, got them all in the car, drove to
the first camp that we had fed that morning, and
we're just started handing out ponchos as the rain's coming down.
They're walking in as you know, the coyotes dropped them off,

(01:16:47):
and that's a long hike. Had the Moon camp from
where they end up to where they break in the
wall is what thirty minute walk, ye so or so,
and so they are arriving in the pouring rain, their
socks are getting wet. It is super cold, especially at
Moon because of the location. It's just ridiculously cold, and
that's like case for hypothermia. And we're there to you know,

(01:17:11):
to stop them from getting so wet. We're giving them
trash bags for their bags, ponchos.

Speaker 1 (01:17:16):
For their being their persons.

Speaker 8 (01:17:17):
I remember seeing this little girl, she must have been
like five or six, and then we had cardboard and
because we didn't think it was going to be so
pooring before we when we loaded up the van and
we had cardboard to keep you know, the ground drive
for them to like lay on in their tents or whatever.
And people took the cardboard out of the van and
we're like blocking the rain and shielding this little child

(01:17:38):
from getting wet, you know. And it's super windy at
Moon too, at that camp. It's the location.

Speaker 1 (01:17:42):
It gets a lot of the the wind from whatever
that passes.

Speaker 3 (01:17:47):
Yeah, it comes up from yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:17:51):
I think everything you said, which we should probably touch on,
is like perhaps it's because of the way we organize,
because we don't have like strict rolls and jobs or
low leadership things. But like, and you'd mentioned it before,
but like nine times out of ten, we end up
doing things with people, not for people. Right, Like the
other day, I know, like a Kurdish guy and I
set up a ton of tents, so Colombian dude and

(01:18:11):
I built this amazing shelter and it wasn't for hit
and his family, it was for anyone who needed it.

Speaker 9 (01:18:17):
I definitely have seen that sort of collaboration with the migrants,
and I feel like it doesn't.

Speaker 3 (01:18:24):
Feel like charity. It feels like mutual lid.

Speaker 9 (01:18:27):
And on top of that, when I'm hearing from them,
you know they you know, they're helping us out. But
then on top of that, they're saying, I'm going to
get processed and I'm coming back.

Speaker 3 (01:18:34):
I'm helping, and I'm.

Speaker 9 (01:18:36):
Have you been in touch with anyone who has come
back yet?

Speaker 3 (01:18:41):
Well? Yeah.

Speaker 8 (01:18:41):
Actually, like early on in IRIS, when I was doing IRIS,
there was like a few people that were staying a
few days before they traveled onward and they just wanted
to be around and help. There was also a dude
we just called him Columbia because he was from Colombia.
It's kind of that nickname stuck and he stuck around.
I mean, he got sponsored by are pretty much loosely
sponsored by one of the organizers that was helping out

(01:19:05):
of Wa and he stuck around.

Speaker 1 (01:19:07):
He came out to Ukumba a bunch of times.

Speaker 8 (01:19:09):
He killed it on everything he did, cooking dishes, whatever,
you know, cleaning up whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:19:13):
He just he just saw that need.

Speaker 8 (01:19:15):
And yeah, I mean I've been in contact with a
couple of people that said they would come out, and
you know, I don't pressure them. I don't and a
A I want pressure them to come out because they
came here for you know, better life and all that.
But at the same time, it's just hard to get
back to some people because I've given them brought to
way too many Kurdish people to get back to everyone
on WhatsApp and that's you know, I got signal, I

(01:19:37):
got regular text and.

Speaker 1 (01:19:38):
Then whatsappened That kind of gets buried.

Speaker 7 (01:19:40):
So Yeah, there was some Afghan folks out here in September,
a few afgand folks who would come out. I think
they had arrived either in May or perhaps earlier. But
there were some afcron folks who came out and we're
able to help us, of course, like it's great because
we don't all have all the languages we need, and
we don't have all the skills we need, and so
the more people we can incorporate, even if temporarily well

(01:20:02):
they're here, then like the better we can help people, right.

Speaker 8 (01:20:05):
Right, yeah exactly, yeah, yeah, I mean, but I think
definitely the the the vibe is there that they want
to come help.

Speaker 1 (01:20:13):
And yeah, like the other day I was feeding. We're
doing a hot.

Speaker 8 (01:20:18):
Dinner and we set up and everything, and then all
these Kurdish people because I you know, will.

Speaker 10 (01:20:22):
Wear this caffee like a like a scuff yeah, with
the scarf that that you gave me, uh all the
way from comieshla, and so they recognize it.

Speaker 1 (01:20:37):
And then I know, the saying is bitja Kurdistan. When
you know.

Speaker 8 (01:20:40):
You you from Turkey, oh you Kurdish because most of
the people from Turkey are Kurdish, not all the most,
And so you know, we'll start talking and then you know,
they get all excited and then they would just want
to help, you know. And I think even regardless of
if I said that or not, or had the scarf on,
they would still just want to help.

Speaker 1 (01:20:56):
Remember one time.

Speaker 8 (01:20:57):
I was surrounded, it was just me serve being one
of the things because we'll serve multiple things water like
a soup, and then a rice or a bread or whatever,
and then maybe some hand wipes or something. And so
we just had it was just me in the middle,
surrounded my Kurdish people, and I remember the dude next
to me.

Speaker 3 (01:21:13):
It was just like someone videotape.

Speaker 8 (01:21:14):
Yeah, we Kurdish people help really well, yeah, tell the world,
you know.

Speaker 7 (01:21:21):
Yeah, and then like even yeah, when we're not doing
food soup, it's like guys will often come up to
me and be like, hey, do you have bin bags.
We'd like to clean up. We'd like it's a mess
here and we'd like to clean up.

Speaker 8 (01:21:31):
Yeah, we're unloading every time I'm loading, Like that's as
cell phone charging station. Everyone like it doesn't matter, you
know what nationality. Someone is there to help. They're like, oh,
can I grab the table? Can I do this? How
can I plug this?

Speaker 1 (01:21:42):
In a lot of times there plugging and I'm like, no,
I got this the certain way. I like to plug
this all in that makes sense and.

Speaker 3 (01:21:48):
Relatively high risk activity.

Speaker 7 (01:21:50):
I don't want any electrocution or like the other day,
I was chomping some stuff with an axe and a
guy wanted to help and I was like, look, if
I hurt myself, then I can get to hospital. If
you hurt yourself, it's going to be a rough I
mean that.

Speaker 1 (01:22:00):
Could have been a stick it out. Yea, he might
have purposely hurt himself at that point.

Speaker 3 (01:22:05):
He had his whole family.

Speaker 7 (01:22:06):
Yeah, but yeah, we build shelters and like, some people
are are really good at that, and they're good at
tying knots, and they're good at seeing things in three
D and some people are not. So like often just
get a team of people who can help, and then
you'll get a team of people who need shelter. So
we'll just career to round booting shelters for people. And
it's fun, Like it can't I'm sure it's not a

(01:22:26):
very stimulating environment out there, you know. So being engaged
in a talk, completing stuff and helping people, I'm sure
he's rewarding.

Speaker 8 (01:22:32):
Or like, yeah, even tonight we had a dude from
Turkey who just like was holding his head. Tia one
of our local residents. She lives around here. Medically, she's
doesn't have a whole lot of medical experience other than
being a mother or a grandmother and working in as
a pharmacy tech and knowing a little bit about it
and learning and being super badass. She came to me

(01:22:55):
and she's like, look, this guy has a headache. Here's
a migraine, and he has medication from so this is
obviously like an ongoing situation. And my eyes were hurting
just from all the smoke from the fires that they
were starting.

Speaker 1 (01:23:07):
In the area.

Speaker 8 (01:23:08):
And he's just sitting there holding his head, clearly, just
absolutely miserable. So she took him in her car just
to like give some heater and to warm them up
and to try to make him feel better, get him
away from the smoke. And she's like, yo, we gotta
get this guy. He's here traveling alone from Turkey. He
doesn't have anybody. So we went and found some more
I think he was Kurdish as well. We went and

(01:23:29):
found another Turkish person or Kurdish person from Turkey, and
I grabbed this this person and I was like, hey,
I have somebody here who has a gnarly migraine and
they just they.

Speaker 1 (01:23:40):
Need their heir alone. They don't have shelter they need.

Speaker 8 (01:23:43):
And so this guy came over and talked to him
and was like, look I got we got a tent
over here, come camp with us. Like that's the kind
of shit that we have to deal with, you know
what I mean, Just like the migrants will like getting
a migrant to help another migrant, you know, it's just
like it's community.

Speaker 1 (01:23:57):
That's what like Mutual eight is about.

Speaker 9 (01:24:00):
I think that and that specific situation, I had been
talking to the group that took him in. I had
been talking with them and chatting with him, and I
sat by the fire with them just talking about you know,
what was your experience like and trying to get warm
because God, it's cold out there, even for us volunteers,
and you know, we're far away from the fires, and
it's really hard because you know, this road is cleared

(01:24:22):
and so there's you know, there's no warmth out there
by where they have to stand to get food. But
what do I what I want out of highlight was
that because we are interacting with these people as equals,
because we are coming here and seeing them as people,
and we spend the time to talk with them and
to build commune with them, we can build those connections

(01:24:45):
which allow people like the gentleman with the migraine to
you know, be taken in and to have, you know,
basically a temporary family while he's there and make sure
that he's taken care of. And that's I think something
that really highlights the strength of this type of organization
and this type of work and this type of you know,

(01:25:06):
the way that our politics, the way that our ideals
really shine in this kind of setting.

Speaker 7 (01:25:14):
Yeah, I think it's right. Like I've been around a
lot of humanitarian crises and you know, refuse situations, and
I think we're doing it really excellent. Do you have
a stectually given the minimal funding and and sort of
scale of access to resources that we have, we could
do a lot more if we had a lot more money,
but we don't.

Speaker 8 (01:25:31):
You know, we're cooking on like a fucking burner with us. Yeah,
we took up to a pro painting that's made out
of an old cag that's just like if you turn
it on wrong and let the gas bleed, you will
blow yourself up. So it's just like like Sam Shaw is,
you know, responsible for everybody at the youth center where
we do stuff, So he doesn't really like other people cooking,

(01:25:53):
does it. I Mean, even though I know how to
do it, he's like, doesn't even like me doing it
because he's responsible for me if anything were to happen.
So it's like our capacity is super limited. We don't
have enough burners, we don't have enough containers. So we
have a couple one really nice like locking containers that
hold hot food and keep the food hot, but not
enough to serve upwards of six hundred people at all
three camps, and not enough vans, like it would be ideal,

(01:26:17):
like in my situation to send a van that has
charging capabilities to charge everybody's cell phone, to feed everybody,
to give them water and all their needs, blankets, medical
to each camp all at once. Instead of us driving,
it's cooking a massive amount of food of the UTH
center and hoping we have enough to hit all three camps.
Because the numbers we can try to call border patrol

(01:26:39):
offices and get numbers, but the numbers are always a
little skewed or just off, you know, or sometimes lately
they have just been straight up not giving us the
fucking numbers, like being dicks.

Speaker 1 (01:26:50):
Especially uh Campo.

Speaker 8 (01:26:53):
Border Patrol Office, which because we deal with two different
Campo takes care of the boulevard open.

Speaker 1 (01:26:59):
Air to time and say, and then the Boulevard Border
Vitel takes care.

Speaker 8 (01:27:04):
Of the willows in the moon camp in a kamba
and straight up the boulevard Border Patrol called Campo Nazis.
Like they treat their employees like nats. They're just Nazis,
and I've seen it in fact.

Speaker 7 (01:27:17):
Yeah, but yeah, like we have to interact with board
patrol a lot to get people the help that they need, right,
but like, yeah, they're definitely some cases where like there
have been certain people who are they the agent I
spoke to you today for a border puol agent. He
was very accommodating. He took the person who was in
medical distress and their partner. He drove them himself to
where they could be ms and ensure that the pretuity

(01:27:40):
they go to hospital, Like I don't have a whole
lot of knowledge what happened afterwards that we don't have.
We're not entitled to their private medical information and not
should we be. But like other times, it could be
much harder. So it's just luck of the drawer, right,
Like we there's so much we don't control, I guess, yeah,
and like we don't know exactly, Like we can't control

(01:28:02):
who goes when, who has the highest level of need,
you know, like constantly people are be coming up to
me and being like, hey, like today I was warming
up milk for babies in my camping stove right and
it was three or four babies, and they were like,
do you think they'll take us first? We have babies,
And like, I think most of the people there would
rather give up their space and let that baby go
out because no one wants to see a fucking baby
shivering out there, like it's fucked, it's terrible, but we

(01:28:26):
don't know, and we can't tell you and we can't
help you. And so like a lot of that stuff's
outside of our control. But the stuff that's within our control,
I think we've done a really good job of. I
wonder like if people are listening, I think I just
want to convey that we're all just weird, like a
group of like we're not like ragcaging, extremely like Motley Crue,

(01:28:48):
and but we we're really doing excellent work. I think
if it may blow our trumpet, but like if people
want to come and help, first of all, I would
like you probably can people think that they can't didn't
have anything useful like a bag problem with you do
like if you can, if you can like lift a
ladle or like a palette of water bottles, or drive

(01:29:08):
a vehicle, or like.

Speaker 8 (01:29:11):
Multip multiple languages, sometimes it's like yeah, or even just right,
or even just one language other than English, because I
mean even some people speak perfectly English out there, and
so just going out there and paying attention to them,
even if you don't have the capacity to cook food
or to serve food or whatever, if you can go

(01:29:31):
talk to people and you're sociable and you can make
connections and listen to their needs.

Speaker 1 (01:29:36):
And you know, there's.

Speaker 8 (01:29:36):
Google Translate, there's we have a list of translators, like
a form with numbers, so if you have a language barrier,
you can just call start calling down the line of
numbers of Mandarin or this language or that language, and
you can get I got a hold of somebody one
time for Mandarin to figure out how many days they
had been there, and it was like called a couple
of people, first no answer, and then finally someone picked up.

(01:29:57):
And so it's yeah, you know, anybody always you could
always find something. Honestly, one thing that I missed doing,
which when I first started coming out here, we had
a little bit more volunteers, especially I was coming out
on the weekends, when the weekends typically we have more
volunteers because people have jobs and the weekdays and week
days we have less. But I was when I first

(01:30:18):
started coming out to Komba on the weekends, I started
bringing my guitar and my bongos and my you know,
different instruments, tambourines, and I remember we gave out all
the instruments to the migrants at night while we were
giving them dinner to they were around the campfire and
so that they can play and enjoy themselves and lift
their spirits and so like that would be rad to
have somebody on spot all the time with a guitar

(01:30:40):
and like jamming with the migrants and lifting their spirits
because it's they're miserable. And one dude from Muzbekistan once
told me spoke really good English, and in fact he
told me about there's like commercials and so he worked
at like a center where they send people over here.

Speaker 3 (01:30:55):
Wow.

Speaker 8 (01:30:56):
Yeah, like he was on the call center or whatever
for it or something like that. But well, I was like, well,
like how was it? Like I he was like, honestly,
we're just bored. Yeah, like they're just waiting and at
that time, like the weights were like four or five days.

Speaker 1 (01:31:08):
You know, it changes, it vary.

Speaker 8 (01:31:11):
As it goes from two to three to four or five,
and the distensions, and sometimes they get out the same
day if they're lucky. But yeah, it was just we're
bored and we're just waiting and they're anxious, and which
also just tears at their spirit while they're you know,
their first day in America, you know.

Speaker 7 (01:31:27):
Yeah, exactly, Yeah, like welcome to America, sleeping with Jesseet.
It's like just above freezing.

Speaker 8 (01:31:33):
Yeah, and here's no blankets, no structures, no anything, no food,
no water, and if you're lucky, border patrol will bring
crackers and water for not enough people.

Speaker 7 (01:31:43):
Yeah, and yeah, a bunch of US waiters turn up
with blankets and that's it.

Speaker 1 (01:31:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 9 (01:31:49):
And I know that even if it's you know, I
try and include other people. But even just like I
go out there with my guitar sometimes and there's a
lull and or we're waiting to pack up or whatever,
and I'll be playing and I think that little moments
like that mean everything for these folks. And I know
that I've you know, I'll bring up that I have.

(01:32:11):
You know, on a day that I don't have my guitar,
I'll bring up that I play it and the migrants
will be all excited, wanting me to bring it out
or wanting me to to you know, whatever the activity
may be, just to stimulate, you know, their minds a
little bit. I mean, this is it's it's really bleak
and being there for for days, for just stuck in

(01:32:35):
the desert with nothing to do, right, And I mean sometimes,
you know, I've seen a soccer ball out there that
the kids play with, and that's that's so heartwight warming.
Things like that that really, you know, we want these
people to feel like they can still be in community
with each other like they're not. And I feel like
things like that really help to repair that sense of

(01:32:58):
desperation because right now, with the level of desperation, we
do see a lot of fighting for supplies, a lot
of fighting for resources because it's it's hard. It's hard
out there. People want to make sure that their kids
have blankets. People are so cold they can't sleep, and
I feel like things that bring them together, activities that

(01:33:21):
really make them feel like a community out there and
help us feel in community with them allows us to
have a more cohesive relationship and allows things to go
more smoothly. And I think it's, you know, in some cases,
more important than the supplies themselves, because it makes sure
that they go to the right places. It helps us triage,
It helps us, you know, it's its own tool for

(01:33:45):
survivals from.

Speaker 8 (01:33:47):
It, it could distract them from their suffering. You know,
if they can have an ounce of joy, you know,
and this horrible condition, in these horrible conditions, it'll distract
them enough to smile and to laugh and to not
be miserable.

Speaker 3 (01:34:01):
Yeah, I have a normal moment. Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:34:03):
So I wonder if people want to help, what other
ways that they can help.

