It Could Happen Here Weekly 159

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media. 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

(00:23):
you can make your own decisions.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Welcome to it could happen here, a show about things
falling apart. We are back from our little break, and
today I'm joined with Robert Evans to discuss fascism.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
I guess, yeah, yeah, I'm here. We're talking fascism. Listeners,
excuse me. I have a Citus infection. So that's why
it sound this way.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
Oh that's why you sound like that. Uh huh.

Speaker 3 (00:50):
That sucks life.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
Yeah, well, it might not suck as much as what
I had to do last week, which is watch this
six part documentary about the twenty twenty five for Trump
election campaign. God well, the art of the surge.

Speaker 3 (01:04):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
Overall, it was actually pretty boring. They were obviously trying
to edit it like a succession episode. Oh my god,
really obnoxious. There is some insight into like the inner
workings of the Trump team, like watching him and his
team react to the Kamala Harris DNC speech and like
workshop counter messaging was actually interesting, and the doc does

(01:26):
show kind of Musk's influence steadily ramping up starting in July.
The only time you see Trump advance together is after
Trump's ABC debate, when JD like preps him for the
Spin room. That's the only time, Wow, we see them
in a act.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
I mean, yeah, that makes sense, Like I wouldn't want
to be in a room with JD vans more than
I had to be, although the fact that he does
want to be in a room with Musk is bafflt.

Speaker 2 (01:52):
Yes, and actually Musk and JD get along quite well
in the interactions that are seeing in the documentary, Malania,
Trump never appears once, not a single time.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
Well, it's good to know that they've they've managed to
put together a functional throuble.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
Ooh, don't like that. Don't like that at all? First, buddy,
the ikes. My biggest takeaway from this documentary is that
it just showed how much his rallies are a religious
experience for his supporters like deeply, deeply religious, especially the
Butler Pennsylvania rallies, where everyone talks about it like they

(02:28):
would like like a genuine like limit experience or religious experience.
Right now this episode, I actually I want to focus
on the rhetoric employed at these rallies in attempts to
label Trump a fascists. There's been a lot of discussion
on like Trump's authoritarian and dictatorial desires and tendencies and
expressions of those fears in particular were not enough to

(02:51):
persuade the majority of voters against Trump, let alone safe
and Republican support towards Harris and we on this show
have not talked much about the escalation of rhetoric used
by Trump and his allies this campaign cycle, with the
Biden administration's horrific border policies and the enabling of Israel's
genocidal actions in Gaza drawing a great deal of our
attention in the past few months. But now I do

(03:13):
want to draw attention to the ethno nationalist framing that
has become all too common, especially with the Democrats just
complete submission to Trump and the GOP's distinct focus on
immigration as the top issue facing America. So part of
what I'm gonna do here is I've outlined a few
clips and some quotes I'm trying. I tried to limit
the clips because I know no one wants to hear

(03:35):
Trump and these guys talk for too long, but I
will place some And Robert, you've spent a lot of
your time thinking about fascism in the past few years
and reading about fascism, so I'm certainly curious on your
thoughts on some of these clips and quotes. As we'll
kind of go through like three specific rallies, mostly great
and outline what type of rhetoric they are using and

(03:56):
what it kind of points to historically. Now, one of
the reoccurring phrases at Trump rallies this cycle was that
the United States has become an occupied territory. Here's Trump
invoking that language at a rally in Atlanta a week
before the election.

Speaker 4 (04:12):
But it will soon be an occupied country no longer.
November fifth, twenty twenty four, will be Liberation Day in America,
and during day one, I will launch the largest deportation
program in American history.

Speaker 5 (04:28):
We're going to get these criminals out.

Speaker 4 (04:32):
I will rescue every city in town that has been
invaded and conquered.

Speaker 5 (04:37):
These towns have been conquered, you know, they have been invaded.

Speaker 4 (04:39):
And can you imagine, just as though a foreign enemy
was invading, a military was invading.

Speaker 2 (04:47):
Okay, I will rescue every city in town that has
been invaded and.

Speaker 6 (04:51):
Conquered, conquered.

Speaker 2 (04:52):
Yeah, just as though an enemy, a foreign enemy was invading.