Speaker 8 (01:34:10):
Ways it can help are are coming out here directly,
hands on the ground. Money donating money is another huge
need because a lot of the supplies that we need
cost money. We need a new kitchen, We need you know,
a dishwashing station because we're currently just dumping all of

(01:34:30):
our dish washing water into a lawn that has a
small drain. Yeah, and yeah, I look to Alatto is
one organization that takes money that you can donate to.

Speaker 1 (01:34:44):
Border Kindness is another one.

Speaker 8 (01:34:46):
Yeah, I know, Detention Resistance is out here a lot.
The most direct way too, is would be donating directly
to Sam Schultz himself.

Speaker 3 (01:34:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (01:34:57):
So yeah, and just you know, following those same organizations,
They're a Free Shit Collective is another one.

Speaker 1 (01:35:05):
They mostly focus on W eight.

Speaker 8 (01:35:07):
But this is all related, right, Like, I we had
this man from Turkey who came with his dog bom
bomb or bam bam, like he said Flintstones, but they
say bomb bomb, I guess. And he was stuck in
one of the camps and so you know, we re
like took his dog because he was not going to
be taken from the camp. He spent the night alone

(01:35:29):
because they had enough room for him. They're just like,
they don't know how to process a fucking dog, I guess.
So we took his dog for him and so he
could get processed. And once he ended up out of
detention at Central, which is where they released them, we
reunited his dog with him. Very emotional on both sides
of the separation.

Speaker 1 (01:35:47):
And the reuniting.

Speaker 8 (01:35:50):
So you know, there's all these organizations you can you know,
volunteer down in Central at the when they release you
can you know this and so yeah, but following all
these accounts share the stories.

Speaker 1 (01:36:00):
You know what I mean.

Speaker 8 (01:36:01):
On your social medias be it Twitter, I'll never call
it the other thing, or you know, Instagram, Facebook, whatever
your media is.

Speaker 1 (01:36:10):
Discord YadA YadA.

Speaker 7 (01:36:13):
Yeah, I think even sharing the stories is really powerful.
People could translate, they can reach out, they want to
do that. I looked up the r L it's for
border Kindness. It's link tr dot ee slash border kindness,
and for it's al alado a l O t r
O l a d o dot org slash donate.

Speaker 1 (01:36:35):
And they pay me to be out here, so please
don't it to them.

Speaker 8 (01:36:38):
Yeah, yeah, help them border kindas. Jackie and James are great,
They're always out here. It's yeah, either one is wonderful.

Speaker 3 (01:36:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 9 (01:36:46):
I also wanted to highlight the lovely mutual aid groups
that do a lot of work. There's not as many
of them directly putting their efforts out here, but I
know that they have helped me work out here and
make sure that I have the funds I need to,
you know, do little store runs that are necessary on
a on a moment's notice at times because we we
run out of something and we can't wait for a

(01:37:08):
bulk order supply and the you know there. There are
these mutual aid groups, you know, they they put in
the work to reimburse folks when we do things like that,
when we have to go make runs because we can't
bulk order, we can't do it the most efficient way
because we have a need right now. And that has

(01:37:30):
saved us in a lot of different moments, especially I
used to volunteer down at W eight in sanny Sidro,
and that was the primary way that we got resources
was through these mutual aid groups who who fundraise and
and I yeah, I just wanted to highlight them and
highlight the So there's the Rose Cup Collective. I know

(01:37:54):
that they do a lot of fundraising. I know that
you were saying free Ship, Free Shit Collective. There's a
few freestore SD Yeah, there's a there's a few different
ones who you know, their funds help keep us running,
especially in the hardest of times right now.

Speaker 3 (01:38:13):
Yeah, because we're all broke. We're so broke. We we
have no money, any money.

Speaker 8 (01:38:20):
I'm on the migrant diet because I'm broke and eating
the food that we feed them when there's leftovers.

Speaker 3 (01:38:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:38:26):
Yeah, we've been a lot of PB and J and
beans help us, help us feed ourselves and that was wonderful.
Thank you so much. Yeah, everyone listening to your.

Speaker 3 (01:38:35):
Do name, thank you. Yeah, and come down here.

Speaker 7 (01:38:38):
If someone came from San Francisco in May, come back,
Like there are places you can stay are in the
desert if you want to come and help. But even
if you have language skills like we there were so
many ways you can help.

Speaker 4 (01:38:50):
Come down.

Speaker 9 (01:38:51):
I've always had a place to stay, even though I like,
like of all I've I've always been ready to sleep
in my van, but always had a spot to say,
come down. It's you know, it's worth it. It's there's
a vortex they called the locals call it. Call it
a vortex. You know. You you come here and it's
like every past lifetime has has been here, and you're

(01:39:15):
you're destined to be here. There's something special about this
town and I've really fallen in love with it since coming.

Speaker 3 (01:39:20):
Yeah. Yeah, I hope more people come.

Speaker 7 (01:39:22):
It would mean a lot to me if like we
could do something cool and like further support something that's
very important to me and I think very important for
the world.

Speaker 1 (01:39:31):
Totally. It's sick.

Speaker 2 (01:39:49):
Oh boy, howdy, welcome back to It could happen here.
A podcast about about those wacky gen Z kids. Uh,
and how all of the things that the mainstream media
used to say about millennials I have now embraced to
say about gen Z who are destroying the world through

(01:40:09):
their through their greed and evilness and good knees comparatively. Yeah, Miah,
how are you doing? You're you're gen Z?

Speaker 1 (01:40:20):
Right?

Speaker 3 (01:40:21):
Yeah, so I'm on okay, I am on the exact
borderline of I am either the oldest Zoomer or the
youngest millennial.

Speaker 2 (01:40:31):
So you're you're a day walker, right like you're the
you're the Blade of gen Z. Yeah, yeah, okay, so
you could go out in the sunlight onions, but you
still need blood.

Speaker 3 (01:40:41):
Yeah, I get it, I get it.

Speaker 2 (01:40:42):
Yeah, who's the Chris Christal I guess I'm the Chris Christofferson.
If we're doing the original Blade movie, which I watched
over Thanksaving Break, pretty good. I hadn't seen it in
like fucking twenty years, but solid movie, solid movie.

Speaker 3 (01:40:57):
I feel like it's kind of downhill from the Blood Rim.
But the Blood Rave is pretty sick. It's all every
everything in culture was downhill from Blood Rave. But yeah,
it's got some it's got some good bits to it still,
you know what doesn't have good bits to it the
institution of marriage.

Speaker 2 (01:41:17):
That I mean, I don't disagree with that, but I
was going to say the Washington Post editorial.

Speaker 3 (01:41:23):
Board, Ah, you know, yeah, so.

Speaker 2 (01:41:27):
We are talking is that this is an episode about
some gin z panic shit that came out recently that
I felt was worth digging into because of the pretty
interesting ways in which it's wrong if you were, you know,
celebrating being with your family, eating turkey or just shooting
up Heroin alone in the bathroom. Last week, on November
twenty second, twenty twenty three, the Washington Post Editorial Board

(01:41:50):
published an opinion column with the provocative title, if attitudes
don't shift, a political dating mismatch will threaten marriage.

Speaker 3 (01:41:59):
Hell yeah, yeah, I want this destroy the institution.

Speaker 2 (01:42:05):
Yeah yeah, we're doing this through a political dating mismatch.

Speaker 3 (01:42:08):
Now.

Speaker 2 (01:42:09):
I think an article with roughly this premise drops every year,
sometimes a couple of times a year, on a couple
of different places. This time it came in through the
Washington Post Editorial Board, and the basic premise of this
specific article is that gen Z and millennial men are
growing more conservative while women are growing more progressive. This

(01:42:33):
threatens marriage as an institution because all these closed minded
gen Z lib broads won't date Republicans right. That is
literally like the point of the article is a gen
Z liberal women they are less willing to date outside
of their political beliefs, and men are getting more conservative,
so it's really a danger for marriage. Now, I understand

(01:42:55):
if your first impulse is to say something like, well,
when has the Washington Post editorial board ever been right
about a single goddamn thing? And that is a correct
attitude to have.

Speaker 3 (01:43:05):
Sometimes they make the decision not to publish an article.
There are some days where they don't write anything.

Speaker 2 (01:43:11):
Yeah, you have to. That is a good decision. If
they made that decision every day, I would be fully
supportive of the Washington Post editorial board. And if they'll
hire me, I can make that decision for them every day.
I'm very good at not doing anything. That said, even
though it is correct to say the Washington Post editorial
boarder basically always wrong, I've still run into overwhelming numbers

(01:43:35):
of my peers who think this article is silly, but
still buy into the basic points in this piece. This
is generally married to a widespread belief which is actually
cited in the article that toxic male influencers like Andrew
Tait have tilted huge numbers of young men to the right.
So even though people will be like, well, it's stupid
to expect people to date, you know, folks who believe

(01:43:56):
horrible political things that would hurt them, it's true that
men are getting more young men are getting more conservative, right,
and this is I think generally down to this belief
that has I don't think people examine often. They just
sort of like they get concerned about the popularity of
guys like Tate, which is valid, he's concerning, but assume

(01:44:17):
that does mean that, like, yeah, we're losing the young men.
They've all been tilted towards these guys. And so without
discounting the damage of dudes like Tate, I wanted to
give a breakdown of how common the so called right
word tilt of young men actually is because spoilers, this
is a pernicious bit of disinformation, and I think it

(01:44:37):
kind of blackpills a lot of people unnecessarily. Let's start
with the obvious point here. Young men are not growing
more conservative across the board than men of other generations.
So first off, I want to read you a quote
from this Post editorial. Since mister Trump's election in twenty sixteen,
the percentage of young women ages eighteen to thirty who
identify as liberal has shot up from slightly over twenty

(01:45:00):
percent to thirty two percent. Young men have not followed suit,
If anything, they have grown more conservative now that claim
is based, You want to guess, did they cite a
bunch of different sources to prove like that it's a
really widespread problem, or do they have a single statorial
board they have?

Speaker 3 (01:45:20):
Those people could not find a second study if you
nailed it to their face, they share, couldn't they share?
Couldn't they googled real quickly? Or I'm not even gonna
give them credit for googling. One of their friends who
works at a right wing think tank sent them a
survey from that right wing think tank, because that the
entire statistical basis of that claim is a study by

(01:45:42):
the American Enterprise Institute, which is a center right think
tank that tends to produce center rights surveys. And even then,
the study that they are actually citing doesn't show what
the Post editorial board claims. Again their claims, young men
have not followed suit if anything, they have grown more conservative, right,
young men, So they are talking across the board about

(01:46:05):
gen Z and millennial males, right, I'm going to quote
from that study. Previous research identified a growing gap and
ideological orientation between young men and women. The gender gap
in liberal identity is notable among members of Generation Z,
but it's relatively modest. Forty three percent of gen Z
women identify as liberal compared to thirty five percent of

(01:46:26):
gen Z men. However, the gender divide among white, non
Hispanic gen Z adults is considerable, close to half. Forty
six percent of gen Z women are liberal, a far
greater share than white gen Z men, among whom only
twenty eight percent identify as liberal. Among gen Z adults,
white men are significantly more likely than white women to
identify as politically conservative thirty six percent versus twenty six percent.

(01:46:48):
So you see what number one the study is doing there?
Is it saying forty three percent of gen Z women
all gen Z women identify as liberal, whereas and then
it goes to thirty six percent of white gens Z
men identify it. It's switching it on them, right. And
while it does eventually acknowledge the differences where because it
says that like across the board, all gen Z men

(01:47:10):
thirty five percent or conservative, forty three percent of gen
Z women are liberal. That's not a massive gap, right.
The Washington Post editorial board just makes the claim that
young men have grown more conservative, which is not supported
by the study. And also the study is specifically talking
about how gen Z white men have gotten more conservative. Right,
very different things being claimed here. So the Post just

(01:47:33):
ignored what was actually in the survey to claim all
young men, not just young white men, are more conservative,
not just gen Z white men are more conservative. Now,
this is weird, But even if you take the study,
which is misrepresented by the editorial board at its face value,
that study does not gel with all of the other
data that we have. Now, when I went through this,

(01:47:55):
it was hard to find good data on just gen
Z men. That is not broken out in most of
the studies that we get. But we do have some
information on how gen Z adult men voted as a
group in the twenty twenty two midterms, and that data
is telling. Based on the twenty twenty two midterms, seventy
one percent of young women, that's a that's gen Z

(01:48:18):
mostly gen Z eighteen to twenty nine, So I think
gen Z taps out at twenty six right now. So
presumably a percentage of the people in this are technically millennials,
but they're yeah, they're like you, they're day walkers. Yeah,
that's like what like, oh my god, I can't I
can't do math live on air.

Speaker 2 (01:48:37):
I think it's like twenty seven to forty something is
the millennials.

Speaker 3 (01:48:41):
But I'm gonna say it's close enough to this. This
is closes. It's only like.

Speaker 2 (01:48:44):
Three years of people, yeah, right exactly, and they're the
three years that are that are right in the middle.
But of that of these voters in the twenty twenty
two midterms, seventy one percent of young women voted for Democrats,
twenty six percent voted for Republicans, fifty three percent of
young men voted for Democrats, forty two percent voted for Republicans.

(01:49:04):
And among LGBT, and again this is not broken down
male or female, ninety three percent voted for Democrats, and overall,
among non LGBT youth, fifty eight percent voted for Democrats,
thirty eight percent voted for Republicans. So again not massive
discrepancies here, and one thing that may help to explain

(01:49:26):
this that again is not really broken down in the
Washington Post editorial is that while gen Z white men
have are more conservative compared to like gen Z millennial
white men, gen Z itself is a lot less white
than prior generations, which means overall gen Z men are
not really getting more conservative. About fifty five percent of

(01:49:47):
gen Z is white compared to about seventy percent of boomers. Right,
So this is one major reason why. Again this because
again if you actually factor in all of gen Z,
there's not this huge worry about like a marriage discrepancy
as long as you assume that people, you know that
interracial dating is not a problem for most people the

(01:50:09):
way it is for apparently the Washington Post editorial board.
Now there's a couple of caveats here. One is that
midterm voters are historically more engaged and educated than voters
of other generations. However, that may not necessarily hold true
with gen Z or millennial voters today due to a
variety of factors. One worthwhile point is that young people

(01:50:31):
tend to be driven far more by what they encounter
through social media, which is probably part of why gen
Z and millennial voters consider abortion to be a more
important thing to vote on than the economy by a
margin that bears no resemblance to older generations. This is
why we've actually seen unless four elections soaring youth voter turnout,
particularly during the midterms, record levels of youth voting, Which

(01:50:54):
doesn't mean it's completely wrong that midterm voters may be
a bit more engaged and educated, but that's probably less
of a factor for young voters that it is for
older generations. Right, some of the conventional wisdom about who
votes when is not as accurate when we're talking about
younger people. This is not something that you can prove objectively,
but there's there's significant, sort of circumstantial evidence around this.

(01:51:17):
Speaking of circumstances, you know what circumstances get me to
spend my money?

Speaker 3 (01:51:24):
Is it being served products and services.

Speaker 2 (01:51:26):
It's well, it's when those products and services advertise on
this podcast and only this podcast. So check that shit out, homies,
ah and we're back.

Speaker 3 (01:51:39):
So yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:51:40):
One of the you know, overall points to make that
I think goes against this kind of panic a lot
of people have that gen Z is somehow being like
pilled away from progressive politics, is that as a result
of stuff, primarily abortion. Gen Z voters supported Democrats over
Republicans in the midterm elections by and astonishing twenty seven points.
This is again a large part of this came down

(01:52:02):
to abortion, which gen Z voters prioritize by a higher
amount than any other generation. One of the things that
was noted in one of the studies I found is
like a potential line of hope for Republicans is that
while this and this is part of where I think
some of the fear mongering and these Washington Post articles
comes from, although I don't think it says what they

(01:52:22):
think it says is that lower numbers of young people
support specific parties. Right, so only about thirty percent of
gen zs align with Democrats compared to twenty four percent
of Republicans. And if you just look at that, that's
way less.

Speaker 3 (01:52:38):
That seems like.

Speaker 2 (01:52:40):
You're seeing like these numbers sort of kind of tighten up.
But again, they still voted over Democrats of Republicans by
twenty seven points. It's just that gen Z is less
loyal to political parties, which doesn't necessarily mean that progressivism
is in danger, just means that most young people hate
the Democrats.

Speaker 3 (01:52:57):
Too, and that could. And the other thing is like
the thing that actually legit and I think this is legitimately.
A part of it is like, well, okay, so what happened.
What's happening to all those people? And the answer is
they're becoming socialists And it's like, well that doesn't help
the public cans either, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:53:10):
So yeah, and it's it's I mean, part of it
is that more young people identify with like kind of
more politically radical chunks of progressivism. Part of it is
that a lot more of them identify as independent and
may not have may not identify themselves super much as
a specific political chunk, but in general, like they vote progressive,

(01:53:30):
they just don't have any faith in like the ossified
political structures in our society, which is a rational thing
to do as a young person.

Speaker 1 (01:53:39):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:53:40):
So I also want to address kind of the elephant
in the room with this piece, which is that the
Washington Post editorial Board's obsession with political divide among the
young harming marriage specifically, is also kind of gay panicky, right,
because one of the reasons why there seems to be
this divide that they see as like this threatens marriage
is that a higher percentage of gen Z kids are

(01:54:01):
less interested in straight marriage. And these gen Z kids,
male and female, are not getting more conservative, but they're
also presumably not going to do the kind of marriage
that the Washington Post editorial board was right. I'm going
to quote from a Time magazine right up here. In
late twenty twenty and early twenty twenty one, gen Z
was the only US generation in which a majority believed

(01:54:22):
there are more than two genders. As recently as the
first half of twenty twenty, this was a minority opinion
even among Gen zs, a remarkable amount of change over
just six months. In contrast, there was only a small
uptick in this belief among older generations. That type of
data is finally available. Starting in June twenty twenty one,
the US Census Bureau offered four options on its Household

(01:54:43):
Pulse survey question about gender male, female, transgender, and none
of these. The last a rough gauge of those who
identify as non binary, gender fluid, or another gender identity.
With that more terrible way of phrasing that court, it's
not a great way. It's better than nothing, but yeah,
it's not God with more than with more than a
million respondents. The survey is large enough to provide accurate estimates.

(01:55:06):
The results are clear. Gen Z young adults are much
more likely to report identifying as either trans or non
binary than other generations. Well, only one out of a
thousand boomers report they are transgender one tenth of one percent.
Twenty three out of one thousand gen Z young adults
two point three percent identify as trans twenty times more.
By this estimate, there are now more TRANSI young adults
in the US than the number of people living in Boston,

(01:55:28):
which is great because I have long felt that what
we need to do is arm trans people to take
over the city of Boston. I believe this for years,
and I think we can finally make it happen.

Speaker 3 (01:55:39):
Okay, but here's the problem, though, you still have to
live in Boston afterwards. Well, I guess we could take
the city of Boston and live somewhere else and then
sort of like, yeah, you dous from it.

Speaker 2 (01:55:48):
Yeah, presumably, yeah you could. You could basically become like
collectively the landlords of Boston and then use it to
afford rented in a better place.

Speaker 3 (01:55:58):
This is viable, I believe, I believe in our lifetime.

Speaker 2 (01:56:01):
So we can tell, and this will finally increase gen
z's like home ownership numbers. Right if collectively all of
the transn non binary people own Boston.

Speaker 3 (01:56:11):
Yeah, this is a workable plan.

Speaker 2 (01:56:13):
I think I'm going to continue that quote. Fewer than
one percent of boomers identify as non binary, compared to
more than three percent of gen Z young adults. Combined
with the more than two percent to our trans, that
means one out of eighteen young adults identified as something
other than male or female in twenty twenty one or
twenty twenty two, which is again, it's not true because
half of the note it's not it's not it's not

(01:56:33):
the time because again two percent are trans, which presumably,
based on this survey and how it's asked, presumably means
identify as either male or female, whereas three percent our
non binary of some sort may not, may not identify
as either male or It doesn't say that this is
this is this is not well written, but the day
is interesting. It suggests five to six percent of gen

(01:56:54):
Z our trans are non binary, which is a wild
departure from previous generations. Right, And also that's a significant
chunk of this These gen Z numbers that are not
being included in this Washington Post because presumably a decent
chunk of these people will want to get married. They
just don't I identify in a way that the gen
Z that the Washington Post editorial board respects.

Speaker 3 (01:57:15):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:57:16):
And again, one of the things that's interesting about this,
and contra to all this fearmongering about Andrew Tates destroying
all the men, is that male or female gen Z
and millennial voters overwhelmingly support LGBT rights more than they
support almost anything else. And this is consistent across the board,
and markedly higher than it is for other generations.

Speaker 3 (01:57:37):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:57:37):
Presumably this seems to include even like more independent or
even more conservative gen Z and millennial voters.

Speaker 3 (01:57:43):
Right, They're just.

Speaker 2 (01:57:43):
Across the board less shitty on this, I'm guessing presumably
because a lot of their friends are trands or non
binary or just queer, and that that makes them less
bigoted about this stuff. And again doesn't really fit in
to this this narrative. Right, And this is again part
of why I'm not as doomer about you know, there's

(01:58:06):
this there's this big fear. Oh, you know, progressives are
desert young people are deserting progressivism. Which is going to
do musclectorally, and I'm just not seeing that in the numbers.

Speaker 1 (01:58:16):
Now.

Speaker 2 (01:58:16):
Again, everything that's been going on with like the Biden
administration's you know, support of Israel certainly may and probably
will have an impact politically, but it's not necessarily it's
not very clearly not a result of young people getting
pilled by Andrew Tate. Right, that's not why that's happened.

Speaker 3 (01:58:34):
And there's there's a thing I wanted to talk about
with the Andrew Tate stuff too, because like everyone's treating
this as like a completely new phenomena and it's like
most of the people who are talking about this should
be old enough to remember gamer Gate, Like this stuff
has all happened before, and it was like, yeah, like
gamer Date did produce a bunch of fascists, and also
the millennials were still unbelievably further left than like the

(01:58:57):
generations that came before them. Yeah, so like it's like
this is this is this is just a thing. Like
every generation has a a giant thing where there's like
a bunch of right wing like yeah, a big push.

Speaker 1 (01:59:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:59:11):
Yeah, it's like this just happens periodically. It's just like
a part of it. It's a part of Baltics. It sucks,
it's bad, but it's also like not a thing to
be humored about.

Speaker 1 (01:59:20):
No.

Speaker 2 (01:59:20):
I do think another thing that is happening here is
that the kind of people who become members of the
Washington Post editorial board have this, have this brainworm, this
sickness that infects members of the American media worse than
almost anyone else, which is like they're always looking for Ah,
contrary to popular wisdom. You think this, but the reality,

(01:59:41):
you know, it's the it's Malcolm Gladwell syndrome, right where
you've got to come up with some like clever thing
that shows that you're smart because you don't buy into
the standard wisdom, which is always wrong. I mean, there's
and that and so that they have to believe that
whatever is really happening is the opposite of what's obvious happening, right,
which is why this Actually young men are getting more conservative,

(02:00:04):
and it's I'm the only one who realizes, and I've
got to warn every one of the danger to marriage.
Speaking of which, here's another quote from that Washington Post article.

Speaker 3 (02:00:13):
In another era, political or ideological differences might have had
less impact on marriage rates, but increasingly the political is personal.
A twenty twenty one survey of college students found that
seventy one percent of Democrats would not date someone with
opposing views. There is some logic to this marriage across
religious or political lines. If either partner considers those things

(02:00:34):
to be central with their identity, can be associated with
lower levels of life satisfaction, and politics is becoming more
central to people's identity. This mismatch means that someone will
need to compromise, as the researchers Lymonstone and Brad Wilcox
have noted, about one in five young singles will have
little choice but to marry someone outside of their ideological tribe.
The other option is that they decline to get married

(02:00:56):
at all. Not an ideal outcome considering the data showing
that marriage is good for the the societies and individuals alike.
And again, this is only the case that one five
number is ignoring queer people.

Speaker 2 (02:01:07):
Yeah, right, because they are largely ignoring non white people, right,
Like it's it's it's just not accurate, Like, yeah, maybe
a lot more young white men are going to be single,
and there's problems that will occur to you to that, right,
because for one thing, that's the group that tends to
like load up on guns and shoot up public places.
Not saying it's not a problem, but it doesn't mean
that our society is doomed because no one's getting married.

(02:01:29):
It means that there's some serious problems with young white
men that we need to deal with.

Speaker 3 (02:01:33):
Yeah, well there's there's There's two other things that I
think are interesting there. One is, Okay, you can tell
when these people like formed their political beliefs because they're
complaining about the personal is political, which is this is
ninety shit like that is that is like that is
like like old school ass like this is this is
like stuff people were like I don't know, it's it's

(02:01:54):
like it's like political correctness where it's like it's the
previous version of the same panic that everyone's having. Now
this is from the nineties, so it's like all of
these people are just like absolute dinosaurs who they've like
dragged out to write this like weird fearmongering thing. And
the second thing is I think is interesting too, is
like just the deep, ingrained, sort of very conservative assumption here,

(02:02:18):
which is that marriage is good for society, which I
don't think is anywhere near as straightforward a proposition as
to Washington Post is making it seem like and you know,
and like they have racistical arguments. I mean, the cistics
that I've seen, like you know, just just sort of
likeasistics that I've seen based on American society is that
like women who aren't married are way happier than they

(02:02:39):
are in marriages, and you know, like men do worse.
But like you know, but like I mean, this is
one of these things there's like we don't know, like
there has not been a version of America where we
haven't where the institution of marriage wasn't like our thing
that hasn't existed for like two or three hundred years, Right, Yeah,
we don't know the Washington Post know what an American

(02:03:01):
society without, like where people don't get married looks like
like they have no idea, but they're just sort of
assuming that it's like the apocalypse because they're weird conservatives
in the nineties.

Speaker 2 (02:03:11):
Yeah, and a lot of I mean, and again, a
massive part of what we're seeing here is less it's
objectively good, like marriage is the result of all of
these kind of positive mental health outcomes and more well,
when people are like, have relationships and loved ones and
like a family system supporting them. They're less likely to

(02:03:33):
commit suicide, They're more likely to have someone notice if
they take ill. They're just like healthier in general. But
that doesn't that doesn't necessarily mean that it's marriage specifically,
and more like yeah, not being alone, right, Yeah, anyway,
I want to continue and just kind of go through.
I think we've trashed this article enough, but I did
find a lot of interesting stuff about gen Z and

(02:03:54):
young voters that I wanted to get into. But first,
here's some more fucking ads, pigs, you have, filthy mongrels.
Slop it up, suck it down. Anyway, we'll be back
in a minute, and we're back. So one interesting thing
I found. I tried to stick to just stuff from
like twenty twenty one or later for this, in part

(02:04:15):
because of the Andrew Tait of it. All Right, I
wanted to like try to find stuff that was like, Okay,
since that guy came onto the scene, has there been
some sudden shift because people treat him like the pied
piper of fucking fascism, which, again, he's a problem, but
I don't think that's broadly accurate. So one of the
studies I found was a twenty twenty one survey from
MTV AP and o RC right, And it was interesting

(02:04:38):
because it showed something I didn't really, something I had
kind of bought into, was at least less supported by
the evidence than I might have thought, which is like
the level of doomerism in young people politics. Gen Z
actually shows optim like that they are more optimistic than
a lot of older people, both in the state of

(02:04:59):
the world and their role in improving it. Two thirds
of gen Z feels like their generation is motivated to
make positive change in the country. Part of I think
where we get some of the feelings of doomerism is
that only about fourteen percent think that they can have
an impact on what the government does.

Speaker 3 (02:05:16):
Yeah, I mean that that is an entirely reasonable assessment
of I mean just like looking at polling data on
Palestine or like absolutely, no, not we had a very
rational take actually yeah, yeah, it's like we had we
had an entire uprising, like people people fought the Secret
Service at the gates of the White House, and the
product of it was the government was like, no, we

(02:05:38):
should give more money to cops. Yeah, it's like, yeah,
it's like, Okay, we're like defunding the New York Public
Library System to buy encrypted radio like things for police units.
Like it's like, yeah, like this is objectively true that
you have very little influence over the government, like.

Speaker 2 (02:05:52):
A perfectly reasonable thing to say. Yeah, but yeah about
is interesting too. Another thing that I was kind of surprised.
Half of Gen Z people think their standard of living
is better than their parents, but about half also think
that the world their generation is facing is worse than
what most other people, most other generations have dealt with.

(02:06:12):
So like, they think that their problems are are worse
than like what boomers and Gen X and millennials we're
dealing with, but they think they're about half of them
think they're living better lives. This is pretty similar to
how millennials feel. Gen X feels very different. Gen X
or is the most pessimistic generation about the state of
the world, which actually makes kind of sense if you

(02:06:33):
realize that, like a lot of Gen Z kids are
the children of Gen X people, right, So like they
think their standard of living is better than their parents
because Gen X is miserable, Yeah, which you know interesting.
Gen Z and millennials are more accepting than Gen X
of depictions of same sex couples in media, and hold
more positive views of LGBT people, which again, gen X

(02:06:55):
is the worst generation. We all have to agree on
that one.

Speaker 3 (02:07:00):
It's just terrible. It really really didn't work out in
two thousands.

Speaker 2 (02:07:04):
Were just a disaster, calamity, calamity. So I wanted to
kind of break down some stuff from this survey that
was interesting, just kind of on on how the generations
support various policies. So, in terms of their support for
prohibiting workplace discrimination on the basis of gender identity, sixty
two percent of Gen Z and sixty two percent of

(02:07:25):
millennials support that, only fifty three percent of Gen X does,
which is still actually not like a massive gap. Right
when it comes to this is interesting when it comes
to requiring Americans to mask in public places like stores
and restaurants, fifty four percent of millennials support that, fifty
three percent of Gen X do but does but fifty
two percent of Gen Z does, which is all potentially

(02:07:46):
within kind of a margin of error.

Speaker 3 (02:07:48):
That's like noise, Like, yeah, that might just be noise.

Speaker 2 (02:07:51):
It's about equivalent, right, It's pretty Most of this is
actually pretty for all of our shitting on gen X.
Most of this is actually pretty close. For acquiring vaccinations,
Millennials seem to support it higher than anyone else forty
nine percent, gen Z at forty three percent, which is significant.
Kind of gen X is right in the middle at
forty five When it comes to supporting a nationwide ban

(02:08:12):
on air fifteens and other similar semi automatic rifles, gen
Z and gen X are at forty two percent for
gen X forty four percent for gen Z, whereas millennials
are at forty seven percent. Now, a lot of this breakdown,
because I dug into the actual numbers, is the difference
between men and women, and conservative men and liberal women
right who are liberal women are a lot more common

(02:08:34):
and more likely to support these kinds of bands, whereas
conservative men aren't, but that drags the overall numbers down.
It's just interesting to me that there seems to be
less support with gen Z over that they're closer to
gen X. Increasing security at the border fifty This is
where there's a huge gap, fifty five percent of gen
X for increasing border security. Millennials in gen Z are
at thirty eight and thirty seven percent, So that's really

(02:08:56):
like gen X really seems to buy into the we
need more border secure, whereas deutes are are like no,
fuck that shit, yeah yeah. Gen X or gen Z
and millennials both tied at forty eight percent support for
a universal basic income. Only thirty six percent of gen
X supports this, again another significant gap. One interesting thing

(02:09:17):
is that gen X and millennials at thirty eight and
thirty six percent support reducing regulations on businesses. Only thirty
one percent of gen Z supports this. That's a significant difference.
I find that kind of interesting.

Speaker 3 (02:09:30):
Yeah, I wonder how much of them also is just
like like like you are okay, you are in, You're
a zumer, You're never are you over owning a business?
Like first off, thank you?

Speaker 2 (02:09:41):
I as I think it may it may be, and
I don't I don't know that this has been studied.
It may be that because gen Z are so so
many of them want to be influencers to do some
other kind of job and like internet content creation that
and a lot of them have done kind of work,
made some amount of money in that field that tends

(02:10:04):
to be independent contractor work. And there's some pretty onerous
tax regulations. You know, if you've ever been an independent
contract about how you've got to pay taxes. It may
have something to do with that. I don't know, though,
Like I this hasn't been broken down like granularly that
I've seen, but I did find that kind of interesting.
And then here's kind of depressing but interesting reducing funding

(02:10:25):
for law enforcement agencies. Thirty four percent of millennials support that,
thirty percent of gen Z supports that, which is enough
of a gap to suggest like might be somewhat less
popular among gen Z than millennials. Only eighteen percent of
gen X feels the same, which is a huge gap,
and that is kind of interesting to me. So yeah, yeah,

(02:10:48):
that's all I'm telling.

Speaker 3 (02:10:49):
I think there's one I think there's one last kind
of interesting thing about this is that those numbers, the
numbers on like police funding and a lot of the
sort of like if you just look at the graphs
that were in the Washington Post article, a lot of
that is it looks a lot like there's there's there's
a giant spike dream the uprising, and then it sort

(02:11:11):
of like tails off after it. Yeah, and so and
so that's the thing that I think is like like that,
I don't you know, and this is I think a
thing I think is kind of important is like these
this stuff is all malleable and moment something happens, everyone,
everyone's beliefs change really quickly. Yeah, and that's the thing
and like like that that's a that's the thing with
these sort of like you know, with with the sort

(02:11:31):
of doombers and right Andrew Tat is like yeah, like
but people, people's actual political beliefs and what they're willing
to do for them can change very very very quickly
in in in moments where they're sort of you know,
I mean there's there's a bunch of people getting shot
by cops in the street, right right, like that that
that changes people really really quickly. And I think that's
why the gap is so high both between overall Americans,

(02:11:54):
which are at twenty eight percent for defunding police, and
between Gen X and Gen Z millennials. Is that a
lot more Gen Z millennials people got like beaten by
the cops in twenty twenty, and that this does show well,
again it's an uphill battle. Most Americans, a super majority
of Americans do not support that way. More young Americans do,

(02:12:16):
and it's probably because so many of us got our
asses checked. And also I want to like like like
if if you look at what was happening, like the
numbers dream the uprising, right, like the number of people
who supported the burning of the third Presinkle was like
fifty percent. Yeah, so like these are things that change
really quickly in the moment too, and now we're in
the sort of long backlash and that's you know, and
that's that's driving like some of these numbers. But yeah, yeah,

(02:12:37):
like don't it, don't don't be cynical things. Things can
and will get better.

Speaker 2 (02:12:42):
Yeah, yes they will, and they there's a pretty dramatic difference.
Maybe it'll take a couple more of the general uprisings
where people get there as kicked, which is not great
to think about, but like, these are pretty stark differences
in the generations, and I think that that's kind of
worth noting. And I don't know, celebrating me be the
wrong term, but I don't think it's pessimistic now in

(02:13:03):
terms of stuff that is pessimistic. I want to end
on a note of like where I kind of think
some of the lazy, dumbass pundit brain on this is
coming from. And I maybe I'm wrong about this. But
I have a little conspiracy theory that involves AI because
I did kind of at the end of digging up
a bunch of these studies, reading through I don't know,
like fifteen articles or whatnot, and you know, the actual

(02:13:26):
like entirety of three or four different big surveys, I
decided just to hop onto one of the AI search
engines that I use occasionally that is usually not helpful,
just to see what it said. And I asked, like,
what is the most recent data on how young gin
z men are voting?

Speaker 1 (02:13:44):
Right?