Speaker 1 (04:57):
Yeah, I mean that's I don't even know what to
say about that. It's like that's textbook fascist shit, right, Like,
I mean, among other things, ramping everyone up to justify,
you know, at least the potential for violence against migrants.
You know, it's it's self defense, right.

Speaker 2 (05:14):
Yeah. Now, I like to focus first on the Madison
Square Garden rally, certainly the Puerto Rico floating Island of garbage.
Comments from the roast comedian got a lot of media attention,
but what got less coverage was the much more historically
worrying statements made by those within Trump's circle. Let's start
with Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.

Speaker 7 (05:35):
America is for Americans and Americans only.

Speaker 2 (05:41):
So, Robert, does that phrase remind you of any other
phrases that have been used over time?

Speaker 1 (05:46):
Yeah, I mean, like one people, one vulc one Reich, Right,
I guess, yeah. I mean again, like I don't even
know what to say at this point, right, Like we're
it's so obvious. When I started in the warning people
about fascism game, you had to like explain a lot
of history and then sort of like walk in. Here's
how you know this is a sign post. I mean,

(06:08):
when someone doesn't eighty eight this is what it means
or whatever, and we're so far past that, like.

Speaker 2 (06:13):
Well, and and specifically this one invokes the Germany is
for the Germans, which is ya a phrase that is
banned in Germany now due to its use during the
Nazi era.

Speaker 6 (06:22):
That gives us something to look forward to now.

Speaker 2 (06:25):
In a rant advocating for election denial in the case
of Trump losing the election, Tucker Carlson referred to Kamala
Harris as a Samoan Malaysian low IQ. This is just
kind of baffling old school racism. Yeah, I honestly didn't
expect this type of thing to have such a resurgence

(06:46):
the past year.

Speaker 1 (06:47):
More esoteric than I expected.

Speaker 2 (06:49):
Yeah, it's frankly odd.

Speaker 8 (06:51):
Now.

Speaker 2 (06:52):
Tucker also spoke about how the elites are trying to
replace the population and the culture and customs of this country,
just clearly invoking the white nationalists a great replacement ideology
that he kind of previously spread on his Fox show in.

Speaker 9 (07:08):
A country that's been taken over by a leadership class
that actually despises them and their values and their history
and their culture and their customs, really hates them to
the point that it's trying to replace them.

Speaker 2 (07:20):
Very very clear stuff. And Don Junior invoked very similar rhetoric,
saying that the government no longer puts Americans first and
that the Democratic Party would rather quote replace Americans with
people who will be reliable voters on glob Well, and again,
this is types of stuff that we talked about in
like twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen. It's like Laurens Southern YouTube videos.

Speaker 1 (07:43):
And like if there's one thing that dims are bad at,
it's getting reliable voters.

Speaker 5 (07:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:49):
Yes, Like this is the type of stuff that was
so that was much more niche. And then you had
a few like four Chan guys start like doing a
writing on Tucker's show, and now it's being used at
disappoint the president's rallies.

Speaker 5 (08:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (08:04):
Now, when Trump finally took the stage he mirrored Tucker's
Kamala Harris IQ comments, saying everyone knows she's a very
low IQ individual. Like usual, he called the press the
enemy of the people. Uh huh, But he went on
to describe the true enemy mastermining the fall of America
the quote radical left machine that has taken control of

(08:26):
the Democratic Party.

Speaker 4 (08:27):
It's just this amorphous group of people.

Speaker 3 (08:31):
But they're smart, and they're vicious, and we.

Speaker 4 (08:34):
Have to defeat them. And when I say the enemy
from within, the other side goes crazy, becomes a sound maho.

Speaker 5 (08:42):
How can he say, no.

Speaker 4 (08:44):
They've done very bad things to this country. They are
indeed the enemy from within.

Speaker 2 (08:48):
And I do find it interesting the way he describes
them as like a morphous Yeah, it's not like a
distinct sect. It's not like a fups of people. It's
this like a MorphOS almost like like a like like
ethereal force that can like inhabit people.