Speaker 2 (02:13:45):
And it gave me mostly useless shit, Like the resources
were bad. But one of the things that said, because
it breaks down the different sources and like summarizes them
for you. So it says here the Atlantic is kind
of one of the sources. It recommends the Atlantic Reporter
that gen Z and millennials are more likely to vote Republican.
This could indicate a shift in political leadings among these demographics. Now,

(02:14:06):
the article that it is linking there is an article
called is gen Z coming for the GOP? Not all
young people are Democrats? By Ronald Brownstein, And it does
not say that, It does not say anything like that.
It certainly does not say, and I will tell you
what it fucking says, right, because it's wildly fucking different.
An analysis of previously unpublished election data from Catalyst, a

(02:14:27):
democratic targeting firm, by Michael pod Orzer, a former political
director for the AFLCIO, shows that even the emergence of
these new voters may not break the larger political stalemate
that has partitioned the country in a seemingly immovable blocks
of bread and blue states. Podewzer's analysis of the Catalyst data,
shared exclusively with The Atlantic, found that over the past
four elections, gen Z voters have broken heavily for Democrats
and blue states and provide to the party's solid margins

(02:14:50):
and closely contested swing states. But in red states, with
a few prominent exceptions, Podhorzer surprisingly found that even gen
Z voters are mostly supporting Republicans. Now, when you dig
into the data, first off, that does not show that
gen Z people are voting more for Republicans. It's the
opposite of that. The vast majority of them are voting
for Democrats, but in red states the number and it's
not finding in red states that gen Z are more

(02:15:11):
likely to support Republicans than previous generations, they are more
progressive than previous generations. They're just still majority supporting Republicans
in deep red states. Now again, if you read that quote,
it's also saying there are some red states where gen
z are voting overwhelmingly for Democrats, and in purple states
they are wildly progressive compared to previous generations. It is,

(02:15:33):
again the opposite of what that AI summary is wondering
how many lazy pundits are doing this because they suck
at shit and we're just like, oh, well, the Atlantic
says they're more Republicans. Like, no, if you read the article,
it does not say that. It's a pretty good article.

Speaker 3 (02:15:47):
Yeah, asolutely well, and this is actually there's one thing
I want to mention about that polling data two, which
is that the twenty twenty two election was really weird
because the twenty twenty two election was supposed to be
it was supposed to be a red wave election, and yeah,
there actually was one, but it was it only happened.
It happened in deep red states. Yes, and it happened
in New York. And that that has to do with

(02:16:08):
the New York media market, which is part of also
why all these people's brains have been completely destroyed. But
I don't actually like, it's actually genuinely unclear to me
that this is even predictive of how those same people
and deep red states are going to vote in like
the next like four to eight years, because that was
because again this this this, this was a mid term
election with a democratic president. That is, when you're supposed

(02:16:30):
to have the opposition like win a bunch of seats
and stuff like that, and like it didn't go the
way it was supposed to and so and so I
think it's actually even that part is more is more
like even the tiny note of it where they're like
more like gen Z people voted Republicans, Like I, I
don't know, I don't even know if that's gonna hold

(02:16:52):
in the long run. But all of these pun like, yeah,
the fact that they probably are just reading AI.

Speaker 2 (02:16:58):
Yeah, I wonder like coming across that dog shit something
like just completely wrong. It's very funny. Made me feel
a little bit better about the computers coming for us.
All made me feel a little bit worse about the
intelligence of pundits. But yeah, it's you know, and one
of the things that is kind of if you're concerned
about twenty twenty four. That is a worthwhile concern, and

(02:17:20):
that is a real problem is that while young people
are overwhelmingly progressive as voters, this is not evenly distributed
across the country, and a lot of the gains in
voters that progressives have seen are going to be clustered
in states that were already overwhelmingly blue, and when it
comes to an elect a presidential election, those are wasted votes, right,

(02:17:43):
And a lot like that this and this is a
problem that the Republicans dealt with a lot during the
Obama years, right where there would be massively more Republican voters,
but they would be clustered in these areas that dims
were never going to win, and so it didn't help
them electorally.

Speaker 1 (02:17:56):
Right.

Speaker 2 (02:17:57):
That is kind of worth noting. It's potentially a thing.
Although a lot of the gains when people are freaking
out about like, oh, you know, Biden's numbers among non
white voters have gotten worse, that is probably true, almost
certainly true to some extent, But a lot of those
vote gains are clustered areas that were so heavily read
it may not have any impact on the hills for

(02:18:18):
all electorals.

Speaker 3 (02:18:19):
I will say the one, the one place for that
matter actually does matter is Michigan, Yes, because and Michigan
had a huge Muslim population who are unbelievably pissed at
Biden for you know, offering them the deal We're going
to murder your family, and also you have to vote
for us, which.

Speaker 2 (02:18:33):
Is like I'm not doing the Will Stancil thing and
saying there's nothing to worry about.

Speaker 3 (02:18:37):
No, I'm saying there are places where it does matter yere,
but like, yeah, yeah, it's unclear, and a lot of
what may be happen. Well, a lot of what is
certainly happening, although this doesn't mean that there won't be
because I think there's a good chance there will be
an electoral impact. But a lot of what is objectively happening,
both on the left and the right, is increasing numbers
of voters who are in states that would never never

(02:18:58):
going to be in play electorate world. Yeah, right, the
electoral college is bullshit, you know. Yeah, It's like like
I've I've lived in Illinois my entire life. It is
not possible for me to cast a vote that matters. Yeah,
Like it just isn't. Yes, just how the system works, right,
It's like it's a great, great, great job, good job. Yeah,
he wrote the constitution.

Speaker 2 (02:19:17):
So anyway, I think that's that's about enough to get into.
I hope this has been edifying and useful to people.
Uh Mia, you got anything else to say before we
roll out here?

Speaker 3 (02:19:28):
Uh Molotov twenty twenty four, just like Malotav twenty twenty Yeah,
don't the Washington Post. Okay, I want to close in
the note that the Washington Post editorial board managed to
find the one socialist in the entire US who's anti
abortion maker, a steam maker or writer for them.

Speaker 2 (02:19:48):
So less Yeah, it's but what are you speaking for?
Why is it important that we have this voice of
a person like fucking hell?

Speaker 1 (02:19:59):
Got it?

Speaker 2 (02:20:00):
It's tiring, speaking of tiring, I'm tired.

Speaker 3 (02:20:04):
So now we're done.

Speaker 11 (02:20:05):
Goodbye. Ah.

Speaker 2 (02:20:22):
I have slain the God of Abraham and cast his
ruin upon the mountain side, and now I am the
Lord and Savior of all. Podcasting Robert Evans, This is
it could happen here a podcast about things falling apart
and about my slow descent into theistic narcissism. Here with

(02:20:42):
me today, Garrison Davis and me along, How are you
guys doing great.

Speaker 3 (02:20:47):
He wasn't like this like fifteen minutes ago, that there's
been a rapid radicalization process.

Speaker 12 (02:20:52):
Yeah, speaking speaking of rapid radicalization.

Speaker 2 (02:20:57):
I downed a bottle of this alive ancient mushroom lick elixer,
and it has overpowered me.

Speaker 12 (02:21:08):
Not a sponsor too, free free, free advertising.

Speaker 2 (02:21:12):
But if they want to pay us, I will probably
stop claiming to have slain the God of Abraham. This
is this Week in Terrorism. Uh, a show title we've
never used before and may never use again, but we
wanted to.

Speaker 3 (02:21:27):
We're probably gonna have to use it again.

Speaker 2 (02:21:29):
None of the terrorism we're talking about has occurred this week.

Speaker 3 (02:21:31):
It all occurred in previous weeks. We were out last week.

Speaker 2 (02:21:34):
We wanted to talk about some of our recent terrorism
attacks to discuss kind of what we're seeing in radicalization
of the people who were carrying out usually shootings, but
not exclusively. We're actually going to start with a hammer attack. Yeah,
what we're seeing out there because.

Speaker 12 (02:21:51):
Very British style. Actually, I think we're ending on a
stabbing too.

Speaker 2 (02:21:56):
S ending on a stabbing. Most of these are not shootings.

Speaker 3 (02:21:59):
I'm a liar.

Speaker 2 (02:22:00):
It's the mushroom juice.

Speaker 11 (02:22:01):
But Yeah, we're.

Speaker 2 (02:22:02):
Gonna start by talking about the attack on Paul Pelosi, who's,
of course Nancy Pelosi's fuck buddy.

Speaker 3 (02:22:08):
Some people call him a husband.

Speaker 2 (02:22:11):
I think that's an archaic term, but yeah, he got
assaulted in his house by this guy, Brian Depayap. This
was like a year or so ago, and he just
recently got convicted of a bunch of stuff. He's going
to be going to forever prison. But we're going to
talk about that attack essentially. I wanted to start with

(02:22:33):
kind of a little bit of audio of the attack itself.
This is from police body camera, and basically what happened
is this guy Brian broke into the Pelosi's backyard, which
was not guarded. Nancy was away from the house. She
had their security detail. Capitol Police does not protect spouses
and family members of Congress people. And he used a

(02:22:54):
hammer in one of the two very large backs he
brought with him to bust into the house and then
had a conversation with Paul Pelosi that he insists was
very polite until the police showed up, at which point
he started bashing him in the skull with a hammer.
And we're going to get into more of what happened,
but I wanted to I want to start by playing
that audio. This is right at the point that the

(02:23:17):
police opened the door.

Speaker 3 (02:23:20):
How you doing?

Speaker 4 (02:23:22):
What's going on?

Speaker 8 (02:23:22):
Man?

Speaker 3 (02:23:24):
That's the guy? What drop the hammer? What is har one?

Speaker 2 (02:23:33):
And so what is actually happening in the video is
this guy Brian, who is like he's got a big,
very large hammer in his hands and like there's a
very mild struggle going on for it. Pelosi has one
hand on the hammer, which is a reasonable thing to
want to do in this situation, and the guy just

(02:23:53):
looks kind of stunned. And the police show up and
they're like, yeah, man, drop the hammer, and he says no,
and they, to be fair to the police, pretty reasonably
take a step towards him, and he pulls the hammer
away from Paul and hits him in the head several times.
The police tackle him off. Paul got hit, hurt very badly.
This is a pretty ugly attack. He's an old man.
He got hit in the head with a hammer several

(02:24:14):
times by a much younger man. Pretty ugly. One of
the things that becomes clear if you watch the earlier
footage of this guy in their backyard, because they have
a security camera, and if you watch this footage, is that, like,
this is not a guy who had a super clear
plan about what he was going to do. This is
a guy who was kind of flying by the seat
of his pants, and when the police came in kind

(02:24:36):
of irrationally like based on his existing plans, decided to
swing at him. And when he was at court, like
some of the things to Pape said were very interesting,
he basically like, you know, he busts into their backyard.
Paul Pelosi in his pajamas, confronts him when he hears it,
and Depap asks, are you Paul Pelosi? Where's Nancy? Where

(02:25:00):
is Nancy? And Pelosi's like, she's not home, She's going
to be gone for several days. And de Pap started
threatening to tie Pelosi up. He does this like ten times.
Eventually Paul's able to get away briefly to go to
the bathroom where he has a cell phone, and he
calls the police and like while he's on the phone
with a dispatcher, you can hear de Pap like telling

(02:25:20):
him to hang up.

Speaker 1 (02:25:21):
You know.

Speaker 2 (02:25:22):
The police get there and he attacks him. The first
thing that happens in the wake of this this is
obviously big news, and the entirety of right wing media
basically decided that this was Paul Pelosi's lover, and.

Speaker 12 (02:25:34):
Yeah, I was under the impression from reparable sources that
this was this was Paul's gay lover.

Speaker 3 (02:25:41):
Is ye I was told that.

Speaker 2 (02:25:43):
Immediately comes out. Marjorie Taylor Green spreads this, Tucker Carlson
spreads this. Elon Musk spreads this. Representative Carla Tinni spreads
this again because this is very clearly a right wing
attack motivated by right wing media on unelectedly pretty brutal attack,
not on an elected leader. Sorry, I'm the husband of

(02:26:03):
an elected leader, right And I wanted to quote really
quickly from an MSN write up on this that talks
about like why Depap says he did this. Depap explained
that he broke into the Pelosi home in order to
lure University of Michigan Anthropology and Women's Study professor Gail
Rubin to their house. Ruben's research, according to her professional bio,
focuses on LGBTQ studies, gay and lesbian ethnography, sexual populations

(02:26:27):
and geographies, sexology, and feminist theory. She is known for
her nineteen eighty four essay Thinking Sex, which is considered
a founding text.

Speaker 1 (02:26:34):
Of queer theory.

Speaker 2 (02:26:35):
Paul was never a target, De Pap said in court,
explaining that he was only using the pelosis to get
to my other targets and that he felt really bad
for Paul Pelosi. He explained that he spent six hours
a day watching political commentary on YouTube before he was arrested,
where he learned that everything was a lie coming from
the press. He listened off common right wing grievances, according
to NBC News, to explain why he broke.

Speaker 1 (02:26:56):
Into the home.

Speaker 2 (02:26:58):
He claims to have heard about Gail Ruben from anti
LGBTQ activist James Lindsay, who is the same person who
claims to have popularize the groomers slur against LGBTQ people.
The PAP said that he regularly listened to Lindsay's podcast.
The takeaway I got is that she wants to turn
our schools into pedophile molestation factories. To Pap said, so,
one of the things that's really interesting to me is

(02:27:19):
that this guy's in the home of one of the
most powerful people in the entire country, who is worth
one hundred million dollars or more so also extremely wealthy person.
But she's not his target. His target is this woman's
studies professor who James Lindsay has convinced him is trying
to molest all of the kids in America.

Speaker 1 (02:27:40):
Right.

Speaker 2 (02:27:40):
This is again, this is entirely stochastic terrorism. This is
the fault. James Lindsay wanted stuff like this to happen.
That's why he does what he does. This is on him,
and it's a very clear example. This is if you
go into the stude's backstory, he was not always like this.
He used to be, I think a pro nudity activist,
but like was not a guy who was like wildly conservative.

(02:28:03):
And then the pandemic hits and he's spending all day
playing video games alone, increasingly isolated, and he starts going
down these YouTube and podcast primarily listening to these right
wing podcasters. Lindsay's one of them. He's also a huge
Timpool listener. Who is this super right wing guy who
believes that, like, we're already in a shooting civil war

(02:28:23):
with the left, And yeah, these are all big groomer guys,
these are all women's studies professors are the most dangerous
people in the country, and this is a vulnerable dude
who the pandemic isolated from what social networks he had had,
and he just kind of completely loses his shit. It's
a very clear radicalization path. And it's a big bummer

(02:28:44):
because this is a deeply mentally unwell man who was
taken advantage of by a right wing media ecosystem that
exists to churn exactly this kind of guy towards violence
against their ideological opponents.

Speaker 12 (02:28:59):
Now, it is certainly interesting, is this attack was more
deeply weird than what we all initially thought, like, oh,
like someone was trying to kill Pelosi, right, is, Like.

Speaker 2 (02:29:06):
I'm not surprised someone would try to do that. I'm
not saying it's just I'm not like saying that because fucker,
I'm saying that. Like, I'm not surprised. She's incredibly powerful.
Of course people want to kill her. Yeah, she's like
the way it is.

Speaker 12 (02:29:15):
Yeah, we all saw what happened on January sixth. The
come on, guys, Yeah, but.

Speaker 3 (02:29:19):
Like this is normal politics.

Speaker 12 (02:29:21):
Yes, But like the idea that you're like holding holding
Pelosi is a hostage to get like a gender theory
women's studies professor is just so much more like like
highlighting the type of American brain rot that is just
totally taking over large swaths of the media, of the
media ecosystem at this point.

Speaker 2 (02:29:42):
Yeah, I think one of my favorite details from this
is that if you go into like his court case,
why he chose to attack the home of again Nancy Pelosi,
super wealthy, powerful person with a security detail, is because
he believed this Gail Rubin, this professor lived in a
fortress that he.

Speaker 3 (02:29:59):
Could not break into.

Speaker 2 (02:30:01):
This woman's studies professor lives in an underground bunker.

Speaker 12 (02:30:05):
It was easier to get to the speaker of the
house's home that it is a woman studies professor's house.

Speaker 3 (02:30:14):
I think it's interesting too that it was specifically James Lindsay,
who I don't know. Have we talked about him.

Speaker 4 (02:30:18):
Really on the show.

Speaker 12 (02:30:20):
I'm I'm sure in passing.

Speaker 2 (02:30:22):
But we had a big Twitter fight with him earlier
this year.

Speaker 3 (02:30:25):
Yeah, I've had held yeah, my, you know. So he's
an interesting he's like kind of like a proto Chris
Rufo like, but he's interesting because he's one of these
people who makes a very classic mistake in in when
you're trying to become a media person which is that
he tries to do theory bullshit and it's on it

(02:30:49):
it's it's nonsense like and hey like it's it's you know,
but his things he's trying to derive basically, like effectively,
what he's trying to do is derive a theory radical
basis for the whole like Judeo Bolshevik conspiracy, which he
was one of the big sort of cultural Marxism people. Yeah,
well he is.

Speaker 12 (02:31:08):
He is probably most known for propagating the critical race
theory kind of debacle that happened a few years ago
that was mostly spearheaded by this guy, James Lindsay.

Speaker 3 (02:31:19):
Yeah, And he's trying to he's like his project is
intellectual project. He's trying to trace this line from Hegel
through Marx, through Gromsey, through Mouth, through the Frankfurt School,
through the sixties radicals, and it's it's It's interesting though,
because what he's doing is he's he's he's he's part
of this really systemic attempt to completely and we saw

(02:31:41):
this this this is the result of this is this
Paul Pelosi attack. It's to completely obscure the actual power
relations of American society to the point where Yeah, the
thing we've been talking about happens where because this person
thinks that this Marxist conspiracy from gender studies professors is
actually the thing that controls the US. He is like
kidnapping one of like the husband of one of the

(02:32:02):
most powerful people in the United States because he thinks
that as a way to get to a gender studies professor.
It's it's this, it's this interesting I think, like, I
don't know, it's I think it's this interesting demonstration of
of how of how right wing ideology is specifically designed
to act to like conceal the actual power relations to

(02:32:22):
society and then blame like queer people for it. It's like.

Speaker 2 (02:32:27):
It's taken Lindsey comes out of academia too, right. He's
like this professor at a in watch.

Speaker 3 (02:32:33):
But he's like he's like a math professor or something.
He's like no, no, It's like.

Speaker 2 (02:32:36):
It's basically the gist of what why. What happens is
he realizes you're never going to get rich being a
math professor, but if you become a right wing thought leader,
you know there's money in that. So he makes the
series of bullshit claims about how he's being oppressed by
fucking evil progressive fascism. And yeah, this is why. Also

(02:32:57):
all of his grievances are so focused around academics. It's
because he still has academia brainworms, where everything that matters
is like what this handful of upper middle class professors
at fancy ivy league schools argue about.

Speaker 12 (02:33:12):
He also believes that queer people are engaging in a
form of ancient hermetic magic, which is.

Speaker 2 (02:33:19):
That party Harrison. If I know you at all, that
part's true, Like that's accurate.

Speaker 3 (02:33:25):
It's so funny that he got there because like, like when
I was arguing with him, he was trying to argue
that Mao had read this Gramsey, who's this Italian Marxist
theory she demonstrably cannot have read because Gramsey's prison notebooks
don't come out until like art translated in Chinese, until
after Mao dies. So it's like it's it's physically impossible
for him to have done this. But it's funny because
like he's gone from that to like the queer hermetic

(02:33:48):
like yes, yes, to destroy the.

Speaker 12 (02:33:53):
Who do we want to talk about next? Because I
have I have, I have my Dayton Shooter, and I
know we we.

Speaker 3 (02:33:59):
Have we have a list of let's do, let's let's do,
let's do date and shooter and then close out with
the two antipas.

Speaker 2 (02:34:06):
And yeah, so yeah, I'm not I don't know shit
about this, so dating me up, motherfuckers.

Speaker 12 (02:34:11):
So a few days before Thanksgiving, well home, we should
we should take geo.

Speaker 2 (02:34:16):
Oh yeah, speaking of Thanksgiving, you know what, I'm thankful
for the fact that we're supported by advertisers and we're back. Okay,
let's talk about this fucking Dyton shooting.

Speaker 12 (02:34:27):
A few days before Thanksgiving, someone walked into a Walmart
in Beaver Creek, Ohio with I believe it was a
it was a high point forty five caliber carbine.

Speaker 2 (02:34:38):
With wow high point Okay, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 12 (02:34:41):
He shot four people before eventually dying of a self
inflicted gunshot wound. Victims were transferred to the hospital. It
looks like nobody actually died besides the shooter. So hey,
that's a win, great, great job medical medical teams. But
upon looking into this this guy's home, it's very very
kind of standard stuff. Ever since twenty sixteen, we have

(02:35:03):
Nazi flags, we have Nazi books. He's he went to
a Christian online school. He was twenty years old. He
spent almost all of his time at home on the internet.
He did not believe the Holocaust was real. He had
been to the hospital before for mental health evaluations. The

(02:35:25):
FBI referred to his beliefs as a quote loosely organized
movement of individuals and groups that espouse some combination of racist,
aidy Semitica, zenophobic, Islamophobic, misogynistic, and homophobic ideology, which is
a very very broad broadway of saying. Yeah, he was
like a far right nut job. He was very very
typical kind of Nazi guy. He had two swastika flags.

(02:35:45):
Now because he died, it's where people are still putting
together like what exactly led to him to like do
this specific act because they can't like talk to him.
But yeah, it was very very typical sort of thing
of this guy deciding to go into a Walmart and

(02:36:06):
do a shooting. This is something that other Nazi accelerationists
have done before. It's something that will probably keep happening.

Speaker 2 (02:36:13):
Oh yeah, I mean for sure.

Speaker 12 (02:36:15):
It's it's it's it's, it's it's it's it's not like
a big story, it's it's just another thing that's happened.
But it is weird, the sort of like normalization of
it of like oh yeah, not see to the Walmart
shooting again. Isn't actually a story anymore. It's just like no,
it's just it's just another Tuesday.

Speaker 2 (02:36:32):
No, And this is like what the right wants, by
the way, is that like when they do these mass shootings,
it does not make the news, and whenever they can
blame a shooting on a queer, a trans person, they
try to keep it, make it be the only thing
anyone talks about, right, Like this is this is part
of the plan, you know. Yeah, And it's a bummer

(02:36:52):
that it's it's worked, just because like, h it's impossible
to stay at an equal level of anger every time
this happens. It's so common, you know, like you just can't.
You can't continue existing and have the same reaction to
these that you had in twenty nineteen.

Speaker 12 (02:37:10):
Yeah, So I mean like that, I don't have much
else on this because it's just it's this guy who
played video games alone for most of his life, went
to a Christian online homeschool, never really interacted with the public.
It was almost solely existed within this like medio ecosystem online,
which pushed him towards buying a book on the history

(02:37:30):
of the SS and buying multiple Nazi flags and not
thinking the Holocaust is real. And this, this is the
inevitable result of this sort of thing. So I guess
do we want to segue to Vermont for our next next?

Speaker 3 (02:37:48):
Like?

Speaker 12 (02:37:48):
Something happened? I think less than a week later, it
sure did.

Speaker 2 (02:37:52):
But first, Garrison, speaking of segues, did you realize that
the guy who bought the segue company died in a
segue crash in Scotland?

Speaker 11 (02:38:00):
Ye?

Speaker 3 (02:38:00):
Segment off of.

Speaker 1 (02:38:03):
Garrison.

Speaker 3 (02:38:04):
He sure did you know?

Speaker 12 (02:38:06):
This is this is why I think there is a
little bit of magic that is reel, because every once
in a while, the funniest thing happens.

Speaker 2 (02:38:15):
Oh man, what a what a stupid product?

Speaker 3 (02:38:18):
Segues.

Speaker 2 (02:38:20):
I remember when those first came out and people were like,
this is the future of transportation. And then everyone who
was not completely brain dead was like, of course they're not.

Speaker 3 (02:38:28):
Look at how dumb those things look. Nobody's gonna want
to drive these.

Speaker 12 (02:38:31):
I mean, if I was a self educated finance guy,
I'm sure I would be able to to to to
estimate the life cycle of the sega.

Speaker 2 (02:38:41):
You're not gonna make it if you if you just
walk like a peasant, you gotta get a one wheel
that explodes.

Speaker 3 (02:38:48):
It's so funny to me too, because it's like like
a thing there. Like I genuinely think is a real
kind of shift in our modes of transportation, is that
people really did start using electric bikes more and then
as a lost to those are three and stuff.

Speaker 2 (02:39:00):
Yeah, it was a huge amount.

Speaker 1 (02:39:02):
Actually.

Speaker 2 (02:39:04):
Instead no, it's like, yeah, we don't need you don't
need to fuck with the form factor. People are happy
using bikes. They're just too slow and sometimes too much
effort is required. So you make that easier and then
people don't drive as fucking much. Great idea. Speaking of
a bad idea, let's talk about this other mass shooter

(02:39:25):
in Vermont from from last week. This actually happened on
Thanksgiving Day, So this guy, I think it was on
Thanksgiving Day.

Speaker 12 (02:39:34):
It may have been like a day or two later.

Speaker 2 (02:39:36):
It was Saturday night, so that would have been. Yeah,
that would have been like the day or two after,
two days after Thanksgiving. So two days after Thanksgiving, you know,
you've got these three twenty year old Palestinian men who
are in town visiting family. You know they're doing I
think they go over and do they do a Thanksgiving
dinner with some friends. They're over another people's.

Speaker 3 (02:39:56):
Yeah, yeah, this big thing they were leaving was it
was they Yes, they went to an eight year old's
birthday party. Yes, yes, yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:40:06):
They're with one of them's uncle who lives in Burlington.
And these kids are all students at different Northeast I think,
all Northeast colleges. One's from Brown University, once from Haverford,
one is from Trinity College. Two of them are citizens
and the other is I think naturalized or at least
a permanent resident. And at some point after you know

(02:40:26):
they're they're hanging out at this event, family event, They're like,
let's go on a walk. You know, it's a nice night.
Let's let's have us a walk around. And they're they're
walking around. They're near an apartment building and this forty
eight year old man named Jason j Eaton steps off
his porch, pulls out a gun, and apparently without saying anything,

(02:40:48):
fires at least four shots at these three young men.
Two of them are shot and they're torso. A third
is shot in the lower extremities. They are all alive. Still,
they're all expected to live and think one of them
was more seriously injured than the others, but they're all
like going to survive, thankfully. And then Eaton flees on foot.
I think like the next day the police catch up

(02:41:09):
with them. He used a three to eighty pistol, if
that matters to you, which is a fairly small handgun,
which probably explains why everybody's survived. And yeah, so that's
the extent of like what physically happened on the day. Again,
Eaton doesn't say anything before he starts shooting. There's no
evidence that he knew these guys. They are apparently speaking

(02:41:32):
in a mixture of Arabic and English as they walk by,
which and also at least I think two of them
were wearing like Palestinian color sort of shimogs or kefias.

Speaker 3 (02:41:43):
I don't think that.

Speaker 2 (02:41:44):
I don't know if it's like like not like the
colors of the Palestinian flag, but like the color palette
there is used in that specific it's white and black, yeah, scarps, yeah, yeah,
yeah exactly. Eaton was a finance broker and advisor kind
of part time. I don't know how much money he
actually made from it.

Speaker 12 (02:42:02):
Yeah, he was like working on a farm part time. Yeah,
he was employed at Edward Jones a few years ago.
He's kind of yeah, he's this this libertarian finance bro.

Speaker 2 (02:42:13):
Yeah, and so yeah, people found his social pretty quickly.
There's like an archived Twitter, which is really standard standard
libertarian stuff. He talks about like, he complains about the
Fed an awful lot. He quotes Elon Musk a number
of times. He seems to be a fan of him,

(02:42:33):
but he's also a huge fan of Bernie Sanders and described, yes,
like the only good man in politics pretty much.

Speaker 6 (02:42:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 12 (02:42:40):
I think it's kind of like it's kind of like
the Joe Rogan libertarian of like right, right, yes, very much.
So you like Bernie because he's like he like curious
about like the people. He's not like he's not like
falling for like the big finance corporation stuf blah blah
blah blah blah.

Speaker 3 (02:42:54):
Yeah, it's it's like it's this old sort of like
the oh my god, what I've forgotten his name, the
liberitarian guy from the two thousands and early twenty tens
who were the Riddler suits. No, he was a congressman.
He was like he was like one of the fashions
in occupy was like these weird libertarians and it's like

(02:43:17):
this seems like that's like the ideological as sentence of
those people who didn't turn into like neo Confederate like
yeah people.

Speaker 2 (02:43:24):
And it's in his old archived Twitter account, he describes
himself like His profile describes him as radical citizen patrolling democracy,
which he spells with a K, and crapitalism for oath keepers,
well oath creepers. I don't know entirely what all of
that means, and then hashtag wild type with the little

(02:43:46):
atomic symbol, which I guess means he likes science. He
describes himself as a dad and a part time farmer,
a reformed yes stockbroker, and his archived account includes a
link to his subs stack, which is our DKL radical.
He describes it as yeah, wander wandering ramblings of a

(02:44:06):
reformed broker on the ADHD ASD spectrum. He's claiming at
least to have ADHD and autism. It's uh, he's deleted.
By the time we got to them. Everyone got to
the most of the posts on his sub stack. The
only thing on there is a really extensive post where
he's like talking about how how restaurants can keep dishwashers employed.

(02:44:28):
He seems to have worked this one and be angry
that they're not always paid fair wage commensurate to back
on the Lion or in front of the Lion staff,
I guess, which is like not unreasonable, but an odd
thing for him to be so focused on.

Speaker 12 (02:44:42):
He has a really interesting online footprint. Yes, at least
like everything like pre pandemic is like he's like this
regular libertarian finance guy. Like there's not like there's nothing
too concerning. He's like or he's yeah, he's like retweeting

(02:45:02):
like the Libertarian Party of Tennessee saying that they like
Bernie Sanders, and like he's he has like this podcast
where he talks about penny Stalks, and it's like it's
a lot of like you see a lots of these
types of guy around and most of them are just
like guys in their forties, because that's what he was,
Just like a libertarian guy in his forties who lived

(02:45:22):
in Vermont.

Speaker 2 (02:45:23):
So like yeah, so you know, as you kind of stated, Garrison,
he's pretty normal up until he gets like COVID hits,
and that seems to be what pushes him over the limit.
I want to read a quote from Vice News here,
who's done a lengthy breakdown of his social media presence.

(02:45:44):
One post from March twenty twenty two titled thought crime.
It's an anti vax screed that labels COVID nineteen as
a government conspiracy. The scale and scope of this operation
was next level, he wrote. He also shared other anti
vax sentiments on his LinkedIn, and wrote last year that
he'd started deleting or unpublishing certain posts because my ideas
make some people not want to hire me. He also
has an Instagram account, which is largely dedicated to sharing

(02:46:05):
images from his farm. Only one post hints at any
ideological or political outlook, which is a screenshot from the
Urban Dictionary definition of America with a K, a word
used to describe the worst sense of the United States,
i e. Imperialism, corruption, and the global exportation of American culture.
His Instagram links to another blog, which has the same
name as his substack and contains rambling podcasts about the

(02:46:26):
financial system. He's uploaded documentation of his various qualifications over
the years. One document indicates that he was a Boy
Scout leader between at least twenty seventeen and twenty twenty one.
Don't worry everyone, the boy Scouts are not letting this
guy continue to be an adult leader.

Speaker 12 (02:46:41):
Yeah, it's the homepage of his website just reads together
no King. And there's a lot of stuff that looks
like it's been deleted, a lot of weird financial advice
under the name radical Citizen spelled all stupid. But you
like I I've I found his YouTube pretty quick. I

(02:47:03):
found his LinkedIn pretty quick. There's a lot of like
vaccine's his His YouTube starts with a lot of like
vaccine hesitancy stuff. Yeah, and then on his LinkedIn he
moves into like full full like weird like COVID conspiracies,
vaccine denial, vaccine conspiracy theories. And I will say, I've
never seen a shooter post like this on LinkedIn before.

Speaker 3 (02:47:25):
Yeah, that's interesting, really unique. It's it's a really unique thing.

Speaker 12 (02:47:29):
Like so you'll find stuff like this on like Reddit,
you'll find stuff like this on Twitter, but having having
a shooter share this types of conspiratorial content on LinkedIn
and then talk about how he has to delete some
because he's not getting hired because LinkedIn's a place to
help you get hired Like that's like it's it's it's
a really weird platform. Yes, this could just be his
like libertarianness showing and like they they use they use

(02:47:52):
LinkedIn because it's like for like business and finance. But
it is certainly weird, like the way he was using
it is unlike most most like either like like cod COVID,
conspiracy shooters, vaccine shooters or whatever his motivation was for this,
for targeting three Palestinian people. It's it's certainly certainly a

(02:48:14):
unique facet of this incident.

Speaker 2 (02:48:16):
Yeah, yeah, so I don't know. I mean, in some
ways this is a pretty standard case, and that like
not the specific things that this guy is starting point,
but just the fact that this is a guy who's
clearly open to some level of right wing politics and
thought influencers. And it seems as if COVID nineteen drove

(02:48:38):
him off a wall ideologically.

Speaker 3 (02:48:41):
Yeah, And I mean, it wouldn't surprise me if this
winds up being a very you know, if we wind
up finding out that a specific motivation for this santi
Palsonian racism, because yeah, well yeah we know it also
probably is.

Speaker 12 (02:49:00):
But his mom describes him as a Christian who takes
his spirituality very seriously. She said that he thought the
whole state of the world was kind of like a
big mess right now, like everything everything spiritually is kind
of falling apart, is what his mom said. Because he
he was he was at Thanksgiving dinner with his family
like two nights before this happened. They said he seemed

(02:49:22):
to act be acting like like his usual self. Not
not saying like, you know, not saying that he was
acting good, but like he was acting.

Speaker 3 (02:49:30):
Normal for him.

Speaker 12 (02:49:32):
Yeah, but no, he certainly had some some degree of
religious affiliation. He talked about using his religious status as
to get like vaccine exemptions for his kids. So there's
stuff stuff like that that that that that does tie
to his religious background, which which could certainly contribute to

(02:49:55):
to anti palestining and violence.

Speaker 2 (02:49:57):
Yeah, and I I don't know, if I had to
assume kind of how this went down without more evidence,
my guess would be he was having a bad day probably,
you know that kind of after the holiday depression. That's
not uncommon. He's like listening to or reading some sort
of listening to some sort of weird conspiracy podcast, or

(02:50:20):
he's just falling down another rabbit hole online He gets
angrier and angrier, and he hears some people talking in
Arabic outside, looks out his window sees a Palestinian Kefia
and decides, I'm going to just start shooting. I don't
actually know, like, I don't know what else it could be.
He can't have These people were not like regular walkers
in his neighborhoods, so this can't have been like he

(02:50:42):
wasn't laying in wait for them. This seems like from
you know, it must have been like a spur of
the moment thing, right.

Speaker 12 (02:50:48):
He waited for the ATF to come to his door,
he said. He said, like I've been expecting you or
I've been waiting for you or something, and he said,
I don't want to say anything without a lawyers like
he he had like, you know, like the libertarian script
of like here's what you say if the police are
coming to arrest you.

Speaker 3 (02:51:03):
Is like, yeah, he didn't.

Speaker 12 (02:51:05):
He didn't like kill himself at the end of this
act of violence that a lot of other shooters do.
He was very very like put together weirdly.

Speaker 2 (02:51:12):
And he's he's lawyered up. I guess we'll learn more, but.