Speaker 1 (09:03):
You need that because, that, among other things, allows you
to refocus the lens on anyone. Yeah, right, Like you
need the opportunity to keep shifting because eventually, if you're
just actually focusing on a real discrete group of human beings,
you get rid of those people. You throw them in
prison or whatever, and then you don't have an enemy anymore,

(09:24):
and you always need that.

Speaker 2 (09:26):
And do you know what we need right.

Speaker 6 (09:27):
Now, Robert Products and Services.

Speaker 2 (09:30):
Yeah, we do need to go on a quick break,
and then I'm going to come back to talk about Dluth, Georgia.
So not good, great, all right, we are back. I'm
gonna now turn to a turning point action event on

(09:54):
October twenty third in Dluth, Georgia, which I actually just
visited for the first time. I went ice skating in Deluth, Georgia,
and to kind of get a sense of what this town.
It's not even really a suburb of Atlanta, it's it's
so far north as I was, isis skating there.

Speaker 3 (10:08):
I'm pretty sure.

Speaker 2 (10:09):
Like a Christian cult showed up and they had all
their members also ice skated, because they were all wearing
like the same outfits they hold, like very specific like headscarves.
A few a few of like the more like youth
pastory types, had like you know, like christ As King
type puddies. But it definitely wasn't like a regular church.
It was. It was more of some kind of like
evangelical like cultish formation based on like the uniform clothing.

(10:32):
So that's Deluth, Georgia.

Speaker 6 (10:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (10:36):
Now, Charlie Kirk gave a fifteen minute speech which he
closed with a spiritual appeal, saying, quote, you have a
biblical obligation to engage in this election and to fight evil.
The Democratic Party supports everything God hates unquote. Kirk then
called this election a quote unquote spiritual battle and in

(11:00):
and finally he said, quote, this is a Christian state.
I want to see that continue. So none of this
is like New Right. This is kind of at this
point bog standard Christian nationalism. But this is a rally
of about ten thousand people. It's not an official Trump rally.
It is a turning point action rally that Trump did
speak at. But I like to hone in once again

(11:21):
on Tucker Carlson's comments. Now, he called this the first
speech he's ever given at a political rally. Now, both
me and you saw Tucker speak at the RNC. I
guess he kind of views the R and C is
a little bit different from like a standard like kind
of more like a campaign rally type event. But Tucker
called Trump a triumph of the human spirit, Christ, a

(11:43):
triumph of the will. You could say, yeah, yes, like,
what's another word for the human spirit?

Speaker 6 (11:50):
Uh huh.

Speaker 2 (11:51):
But now I'm gonna play Actually, this is the lunge
cliff we have just because it's so fascinating and I
have a lot that kind of written on this already.
I'm just gonna play this clip.

Speaker 9 (12:00):
There has to be a point at which Dad comes home.

Speaker 3 (12:10):
Yeah, that's right. Dad comes home and he's pissed.

Speaker 2 (12:21):
Dad is pissed.

Speaker 3 (12:24):
He's not vengeful.

Speaker 9 (12:26):
He loves his children, disobedient as they may be, he loves.

Speaker 3 (12:31):
Them because there's children. They live in his house.

Speaker 9 (12:35):
But he's very disappointed in their behavior and he's gonna
have to let them know. He's gonna have to get
to your room right now and think about what you did.
And when Dad gets home, you know what he says.
You've been a bad girl. You've been a bad little girl,
and you're getting a vigorous spanking right now. And no,

(12:58):
it's not gonna hurt me more than it hurts you.

Speaker 3 (13:00):
No, it's not. I'm not gonna lie.

Speaker 9 (13:02):
That's gonna hurt you a lot more than it hurts me.

Speaker 3 (13:05):
And you earned this.

Speaker 9 (13:07):
You're getting a vigorous spanking because you've been a bad girl.

Speaker 1 (13:12):
Well, that's just real sick and deranged. I mean you
can tell he really gets off on spanking little girls.

Speaker 2 (13:23):
I mean, like beyond like Tucker is like shown depravity here.
I also just find like the willingness of the audience
just to eat this stuff up and like really enjoy
it to like similarly be like both like fascinating and
like a show of like a certain level of a depravement.