Speaker 12 (02:51:15):
Yeah, no, it's it's it's certainly interesting. I mean, I've
scrolling through the past two years of LinkedIn posts where
he posted a lot on like LinkedIn's like social platform,
and it's a big mix of like big mix of
like financial conspiracy theories and COVID conspiracy theories and vaccine
conspiracy theories. I can certainly see how the way the way,

(02:51:36):
like libertarians in general the past three years, past, like
five years, six years, maybe even since, like the Tea
Party realistically have just have been getting increasingly aligned with
like other aspects of the far right where uh, it
contributes to like transphobia, or it contributes to racism, xenophobia, homophobia. Yeah,

(02:51:59):
like that that that has big that that Venn diagram
is slowly becoming more of a circle. And I can
certainly see if this guy, this guy obviously was listening
to podcasts, if he was making he was making a
financial podcast at some point, yeah, he Like, I can
totally see if if you're listening to libertarian podcasts, you
slowly getting all of these other kind of beliefs that

(02:52:19):
have been seeping in to almost the entirety of the
libertarian political project. If you see, like a few years ago,
he was retweeting posts from like the libertarian parties of
these various states, and now many of those accounts.

Speaker 3 (02:52:33):
Are just run by Nazis, Like, yeah, it is.

Speaker 12 (02:52:36):
It is, like, yeah, watching how the posting trends of
like official libertarian party affiliated accounts have changed the past
few years, specifically the New Hampshire account.

Speaker 3 (02:52:46):
Yeah, oh my god, quite is quite something.

Speaker 2 (02:52:49):
Yeah, and it's it's not always what you'd think because
the the the Louisiana Libertarian Party is like super chill, reasonable,
anti racist, you know, guy, whereas yeah, the New Hampshire
Libertarian Party, dude is like just a straight up Nazi. Yeah, interesting, interesting,
good stuff. Should we do our second AD break? Did

(02:53:09):
we already do that?

Speaker 3 (02:53:10):
Did we already do it? Anyway?

Speaker 2 (02:53:12):
Daniel? If we didn't do a second ad break, here's
our second ad break. Ah, we're back after either our
second AD break or that will be edited out because
we already did too. We forgot which Daniel will figure
it out, and you the listener will never know if
I fucked up. Dani'll keep it in if I fuck up.

Speaker 3 (02:53:31):
Yeah, And speaking of speaking of stuff that's fucked up, yeah, yeah.
So the last thing I want to talk about is
this is this is an older This is from like October, right, Yeah,
this is from October fourteenth, and I think it's specifically
this is this is seven days after the sort of
Amos attack that started all of the sort of stuff

(02:53:52):
that's been happening in palestein Yeah, so in Plainfield, which
is this kind of Yeah, it's like a it's.

Speaker 12 (02:54:01):
A really far suburb of Chicago.

Speaker 3 (02:54:03):
Yeah, it's it's in these things where it's like it's
in the kind of I don't know, almost a borderline
of is it a suburb like it is, it's a
place that sucks ass Yeah, and no offense to anyone
living there with yeah, no, like there are good people there,
but some of them I assume are good people. Yeah.
So on on the fourteenth, a seventy one year old

(02:54:26):
man named Joseph Kuspa who was the landlord of a
Palestinian woman and her son and you know, okay, so
this story, this story just sucks. They had actually so
these this family and their landlord had been like pretty
close friends. Like the family had considered him like like

(02:54:47):
a like they considered him like a grandfather. And this
guy comes through the door and the six year old
kid runs up to go hug him, and he stabs
the kid twenty six times and kills him, nearly kills
his mom. He's screaming like the entire time about like, Yeah,
he's screaming, You Muslims have to die. You're killing our

(02:55:10):
kids in Israel. You Palestinians don't deserve to live. And
this is a I think this is a kind of
a kind of different kind of shoot of well not
sually a different kind of like killing than the ones
we've been talking about, because this is a very sort
of like wake of two thousand and one killing where
you have this enormous, enormous spike in Islamophobia, very specifically here,

(02:55:31):
you have this incredible spike in in anti Palastinian racism,
and you have this this period like especially in the
week I mean, and this is still happening to this day,
but in like the week after, in the week after
this all started, you could say fucking anything. You could say.
You could you could like you could talk about fucking
turning the Gaza strip into glass, like you could talk

(02:55:53):
about fucking dropping nukes, you could talk about killing every
single Palestinian on earth. And it was and no one
fucking said anything, Right, all these fucking people. All of
these fucking all these fucking journalists said nothing all like
the president, Like the president only starts talking about his
homophobia after this fucking kid gets stabbed the death and
you know, and this guy is listening to right wing
talk radio, which is why you know, this is like

(02:56:13):
this is a this is an older like this, this
is a this is a s pecific kind of killing
that like I think is very very similar to the
the enormous number of Muslims who were killed and I
will seek people too, because these people are just really racist. Yeah,
and Pealstinian people who are just killed right after nine
to eleven, because there's just this wave of the US
that gets into one of these sort of murder frenzies,

(02:56:35):
like one of these sort of racist frenzies. And this
kid gets stabbed to death and yeah, this guy, you know,
and I mean and like I think, I think the
think about this case right like this is you know,
this is a radicalization in terms like in terms of
like going from going from literally like this kid is
running up to hug him because like he had built

(02:56:56):
like a treehouse for the family before this, right, like
the like and over the course of like seven days.
This guy goes from that to like we need to
kill all Muslims and we need to like stab them
to death, right, Like it's it's horrible and and this
is you know, like this kind of stuff just keeps happening,

(02:57:17):
and you know, like the only time, the only the
media literally only covers this stuff, like in terms of like, oh,
it's costing a Democrats support and it's like, you guys,
just I don't know the extense of which the media
has been utterly and completely complicit in anti Palasinian racism
has been appalling, and you know it's killed people now, yeah,

(02:57:41):
and there will there will be no reckoning with this
because the US media does this shit all the time
and no one cares.

Speaker 2 (02:57:48):
And yeah, by by a wide margin. The most disturbing
thing about this is just and I think what separates
this from the two thousand and one stuff because this,
this version of this attack in two thousand and one
would have just been some racist stranger who saw, you know,
a Muslim person or just a person he assumed look
like they were Muslim and attacked but did not have

(02:58:08):
a relationship with them. This guy is super close to
this kid, right, This is like an example of how
fairly integrated this community was. And it's the again an
example kind of what we're seeing in most of these
other attacks we've talked about, say of that nazi is
like these people who are a lot more normal. And
then I'm going to guess if we when we find

(02:58:30):
out more about the dude who stabbed that kid, a
lot of his drift happened after COVID, right. You know,
it's a product of this right wing media ecosystem that
again exists purely to do this sort of thing, but
it's also a product of COVID. Right, it's a product
of this lockdown that just fucking shattered so many people.

Speaker 12 (02:58:53):
It's the one other thing I will mention because it
is relevant because the trial is starting. Is another extremely
targeted attack with the.

Speaker 3 (02:59:00):
Murder of Brianna Jai.

Speaker 12 (02:59:02):
Yeah, the perpetrators were very familiar. They were they were
interested in killing her specifically because Brianna was trans that.

Speaker 3 (02:59:13):
I don't I don't know if we talked about this
on the show that I don't think we did.

Speaker 1 (02:59:16):
I don't think it happened.

Speaker 12 (02:59:18):
Yeah, yeah no, But with with with the trial happening,
we're we've gotten text exchanges between the two people who
were involved in the killing, and it's it's very very
very telling the way they were talking about Brianna like
as this as this like object and very very very

(02:59:38):
specifically like like almost like stalking and gaining familiar with her,
specifically to kill her out of like fascination.

Speaker 3 (02:59:47):
Oh wait, So so for people who don't know what
this is, Brianna was I think she was fifty sixteen sixteen,
sixteen year old trans girl in the UK who was
stabbed to death by two other kids. And yeah, so
the trial's like happening right now and it's it's really
really fucking sucks. Yeah she was, she was killed earlier

(03:00:09):
this year. Yeah, and yeah, I mean, if you, if you,
if you want to understand what transphobes think about trans people,
like those texts are as clean as an example that
you're going to get about how like all of the

(03:00:29):
fucking right wing media people and all of the sort
of like you know, like all of the most sort
of like absolutely like committed transphobes think about transfer, But
how they talk about us like in in closed like
like behind closed doors where they think you will never
see it. And this this is just this is just
how they talk about us, and this is what happens

(03:00:50):
is people like people fucking weirder trans people and yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:00:57):
Yeah, well then yep, all right, well folks, this has
been uh it could happen here? A podcast about terrorism?

Speaker 3 (03:01:08):
Goodbye? Do we do? We want to try to end
in SETI literally any other way? I'm not sure you know.

Speaker 2 (03:01:19):
No, Garrison, We're not.

Speaker 11 (03:01:21):
That's the end of the podcast. Goodbye.

Speaker 3 (03:01:39):
Welcome to the could happen Here? A podcast with the
It is Henry Kissinger, and the happening here is that
he's dead as a door nail. I'm your host via
log with me on this joyous day after Kissinger's dead.
Is Garrison Davis and James Stout. Welcome to the show.
Who Hello, very excited.

Speaker 12 (03:01:55):
Had had a fun night in the group chat last night.
I did send over the Hordy Hendrika Singer copy pasta
without reading it to two of the group chat, and
I feel like that was that was a good call.

Speaker 3 (03:02:08):
Fully at the exit. Within within thirty seconds of you
sending that, I got the same I got the same
message in another group chat, and it was it.

Speaker 12 (03:02:18):
Was spreading around pretty quick. I wanted to jump on it.
Soon before before other people were going to share it.
So so yeah, that is that is, that is my duty.
I mean it's it's certainly upsetting he lives till one hundred,
but we will celebrate his death nevertheless.

Speaker 7 (03:02:32):
Yes, it would be nice if he died sooner.

Speaker 3 (03:02:36):
Yeah, yeah, it was nice. Well, we don't we don't
know how he died. He could he could have died horribly.
We actually don't know. Really, Yeah, he died anything.

Speaker 12 (03:02:45):
In his home in Connecticut, surrounded by his hopefully according
to the actual statement.

Speaker 3 (03:02:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (03:02:52):
Well, look, he he lived a little longer and died
a lot more pleasantly than a lot of the people
he was life he ended, which is sad.

Speaker 3 (03:02:57):
It is.

Speaker 12 (03:02:57):
It is sad, But it's also funny. He he died
knowing he's probably one of the most hated men in
the world.

Speaker 3 (03:03:06):
Pretty funny parties in the fucking street, like there was
so there was there was a giant pro Palestine protest
in Chicago last night and there's videos of them finding
out live while they're in the streets that kissing, just dying,
and this giant cheer goes up. People having a great time.

Speaker 7 (03:03:25):
Yeah, I was texting my friends who were down at
the border. Uh, Camery Kissinger is dead. Spread the word
among the people of the nations that he destroyed.

Speaker 3 (03:03:35):
Pretty good, pretty good stuff.

Speaker 12 (03:03:36):
I mean it's we we we all, we all had
a fun time last night, as I'm sure many many
of you listeners did. But slowly some organizations started to
trickle out very embarrassing statements.

Speaker 11 (03:03:50):
Uh.

Speaker 12 (03:03:51):
The first one I saw was from the A d
L who had a quite quite the quite quite the
statement I'm gonna I want to find the I want
to find it actually on on x, the new hot
social media app, because it's because because the community note
on it is just magnificent.

Speaker 3 (03:04:10):
Ye.

Speaker 12 (03:04:11):
Really really gives you a good look at the mind
of Kissinger, and it's fun to laugh at the people
who are like propping him up as some like great
Jewish statesman.

Speaker 3 (03:04:23):
So yeah.

Speaker 12 (03:04:23):
Henry Kissinger was a towering intellect, diplomat and practitioner who,
not without controversy, helped shape American foreign policy with a
lasting impact worldwide. A refugee from Nazi Germany and the
first Jewish Secretary of State, he was unapologetic about his
heritage and his embrace of the importance of American global

(03:04:44):
power and democratic values, which I like that they call
him a practitioner. Just a funny thing to say.

Speaker 3 (03:04:53):
Yeah, but there are a number of in that post.

Speaker 12 (03:04:58):
Oh, absolutely problem. The funniest is that during a meeting
of the Washington Special Actions Group, Kissinger said, quote, if
it were not for the accident of my birth, I
would be anti Semitic. Any people who have been persecuted
for two thousand years must be doing something wrong.

Speaker 3 (03:05:18):
Yeah, here's here's here's another one. That one's fun It's
another one. The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union
is not an objective of American foreign policy. And if
they put Jews in gas chambers in the Soviet Union,
it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.

Speaker 12 (03:05:35):
And that was a realism, amazing stuff like it's it's
it has. It has certainly been wild to watch any
any shred of credibility that the ADL has had just
absolutely go down the drain in the past two months
by their own volition, just ruining decades of like of
of research into anti Semitic extremism, by just tarnishing every

(03:05:56):
single piece of research they've done, by how they've how
they've been behaving the past two months.

Speaker 7 (03:06:01):
Yeah, I mean they past three or four years, they've
really been over like.

Speaker 3 (03:06:09):
To the bottom there. They're like they're like fully going
back to their like selling information to a partid South
Africa days. Yeah, so praising pim praising.

Speaker 12 (03:06:22):
Henry Kissinger is someone who admitted that he would be
anti Semitic if he wasn't born Jewish.

Speaker 3 (03:06:27):
It was just like, what the fuck are you doing? Anyway?

Speaker 12 (03:06:30):
That was that was one of the first one of
the first organizations to come out in in memoriam of
mister Kissinger after after his his devastating passing last night.

Speaker 7 (03:06:42):
Sorry, I've I made a post about this ADL post
and I'm just scoping the replies because there are a
lot of normal people on on x dot com these days.
Someone that there's a group which appears to exist to
lobby for the ADL to lose its nonprofit status, and
I'm just going to say that these are the people
that a d L should be focusing their because this

(03:07:03):
is this is the old school anti Semitism. That is
a giant fucking problem and we all need to reject. Like,
there is some hateful shit on x dot com and
sadly it's in my replies.

Speaker 12 (03:07:15):
Yeah, there is there, there's plenty to go around, and
the fact that they feel the need to defend water Kissinger.

Speaker 3 (03:07:23):
This guy's running for governor of Missouri.

Speaker 7 (03:07:25):
So yeah, just as a podcast, I think we can
safely say, don't vote for Darryl McClanahan.

Speaker 3 (03:07:31):
Klan is in his.

Speaker 12 (03:07:32):
Name, this is our this is this is the here's
first anti endorsement for the twenty twenty four election season.

Speaker 7 (03:07:41):
Yeah, yeah, I'm just gonna say don't don't vote for
this guy.

Speaker 12 (03:07:47):
So so true. Well, God, I'm glad. I'm glad we
could all bond over over over that, as I bonded
over the many, many funny, funny memes in the meme
chats that I'm in rocketing on all scillas Twitter has
been preparing for this night for years. We have been training,
We've been training for so long. People have stayed on

(03:08:08):
throughout Elon's catastrophe, just just for this night, and now
are finally free. They could, yeah, finally be released into
the pasture.

Speaker 3 (03:08:19):
Go live on.

Speaker 7 (03:08:20):
I'm surprised we didn't crash Twitter with yeah, hopefully his
last words, well, I wonder what they'll post about me.

Speaker 12 (03:08:28):
Yeah, I'm sure he was thinking about posting when he
was going out.

Speaker 3 (03:08:31):
That makes sense. He would have been a post hoping.
It was like, oh no, it burns, Oh god, yes,
Anthony bore Day with brass knuckles at the gates of Hell.
Yeah yeah, So okay, all right, so what are we

(03:08:51):
doing for the rest of this episode? So okay, If
if you want to do an episode that is the
entire history of the stuff Kissinger did. Robert did a
six part Behind the Bastard episode on it. You can
spend like twelve hours of your life doing learning.

Speaker 13 (03:09:05):
About having the worst time. Yeah, yeah, I always of
a self help book. Is a self harm book audiobook
that Rob has made for.

Speaker 12 (03:09:14):
You, Yes, but with three funny people giving commentaries.

Speaker 3 (03:09:17):
Yes, it's very funny. You should. Yeah. However, comma, so
we have been talking about how I mean people are
like people are partying in the streets in Cambodia, like there.
Kissinger's death has been a source of celebration for almost
everyone on Earth, but that is not what this episode
is about. This episode is about the one country on

(03:09:39):
Earth that isn't celebrating. That country is China and on
the country. Not only is China not celebrating the death
of Henry Kissinger China is quite possibly the most popular
American in the history of China to this day. Like
right now, if you went and pulled like the favorability
rating of like every famous American, you can think of

(03:10:02):
the person what the highest rating is almost certainly going
to be Henry Kissinger. And you know, I mean, and
this is this is and this is not just a
sort of like a popular thing, although again he is
enormously popular among ordinary Chinese people. This is a thing
that goes from the state down. Xi Jinping, he's actually
weirdly one of the last world leaders to talk to Kissinger.
So Kissinger went to visit China in July, and him

(03:10:26):
and Chijinping have this like great heartfelt reunion. They have
a great time. Xijinping says quote. The Chinese people never
forget their old friends, and Sino US relations will always
be linked with the name of Henry Kissinger. In the
wake of Kissinger's death, the Chinese government said, from Reuter's quote,
Kissinger made historic contributions to the normalization of China US relations,

(03:10:51):
and Chinese people will forever remember him for his quote
sincere devotion and important contributions, Wang added, the Chinese Premier
and the four Minister also sent messages of condolences to
Kissinger's family and to Secretary of State Anthony Blincoln. So
he is getting like he is getting as good a

(03:11:14):
reception in China as any American has ever gotten. And
if you if you can understand how this came to be,
how like every other country in the region fucking hates
Kissinger like everyone else despises him. And if you can
understand why China, why he is like the most popular
American in Chinese history, you can understand the entire arc

(03:11:35):
of the twentieth century and how we ended up with
the horror that we all live in today. But first,
speaking of the horrors that we all live in today,
is breaking.

Speaker 7 (03:11:50):
Yeah hopefully one of our yeah, hopefully, Henry Kissing your
collectible coins that they minted ten years ago and now
been released to the market, and this will be the
first of any adverts for them. They're only going to
grown value, insulate yourself against inflation with these Hammery Kissinger coins.

Speaker 3 (03:12:09):
And we are back. So this story, the story of
how Kissinger became the most popular man in China, or
the most popular American in China, begins in Shanghai, nineteen
twenty seven. Oh, it is the year nineteen twenty seven.
For over a decade, China has been lost Inger Series
C Wars. Kissing is seven four four years old.

Speaker 7 (03:12:31):
Yeah, four years old, child Kissinger.

Speaker 3 (03:12:34):
Child Kissinger is presumably unaware of the developments in China. Oh, oh,
say that he was. He was keeping tabs absolutely at
four years old. Yeah, he was. Even back then.

Speaker 7 (03:12:50):
He was a quote foreign policy realist.

Speaker 12 (03:12:53):
A towering intellect of this stature doesn't doesn't start his twenties.
He starts like it his toddler years.

Speaker 7 (03:13:02):
Choice of words. By the way, towering intellect. Just looking
at him, the pictures of him in China where he
where he's dwarfed, and it's it's just very funny to
look at this guy's grabbing, towering and it's like he's
gonna be like five foot nothing.

Speaker 3 (03:13:15):
His intellect is towering, not his not his, not his person.

Speaker 7 (03:13:19):
Short King, short king, King, sure King would have been
a great tweet if the ADELA called him a short king.
I'm ironically I would have stand that.

Speaker 3 (03:13:29):
Yes, you were saying so, as as as as little
tiny baby as Kissinger is looking on China's Communist Party
is locked in a tenuous alliance with the Chinese Nationalist Party,
which is the glooming Dong.

Speaker 1 (03:13:45):
No.

Speaker 3 (03:13:45):
Yeah, they suck so with the aid of the Soviets.
And when I say the aid of the Soviets, I
mean the Soviets basically rebuilt the Nationalist Party from the
ground up. Yeah, the Nationalists have turned into a juggernaut.
They have, they are, they have swept aside like every
world ord army. They face their marching triomphant across the country,
and ahead of their advance, a massive uprising led by

(03:14:06):
the communists finally drives the warlords out of Shanghai, and
Chinese working class stands victorious. They and they alone stand
triumphant over the greatest city in China. It is the
last time they will control this city for forty years.
The new leader of the Nationalist Party is Chang Kai Shek,
a proto fascist drug lord who the Soviets, for some

(03:14:26):
inexplicable reason, thought was going to work for them and
was going to like build a socialist state at China.
Deeply unclear why they thought this. I don't know. Don't
have stalin running your foreign policy. I don't have.

Speaker 7 (03:14:40):
Started running shit like as a Yeah, yeah Christmas.

Speaker 3 (03:14:46):
Yeah, so geez, he's no kissing jerk, Like what can
we say?

Speaker 7 (03:14:50):
Yeah, also dead, though thankfully killed.

Speaker 3 (03:14:52):
Similar numbers of communists were get we are one sentence
away from that. So, under the direction of Moscow, the
communists in China convinced the Chinese working class to open
the gates of the city to allow the nationalist army inside.
The nationalist army immediately begins slaughtering the Chinese working class.
By by the end of the white terror that this
is going to unleash, the nationalists will have killed one

(03:15:14):
million people, most of them Chinese workers and peasants. Basically
like the entire you know, like like basically the entire
urban Chinese left dies in this like like the the
in this slaughter, and with them dies basically the entire
internationalist wing of the Chinese Communist Party. Because the internationalist wing,

(03:15:35):
the wing that had you know, very close connections to Moscow,
were all like in Shanghai, and they were all but
the most importantly not that they were all literally in Shanghai,
but they were all part of the urban Communist Party
and they get just completely wiped out. And this is
the part of the Shanghai Rising. That for our purposes
is important because it's the first moment where the rift

(03:15:57):
between the Soviets and the Chinese Communist Party begins to form. Now,
in the wake of the Shanghai massacre, Stalin sends the
CCP instructions that are just nonsense, Like he's telling them
to stay aligned with the Nationalist Party, but to oppose Shangkai.
Shecheck like and literally there's descriptions of the meeting when
like this this telegram comes in. The CCP leaders are

(03:16:18):
like sitting around this I think it's a radio. They're
sitting around this radio, and they get the they like
they get the instructions, and they're just like these people
are just burying their hands in their face because like
this is nothing, it is nonsense, and you know, and
this is sort of this is that's like the last
gasp of the old Communist Party leadership. Those people are
just gone, and in their place rises Mao. Now Mao

(03:16:39):
is not from the urban wing of the party. He
is from like Mao was a peasant organizer, right, He's
from the whirl wing, and his wing of the party
tends to be more nationalist and less sort of like
subservient to Moscow. Than the urban wing of the party,
and with Stalin basically getting the entire urban Communist Party
and like every other urban leftist in the country killed,

(03:17:00):
you know, the people that are left are MAO and
the sort of peasant organizations who have a distrust of
the Soviets that they're going to maintain for basically their
entire lives. Now, obviously relations between the CCP and Stalin
improve as like World War two happens, but there's a
basically the moment the war ends, there's a series of

(03:17:21):
incidents that sort of trained relations. One is that this
is less an incident, but Stalin seems to not have
thought that the CCP was gonna win the war, like
he seems to have thought that the nationalists are going
to beat them. And one of the things that he
does is basically de industrializes Japan's giant industrial belt and

(03:17:42):
occupied Manchuria. This is a completely intact industrial belt. It
is one of the largest like intact industrial belts in
the world, and Stalin, like in classic Soviet fashion, takes
the factories, takes them apart, puts them on trains, and
ships them across across the so sorry to rebuild this
Ovia economy, yep.

Speaker 7 (03:18:01):
One of the first is many such incidents.

Speaker 3 (03:18:05):
Yeah, and this is a catastrophe for the CCP because
even after the CCP wins the war, because they've now
you know, so it's like Shanghai is in ruins, Beijing,
like most of China is just in ruins because of
I mean, like, what year are they on if effectively
continuous fighting and the after the war. China's industrial base

(03:18:27):
in this is nineteen forty nine, right, Their industrial base
is smaller than Russia's in nineteen seventeen, which is just nuts,
it is and this is small, yeah, and this is
the conditions that the everything, the entire course of twenty
century Chinese history are defined by these conditions, right, And
these specific conditions are this is basically a production bottleneck, right.

(03:18:53):
And I've talked about this on the show before. This
is one of the one of the sort of most
important things in twentieth century Chinese like political economy, is
that you know, the CCP is trying to simultaneously expand
its agricultural production to feed people and also expand its
industrial capacity. It's mostly trying to expand it to its
industrial capacity. The problem is they can't expand their industrial
capacity without expanding their agricultural capacity, and they can't expand

(03:19:15):
their agricultural capacity without expanding their industrial capacity. And their
attempt to just blow through this by like mass use
of human labor is the great lead bored. It's complete catastrophe, right,
this is just gonna fuck like whatever like intentions like
the Chinese Revolution had, this is just going to fuck
them because the combination of this and their ideology is
just going to doom the entire project. And you know

(03:19:41):
this and the other thing about this period, the Soviets
are really really patronizing, like they talk about like constantly
and like diplomatic things, like they talk about the Soviet
like the Chinese is like their younger brothers. There's like
this weird like thing going on. This isn't enough to
substantially threaten their alliance, but the relationship between the USSR

(03:20:02):
and China is never as it's never quite as firm
as people.

Speaker 1 (03:20:06):
Think it is.

Speaker 3 (03:20:08):
Now. The thing that really like kickstarts the break between
the USSR and China is Khrushev's secret speech denouncing Stalin.
So this gets like leaked. Krushchev makes the speech where
he was like wow, Stalin did some fucked up stuff
they called the personality was bad, actually, and this pisss
off an enormous number of people. Mau forever like problems

(03:20:32):
malhas with Stalin. He takes a very hard line on this,
where he's like, no, I'm like, the Soviets are now revisionists,
they have abandoned the path of Marcs Leninism. I am
now the only anti revisionist in the world. And you know,
and this whole thing like results in these worstening relations
between China and the Soviet Union, with the CCP basically
calling the Soviets like weak neck bureaucratic social imperialists and

(03:20:54):
the Soviets looking at like the great leap forward and
being like, what are these maniacs doing? And this tension
escalates to the sixtieses both sides start massing troops on
the Chinese Soviet border. Now meanwhile, so so okay, the
sixties goes.

Speaker 4 (03:21:11):
On, and.

Speaker 3 (03:21:14):
Control of the Soviet Union has fallen to Leoned Breshnev,
who is an absolute maniac, deeply weird, deeply not very
good guy, and he in response to the Council Communist
uprising in Prague in nineteen sixty eight, Breshnev rolls tanks
in kills everyone, and then declares the Breshnev Doctrine, in
which Breshnev claims the right to overthrow any socialist government

(03:21:36):
who the Soviets decided we're trying to become capitalists, which
I mean, this is the Soviet's right like that that
what that actually means is that they don't align with USSR.
So Breshnev means this to be about Eastern Europe, right.
MAO looks at this and goes, oh shit, Breshnev is
going to try to overthrow be and this does not

(03:21:57):
go well. So and you know, I know the looking
at it, he's looking at like the Soviet troops massing
on the border, and he's like, oh shit. And this
is where things get absolutely wild. In nineteen sixty nine,
there are a giant series of border skirmishes between this
between Soviet and Chinese troops. People are killing each other
across this enormous this is like continent sized border. People

(03:22:21):
are like like like like companies of Chinese and Soviet
troops are like firing artillery at each other. Everyone is
completely losing their minds. And this is actually like one
of the reasons why, Like every once in a while
you'll get these things from the Himalayas and China's border
with India, where everyone's like hitting each other with sticks,

(03:22:41):
and the reason you're hitting each other with sticks is that,
like the Chinese were like, wait, hold on, it's actually
a bad idea to have guys with guns on the
border of a nuclear power. Yeah.

Speaker 7 (03:22:52):
Yeah, they have some amazing, amazing browls.

Speaker 3 (03:22:56):
Yeah, but you know, but like and the funny thing
like that, that's the reasonable version of this. In sixty nine,
they're having the unreasonable version of this, where the Soviets
are looking at the situation and they're going, oh shit,
we can't win a war with China because their calculation
is that they will eventually be overwhelmed by a combination
of human wave attacks and the fact that like an
enormous portion of the China is the Chinese population has

(03:23:18):
been trained in guerrilla warfare. And their second problem is
that the Chinese population is to disperse for them to
all be killed by a Soviet nuclear weapons. And the
CCP makes the same assessment and it's like, Okay, if
we fight this war, like the human wave attacks are
just going to eventually are going to crush them. We're
going to use force numbers that can't kill us all
with nukes. So the Soviets plan for this is they
are like drawing up plans to line the border with

(03:23:39):
China with nuclear land mines to stop the chese. It's nuts.
Everyone is losing their minds normal times. Yeah, Like I've
seen rumors. This is the thing I don't have actually
good sources on. I've seen a lot of rumors that
both both the Soviets and China like reached out to

(03:24:01):
the US try to get them the nuke. The other side,
it's everyone is everyone is completely losing their minds. And
you know, so at this point, like both sides kind
of back down because both of them realize that, like

(03:24:22):
fighting this war is the stupidest thing that anything could
possibly do, because there's there's like there is there was
a little tiny shred of sanity left in both sides.
That's like, do we like actually what to have a
nuclear war? And they're like no, okay, but this marks
the permanent solidification of what's called the Sino Soviet split.

(03:24:43):
And do you know what else is it is? It
is a Sino Soviet split. It's the split between the
part of the episode that's ads and the part of
the episode that's episode.

Speaker 12 (03:24:53):
That is a very important split that does relate to
the worker councils of the Soviet state, as if the
Soviets got their wish for world domination, we wouldn't be
pivoting to an AD break instead, this would be purely
workers sponsored.

Speaker 3 (03:25:07):
I don't know, here's the.

Speaker 12 (03:25:08):
App all right, I for one, am very excited to
get those Coininger limited edition NFT collectibles. I think it's
a real solid investment. So I know it sounds a
little far fetched, but hey, in ten years, you can
sell it to some guy from the CCP and.

Speaker 3 (03:25:26):
You might make a lot of money. So yeah, food
for thought or the ad.

Speaker 12 (03:25:30):
That's right, that's right. You can sell it to Pit Cabbage.
He could buy that for like ten grand. All if
you spend one thousand dollars and in ten years you
could be getting ten grand from pit Cabbage.

Speaker 3 (03:25:43):
And that sounds like that sounds like a great deal.

Speaker 7 (03:25:45):
That's a that's a ten percent discount as well with
the discount code. Garrison Davis. Sorry miss back in script.

Speaker 3 (03:26:00):
So the back in nineteen sixty nine basically from from
from yeah, yeah, so it basically from this point on,
the USSR and the People's Republic of China are enemies.
This is what's called the Sino Soviet split. And Mao
begins casting around for allies, and into this breach steps
a man accursed through history. Who's who's towering footfalls echo

(03:26:25):
through the halls of power. I am talking, of course,
about Charles de Gaulle. Yeah, most Frenchman two exists. Yeah,
so Degall has been devising a strategy to pull China
away from the USSR and towards the West. And this
is the origin of what's called Triangle diplomacy. Now Kissinger
steals this idea and goes and does it. But this

(03:26:49):
was not Kissinger's idea. This was this was a plan
that was already kind of in motion that he stole
from the Gaull.

Speaker 12 (03:26:57):
Good artists copy great artists, steal Kissinger was anything.

Speaker 3 (03:27:01):
It wasn't artist great artists.

Speaker 7 (03:27:05):
What the Tony Blair Foundation said, It's not as Joe
God fucking make jokes because everything's too fucked.

Speaker 3 (03:27:13):
I'm quoting the Tony Blair Foundation. That was it. There was,
there was, there was there was some oh god, I
can't remember his name. So someone in the seventies declared
that satire the day, the day that Henry Kissinger won
the Nobel Peace Prize the day Satire died. And he
was right. And this is why satire doesn't work any work.

Speaker 7 (03:27:29):
Yeah, Tony Blair is now pissing on its grave.

Speaker 3 (03:27:33):
A yeah, so all right, but the you know, okay, So,
so this triangle diplomacy thing, Kissinger basically takes it over.
And the key element of this plan is is to
use China as a bulwark against the Soviets, both in
East and Southeast Asia and in places like Central Africa.

(03:27:55):
But in order to do this they have to actually
like establish contact with China, a thing they haven't had
in like thirty years. Wow, I guess twenty. Ah whatever,
Hey complicated. I'm not going to go through the entire
diplomatic history of China, but you know, if you and
this is the origin of one of Kissinger's most famous crimes,

(03:28:15):
which is Operation search Light, which is Pakistan's genocide and Bangladesh.
They kill about three million people. If you want to
really detailed account of this, go listen to the Behind
the Basses episodes. The short version of this is that
Pakistan has been a Chinese ally for a while for
a lot of reasons, one of which is China's antagonism
with India, which peaked in nineteen sixty two when China

(03:28:37):
just straight up invaded and he'speeded border region, conquered it
and then like handed Nehru his ass in the process
of what became known as a Sino Indian War. And
this is an incredible betrayal, by the way, like Neihru,
who was the Prime Minister of India, Nehru had turned
down a permanent seat on the UN Security Council because

(03:28:59):
because he was being given the seat as a way
to make sure China didn't get it, and he turned it.
He turned down that seat to get China onto the
Security Council like out of out of like, not out
of geopolitical like. This was basically a pure like ideological
I'm doing this because it's the right thing to do thing,
and Mao returns him by fucking invading India. So because

(03:29:22):
of this and because of like you know, India Pakistan
don't like each other. This is this is known. The
Pakistani government is very close to China. Pakistani troops are
trained by the Chinese army. They are armed with Chinese
weapons and with Kissinger's blessings, so he could use the
Pakistani government as an intermediary to negotiate with China. The
Pakistani government seeds to kill three million Bangladeshis.

Speaker 4 (03:29:45):
It is.

Speaker 3 (03:29:46):
Yeah, this is. It is among the worst crimes of
the twentieth century. It's a crime that it is broadly forgotten.
China's complicity in it is forgotten. The American's complicity in
it is barely remembered, basically only when people talk about Kissinger.
But this was one of the worst things that happened
in like one of the worst centuries in human history.

(03:30:06):
But you know, for Kissinger, this is an enormous success, right,
He gets everything that he fucking wants out of it.
He doesn't give a shit about Bangwadeshis. Then you know,
this is a tradition that has like echoed through the
like the e ods of the liberals have ever since
the US successfully opens diplomatic channels with China. And soon
Kissinger and Nixon are going to meet Mao in China,
And I'm going to read from Mao talking to Kissinger

(03:30:28):
so you can understand who these people are. The tree
between our two countries at present is very pitiful, is
gradually increasing. You know, China is a poor country. We
don't have very much. What we have in excess is women, Kissinger.
There are no quotas or terrible for those, Chairman Mao,
So if you want so, if you want them, we

(03:30:49):
can give you a few of those, some tens of thousands,
Prime Minister show of course, on a voluntary basis. Chairman Mao,
let them go to your place. They will create disasters.
That way you can lesson our burdens. Laughter. Sometime later, Mao,
do you want our Chinese women, We can give you
ten million laughter. Jesus, the Chairman is improving his offer bow.