Speaker 1 (13:42):
Well, it's this, it's leaning into what has always been
the core of like the most militant conservatism, which is
the like strict Christian conservative parents rights people sure be
like my children are my property, and also the right
way to parents is like a dictator.

Speaker 2 (14:02):
I mean this is like the most like openly Freudian
display of American fascism that I've ever seen before.

Speaker 6 (14:08):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, It's amazing, this.

Speaker 2 (14:11):
Idea of like a harsh father whose love is replaced
with fearful authority. It's really important that like America is
framed as a bad girl. There's this like feminizing of
the masses. Right, America is not like a bad little boy.
A bad girl is like really important. Carlson's almost invoking
like an incestuous like domination. Yeah, it's it's quite sick.

(14:31):
And like I had to actually like like look up
stuff on this because I'm like, I know Freud and
a few others have like written about this type of
thing before, and specifically Adorno has written about this in
an essay called Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist
Propaganda that I'd like to read just a few brief
quotes from.

Speaker 1 (14:46):
Oh I love some Adorno, Yes, please.

Speaker 2 (14:48):
Quote There is either no mention of love whatsoever between members,
or it's expressed only in a sublimated and indirect way
through the mediation of some religious image. In the love
of whom the members unite and who's all embracing love
they are supposed to imitate in their attitude towards each other.
It seems significant that in today's society, with its artificially

(15:08):
integrated fascist masses, reference to love is almost completely excluded.
Hitler shunned the traditional role of the loving father and
replaced it entirely by the negative one of threatening authority unquote.
I'm going to pivot to Freud here, specifically his essay
on group behavior and how individuals regressed become part of masses.

(15:30):
He writes about how a leader of a cult can
exploit psychological shortcuts in its followers to embody this like
group ideal that governs their ego as a substitution quote,
the leader of the group is the dreaded primal Father.
The group still wishes to be governed by unrestricted force.

(15:50):
It has an extreme passion for authority, It has a
thirst for obedience. The primal Father is the group ideal.
This is like so displayed what Tucker is doing like
this is just exactly what it is. I mean, it
reminds me of the other quote about how people seek
out salvation in subjugation. And I'll leave just one more
quote from Adorno here quote. Fascist agitation is centered in

(16:13):
the idea of the leader, no matter whether he actually
leads or is only the mandatory of group interests. Because
only the psychological image of the leader is apt to
reanimate the idea of the all powerful and threatening primal Father.
The formation of the imagery of an omnipotent and unbridled
father figure, by far transcending the individual father and therefore

(16:35):
apt to be enlargened into a group ego, is the
only way to promulgate the passive masochistic attitude to whoms
one's will has to be surrendered, an attitude required of
the fascist follower the more his political behavior becomes irreconcilable
with his own rational interests as a private person, as
well as those of the group or class to which

(16:56):
he actually belongs. The followers reawakened irrationality is therefore quite
rational from the leader's point of view. It necessarily has
to be a conviction which is not based on perception
and reasoning, but on an erotic tie. I'm sure someone
more skilled than me could write like a whole dissertation

(17:17):
just on Tucker's speech here, because like it invokes so
many of these ideas and like without trying to this
is always like subconscious on their part, Like they're pulling
on these things like specifically, like like the passive masochistic attitude.
It's like their submission to Trump is like this deep
masochistic urge.

Speaker 1 (17:36):
There's another thing in there that I think is important,
especially because I'm hearing a lot of people talking about like, well,
once Trump pushes through his tariffs or does this or
does that, the horrible negative consequences of this will like
absolutely destroy the GOP right. That'll finally bring them down
to me let them, you know, no, And one of
the things that Dorino says there is that, like the

(17:58):
leader doesn't even need to be bro and that's an
underdiscussed aspect of psychology and fascist states. One of the
one of the phenomenons within Nazi Germany was, you know,
there were a number of Nazi policies, Hitler's policies that
had serious negative effects on people in Germany. And one
of the most common phrases that you would hear from

(18:20):
them was if only Hitler knew, right, you know, you
usually deployed when like you were dealing with a government
agency that was headed by just like an absolute criminal
that you know, Hitler had appointed that like, oh, well,
Hitler doesn't know that the Gestapo are doing this, right,
you know, he would stop this, he'd put a stop
to this if he knew, he wouldn't let this happen.