(03:31:14):
By doing this, we can let them flood your country
with disaster and therefore impair your interest in our country.
We have too many women, and they have a way
of doing things. They give birth the children, and our
children are too many. I mean, this is like a
deeply CCP moment, like, yeah, this is like this is
one of these stings. Was like there are people in

(03:31:36):
the United States to this day who call themselves Maoists
and like and think that this guy was like on
the fucking left, and it's like, how do you fucking
read that? Like him, just him just doing this fucking
banter with the Butcher of Bangladesh and be like no, no, no,
this is the guy who figured out to keep the
key to achieving like socialism, right, he is the guy

(03:31:58):
you figured ou how to end the class system, end imperialism.
Is this fucking guy poling it up with fucking Henry
fucking Kissinger, Like it's terrible, Like I just yeah, it's not.

Speaker 7 (03:32:12):
I meant the king to being a mauist is not
reading this though true.

Speaker 3 (03:32:19):
I've seen maoists on Twitter trying to defend this. They're like, well,
it was only like a temporary thing because the Soviets
were threatening the New China and like, you know, and
I'm one of the things that one of the real
problems they have is that so in Angola, there's a
civil war in Angola. There is a a faction that
are the good guys, and then there's a faction that's
being backed by apartheid South Africa and backing the apartheid

(03:32:41):
South Africa fashion. Yeah, so you know, and this is
the thing they have to justify and they can't. And
this actually and you know, one of this actually has
impacts in the US because like American maoists are confronted
with this and are like what the fuck.

Speaker 7 (03:32:58):
Like what is this?

Speaker 3 (03:33:00):
And there are some of them who just like ignore
it and quadruple down. There are some of it who
become disillusioned.

Speaker 7 (03:33:06):
You could even pick a different tanky, like like Cuba
heavily supported the m p l A and I go,
for instance, like yeah, at.

Speaker 3 (03:33:13):
Least and just like yeah, moved to like Castro or something.
I don't know.

Speaker 7 (03:33:17):
Trotsky's right there, He's right there with an ice pick
in his head.

Speaker 3 (03:33:22):
So true.

Speaker 13 (03:33:25):
Should have happened to Kissinger a fucking incredible alternate history
lives and Kissinger dies lives.

Speaker 3 (03:33:37):
To one hundred.

Speaker 12 (03:33:39):
The world is so much it's the world's are like
a great place, but it is a much better place
in that alternate history.

Speaker 3 (03:33:47):
Can you imagine if Trotsky had held on long enough
for social media to exist? You know, oh my god,
it's him and the one the person I've been most
sad right now than never gone on there was Goredal.
He would have been killed it he would Yeah.

Speaker 7 (03:34:05):
Yeah, there's a few people you just think would have
been magnificent.

Speaker 3 (03:34:10):
Vodal has a famous a Kissinger moment where he's he's
he's watching he runs into a Kissinger like in the
Sistine Chapel, like looking at the part that's like looking
at the hell part of it. Vidal goes, Kissinger is
apartment hunting.

Speaker 13 (03:34:24):
Very funny, very yeah, yeah, yeah, that is brains.

Speaker 3 (03:34:31):
So many of these. There's there another famous one where
the the absolutely dog Ship American author Norman Baylor punches
him and he's like falls over because he's got punched.
While he's on the ground, Vandal goes, words failed Norman
Baylor again. Yeah, really incredible guy, real time posting. We

(03:34:57):
see it. Yeah, tragic, tragic had never made it it.
Lots of tragedies unfolding. One of them is that you know,
this whole thing of like like kissingered bantering with Mao
like this it works like the US and China established
mathomatic relations. And this is a this is a seismic

(03:35:17):
shift in sort of Chinese popular culture and media and
consciousness because from the Korean War until like the seventies, right,
the way people think about America and the way they're
portrayed in Chinese media is like as the great imperialist enemy, right,
like the last time there was contact between the US

(03:35:37):
and China. It is a bunch of Chinese troops doing
bayonet charges, like wearing sandals in the fucking snow, doing
bayonet chargers through their own artillery barages to kill American
troops like that. That is like like the amount of
hatred like there is is unbelievable. And you know, it's
funny because like the US like really forgot that war,

(03:35:58):
but like China did not, right, and suddenly like America
is China's friend. And the human face of this absolutely
Parkle shift in basically the entire ideological system of Chinese communism.

(03:36:18):
The face of this shift in in the just the
image of what America is, which is like it doesn't
it's not quite mapping on, but it's like like America,
like it's it's kind of like how Baptists think about
the devil, right like that that that is the role
that America has in Chinese like popular sort of culture
like up until this point, and then suddenly it's completely

(03:36:38):
pivot on its head. And the face of this shift
is Kissinger. And you know and this, uh, this is
pingpong Eurasia is what you're doing right now? This yeah,
happened to this all happened due to table tennis, and
I won't hear any other way. Oh god, I was
I specifically did it include that the table tennis diplomacy
at this because I was like, I hate the ship, but.

Speaker 7 (03:37:01):
Yeah, liberals really get on that ship. They talk about
I think Joseph was a big diplomacy guy.

Speaker 3 (03:37:09):
Yeah, but it's like, you know, but I I think,
like thing on diplomacy is an example of like how
circumscribed the contact between the U to the US and
China is right, Like again, like we're talking about like
like ping pong teams playing each other. This is like
the big diplomatic and cultural exchanges going on between China
and the US. There's nothing. And this is something that

(03:37:31):
you have to sort of understand if you want to
understand this pivot is how isolated China was. Right Like
the US through this entire period is pretending that the
nationalists in Taiwan or the legitimate government of all of China,
they have blocked off effectively all trade with China. They've
blocked off basically all trade from the US. They've blocked
off a huge amount of international trade and and you know,

(03:37:53):
and this this this is something that really really cripples
the Chinese economy. Like you know, you can't quite blame
it for like the famines because like I mean, for example,
like the CCP was exporting grain to the USSR while
greatly before what was happening, right like, but I mean,
it didn't fucking help that. And one of the the

(03:38:14):
other big consequence of this is that it is almost
impossible for Chinese people to go to China. Like you
you basically can't do it. And this is an enormous
deal because there are tens of millions of Chinese people
across the world who can't go back to China. These
people can't see their families, they can't see their friends,
they can't go to the graves of their ancestors, they
can't they can't go home. And this happened with my family,

(03:38:35):
Like my grandpa didn't see his brothers and sisters for
forty years after the war. Forty years just did not
see his family. And you know, and it's only when
Kissinger and that this is the way that it's seen
in China. It's only when Kissinger re establishes relations, which
Kissinger goes out there and advocates and The way they

(03:38:56):
see it is he's advocating for China in the US,
which is kind of true. But the way they see
this is only when Kissinger reestablishes diplomatic relations, that's when
it becomes possible for you to see your family again.
And you know, like I cannot emphasize enough how big
of a deal this is in China in the diaspora, Like,
if you are in the diaspora, you can't get fucking

(03:39:17):
messages in you Like a lot of people don't know
whether their family is still alive because the last time
they saw them was the war or and when I
say though war, like that could be World War two,
that could be the Revolution, that could be people liking
before that. And you know, this is a huge deal
in the diaspora too, to the point where like a
lot of the people who had been like in the
in the Asian American movements in sixty eight, like people

(03:39:39):
who had been like Yellow Peril, Yellow Power, people who
are like ally with the Black Panthers, Like these people
are trying to get jobs in the Nixon State departments
because they want to be there to like help reopen
diplomatic relations with China. It is it is like, this
is like it is one of the sort of apocaum
moments of the second half of the twentieth century. Is

(03:40:00):
this this these diplomatic relations opening up again. And in
the Chinese media, they don't really want Nixon to be
the face of it because now there's this is not great.
But so they they put they put Kissinger as like
the human face of all of this, and you know,

(03:40:23):
and and there's there's and there's a lot of benefits
of China from this. They're getting these massive technological transfers
from the US, and this is one of the things
that it's in I think it's a very underrated factor,
but this is one of the factors that makes their
their technology. Like sorry, let me say that again. This
is one of the factors that makes it's one of
the incredibly underrated factors that makes their industrialization program work.

(03:40:44):
And there's a lot of places where people try similar
industrialization programs to what China is going to pull off,
Like Venezuela, for example, tries this, and Venezuela's program completely
fails because they don't have access to the technology that
the US got from basically sucking up or that China
got from sucking up to the US, and Kissinger is
directly responsible for a lot of like a lot of
these technology transfers, and for this, Kissinger is labeled as

(03:41:07):
as like as a friend of the Chinese people like this,
This is literally the way that it's talked about in
the Chinese media, and even sort of beyond just him
being labeled like a friend of the Chinese people, like
he is like Okay, so there's like one or two
other Americans who you can sort of like publicly express
admiration for. Who are people who like effectively defected the

(03:41:29):
China or just move to China and like we're there
for the revolution. But those aren't like major figures, right,
Like they're like communist journalists or stuff like that, or
like anthropologists, like they're not. This is the first like
actual public American figure that you were allowed and you
are encouraged to be like yay, this guy fucking rules.
And in a very short amount of time, Kissinger becomes

(03:41:51):
enormously popular as the man who you know, he's the
guy who restored Chinese American relations. He's the guy who
allowed all these people to see to see their families
and the saytion to terror regime I mean he doesn't
actually end them, but he's helping people work around them,
and the sanctions eventually sort of come down. But you know,
all of this comes with the price. And this brings

(03:42:13):
us to another Kissinger crime, which is a Kissinger in
the coup against Chile's democratically elected president Salvadur Ayende. So
this coup is fully green lit by the US, like
Kissinger is involved with it. Pinochet is going to murder
forty thousand Chilans. We talked about this on the show
a few times before, but what we haven't really talked
about much is that after this, after the coup, Chile

(03:42:36):
is like completely diplomatically isolated. No one wants anything to
do with them because this just like maybe like absolute maniac,
massive murderer has just deposed like a sovereign government. Like
even like the even the UK like won't like refuses
to like talk to them, right like like and when
when like the Brits won't talk to you because you've
done too many crimes?

Speaker 7 (03:42:57):
Yeah, yeah, you've really fucked it there, like the guys
who who's prime Minister's son living doing coups?

Speaker 3 (03:43:05):
Yeah, but there is one country other than the US
that will do that, will that will like do that,
will make deals with Pinochet. And that country is China,
and China funny funnels millions of dollars like to some
literally to Pinochet directly and to the Chilean government. And
this is a time where China is not rich, but

(03:43:25):
and this is millions of dollars like in in like
nineteen seventies money. It's it's a lot of money. And
and China is absolutely broke, and they're fucking sending it
to and they're they're sending it to fucking Pinochet, and
like and and like to get a sense of how
weird this stuff is in China, right, Like a lot
of people in China think that Pinochet is a socialist

(03:43:47):
because he's being portrayed positively in the Chinese media, so
they assume that he's a socialist. Like this is the
kind of shit that's like just the absolute brain worms
that are happening in China at this point, because they're
their connection to the outside world is really really tenuous,
and the Chinese media is suddenly gassing up all of
these just like horrific right wing dictators. Now, as as

(03:44:12):
Kissinger Star sends in China, the CCP begins pulling its
own kissingers. So this is this is a this is
a kind of a story we only learned about pretty recently,
I think in like the last two years. Being Japing
was the first like Chinese communist leader to visit the US.
And so he got he's in Washington, DC, and he

(03:44:32):
takes time out of his schedule to have a secret
meeting with the CIA where he goes to the CIA
office to set up like list to set up CIA
listening posts in China to spy on the USSR.

Speaker 1 (03:44:44):
And one of the.

Speaker 3 (03:44:46):
Products of this, you know, so that that's that's the
sort of low level stuff that Chine is getting involved with.
The high level stuff is in nineteen seventy nine, China
invades Vietnam. They killed tens of thousands of people, They
devastate both the Chinese and music economy. And this is
one of the things that you know, this is a
decisive thing in the Cold War, Right, China has like

(03:45:09):
Donna Kissinger, They've invaded fucking they've invaded Vietnam. Yeah, and
you know, and one of the one of the sort
of modern iterations of this right has been you know,
there's there's a long period of sort of like China's
alignment with the US. And one of the other things
that happens that China like becomes increasingly tied to Israel.
And this is one of the things that that's like

(03:45:30):
true of China to this day is like there are
a bunch of surveillance cameras in the West Bank that
are that are that the Israelis used to surveil Palestinians
that are built in China, right the same the same
cameras that are being used in shing Jan. A lot
of like Chinese h what's it called. It was like
Chinese police sometimes special forces units like trained with Israeli

(03:45:52):
like trainers. There's a lot of like they do like
cow like quote unquote kunter terrorism exchanges and and the
other big aspect of this is that a huge part
of the Israeli tech industry and a huge part of
their sort of like defense complex is fueled directly by
both Chinese resources and by Chinese raw materials, and also

(03:46:13):
by things like transistors that they're importing from China. And
this is the product of the sort of long arc
of Kissinger's work in China and Kissinger's work sort of
peeling off Egypt from the Palestinian like Soviet camp. And
this ultimately is the price of opening relations with the US.

(03:46:34):
It's not a price that's paid by the Chinese ruling class. Instead,
what happens is that every dissident in China, every fucking
child in Cambodia, every teenager in these Teamwar and every
veteran in Vietnam, Mao sells them the fuck out, staying
Shaw Ping sells them out, ku Chaital sells them out,
Xijinping sells them out. They take American money, they take
American technology, They shake hands with Kissinger, and they let

(03:46:56):
Bangladesh burn. And for this, Kissinger would remain astead fast
ally at the Chinese capitalist classes entire life. When the
CCP butchered the last gas of the Chinese working class
at Tienemen, Kissinger stood by the CCP and basically is
one of the few Americans straight out doing pr for them.
He does it again when China's tried to enter the
World Trade Organization. He like, this is the last thing

(03:47:18):
he was doing before he fucking died, was going it
was going to China and allying himself for the Chinese
ruling class. And you know he meets Chijien Ping and
is greeted as an old friend. And this is how
you get to the thing that's been happening today, which
is like all of these Chinese, like the Chinese Foreign Ministry,
and a bunch of time making Chinese government officials like

(03:47:39):
releasing these statements about how doctor Kissinger is a good
friend of the Chinese people. And this ultimately is what
Kissinger represents, the prospect of the alliance between the American
and Chinese capitalist class built on the blood of the
working class of five continents. It is a world in
which there is peace and prosperity for the bourgeoisie, where
there was starvation and death for everyone else. This still,

(03:48:03):
to this day is the regime that rules the US,
it is the regime that rules China. And they are
being united for one final time in their love of
one Henry Kissinger. And yeah, that's basically all I've got.
I guess the last thing I can say is one
of the things that I think I hope people will
understand about this is that the way that the American

(03:48:27):
left thinks about China, like the way that it the
way that it's politics function, are completely illegible in China, like,
there are no like in the US. It is very
common to have someone who is like pro Palestine, who
is like socialist, who is like pro LGBTQ like rights,
who like you know, who considers this selves Nancy imperialist

(03:48:49):
who is also pro CCP and also fucking hates Kissinger.
And this is not a position that exists in China.
There is nobody like this, nobody, fucking like, no one
at all believes this because it's just it's a not
a coherent political position. Is it is an American projection
of politics on the China because again, meanwhile, like the
actual thing that's happened in China is because of the
way the media has covered Kissinger. The thing they covered

(03:49:12):
is the normalization of US China relations, and not all
of the fucking genocides that he did. And so they
have the same fucking whitewashed view of Kissinger that like
right wing Americans do and that the American ruling class does.

Speaker 12 (03:49:27):
And this is truly, truly has been the century of
Kissinger from twenty three to twenty three.

Speaker 3 (03:49:33):
But but fuck that, the center of Kissinger is over.
Now is the century of the social revolution. We're fucking
going for his ass. We're gonna tear apart everything he
ever built. That motherfucker's gonna watch from hell as we
destroy everything he ever created his entire life time.

Speaker 7 (03:49:50):
That's why we're taking a week off to go to
Chile and begin the social revolution that Kissinger destroyed again
as a podcast.

Speaker 12 (03:50:00):
We we we do now have to choose the new
most evil person alive. Uh, there's there's been quite a
there has been quite a few in the running. We
have we have Chinese up there, obviously, we have uh
W Bush, we have.

Speaker 3 (03:50:17):
We have net and Yahoo. We have making a strong
case right now. Yeah, we have him off.

Speaker 7 (03:50:24):
Maybe he wanted to take the seat, take the throne.

Speaker 3 (03:50:28):
Yeah, made a decently strong case.

Speaker 12 (03:50:31):
Sure, sure there is there is, There is a decent
list running. I think only time will tell for who
will truly have a lasting impact of similar evil. But yes,
that there is now a new new open position for
most evil person Alive. So many people are throwing their
hat into the ring. We will see how this contest

(03:50:53):
plays out.

Speaker 3 (03:50:56):
Yeah, and you will. You will hear it when when
that fucking person dies. You're shirt on this show too,
and we will enjoy it. Yeah, let's be make it
up here and go have a good time. Enjoy, Enjoy
for this, Enjoy. By the time you're hearing this, the

(03:51:16):
second ever sunrise in one hundred years that does not
have Henry Kissinger under it. Yeah.

Speaker 7 (03:51:23):
Somewhere today, somewhere in the world, a baby has been
born in a post Kissinger world, and we can we can.

Speaker 3 (03:51:29):
All the most evil baby has been born and we
have to heal. Yeah.

Speaker 7 (03:51:34):
Yeah, somewhere thanks to the cyclops I'm Sarah. Henry Kissinger
is attack.

Speaker 3 (03:51:39):
That's right.

Speaker 7 (03:51:39):
So if you're squeezing out a baby this month, just
be careful.

Speaker 3 (03:51:43):
It's all I'm saying.

Speaker 2 (03:51:48):
Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week
from now until the heat death of the universe.

Speaker 3 (03:51:53):
It Could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media.

Speaker 12 (03:51:56):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool Zone Media dot or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 3 (03:52:05):
You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
monthly at Coolzonemedia dot com, slash sources. Thanks for listening.

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