Speaker 6 (18:39):
Right, That's what That's what Trump's believers.

Speaker 1 (18:41):
I don't know if that's what the American people writ
large may never buy into Trump the way that the
Germans bought into Hitler, but Trump's supporters are certainly already there.

Speaker 2 (18:52):
And this is something that Tucker saw in the audience
when he started on this rant, he started repeating certain
phrases because it got such a good reaction from the crowd. Like,
this wasn't like planned, it was. It was him reading
the crowd and realizing, oh, they really like this. I'm
going to keep doing it, and specifically this. This is
also how he closed his speech. And I don't believe

(19:13):
this was this was planned. I believe this is because
of the reaction that the crowd had previously. I'm going
to play the very end of his speech where he
basically endorses like a coup. If Harris actually wins.

Speaker 9 (19:23):
If they do all of that, they need to lose.
And at the end of all of it, when they
tell you they've won, no, you can look them straight
in the face and say, I'm sorry.

Speaker 3 (19:34):
Dad's home and he's pissed.

Speaker 6 (19:37):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (19:42):
They love it.

Speaker 1 (19:43):
Yeah, of course, of course, all they have ever wanted
is to be forced to be right, you know, and
to the extent that reality disagrees with their beliefs, which
it usually does, to be able to beat reality into place,
and at least continue to trick themselves until they die, right, Like,

(20:05):
that's all the fascists, I know, you know, the older people,
many of whom raised me. That's what it really was
about for them was never having to acknowledge the mistakes
that they had made, the things that they had supported
that didn't work out. Like it was a rage at
the people who insisted on pointing out, Hey, you said
this was going to happen, and the opposite happened. So

(20:27):
that promise of like even if they win, Dad's going
to come home and beat them into submission is deeply attractive.

Speaker 2 (20:37):
I mean, and even if it hurts your own like
self interests, your only class interests, right, And it's like
replacing all of the anguish you have as like an
individual person and like replacing your own ego with the
embodiment of this group ideal that is just someone else.
Like this is why so many people have like dedicated
their lives to Trump. Like you look at all these
like like boomers and even some like gen X people

(21:00):
at these Trump rallies who like Trump has like become
like their personality. He's fully occupied their life. And yeah,
like that's that's similar into the way that like occult
leader has like how Freud wrote about it. Freud wrote
all that stuff like in the nineteen twenties before before,
like Hitler really rose to power, but he could like
sense what was like coming in Germany. He could he

(21:21):
could feel it. Yeah, And what I'm gonna feel right
now is the products and services that support this podcast.

Speaker 6 (21:26):
Huzzah, all right.

Speaker 3 (21:38):
We are back.

Speaker 2 (21:40):
I like to close by talking about Aurora, Colorado.

Speaker 5 (21:44):
Now.

Speaker 2 (21:44):
A tactic the Trump campaign consistently used this past year
is to hone in on particular small communities as being
taken over by immigrants who they would call like criminal migrants.
The best known example of this is what happened in Springfield, Ohio,
but this also happened in the Denver suburb Aurora, Colorado,
after a video went viral showing men walking through an

(22:07):
apartment complex holding firearms. A false claim then spread that
a Venezuelan gang was forcibly taking over entire buildings in
this city. At a Trump rally in Aurora on October eleventh,
massive banners on both sides of the stage read Deport
illegals now and end Migrant crime. On either side of

(22:29):
the podium, there were large mugshots of Latino men with
text that reads occupied America. Steven Miller, now Chief Advisor
for Immigration Policy, takes the stage and says that the
patriots gathered at this event can quote end the invasion
and end the occupation by voting for Trump.

Speaker 7 (22:52):
Look at all these photos around me. Are these the
kids you grew up with? Are these the neighbors you
were raised with? Are these the neighbors that you want
in your city? No, these are the criminal migrants the
Kamala Harris brought into your community.

Speaker 2 (23:10):
Again, it's all it's all pretty brazen stuff.

Speaker 8 (23:13):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (23:13):
Yeah, I mean we call that brazen, but like that's
just mainstream now. Yes, Like the fight to look at
migrants as human beings and have any kind of sane justice,
you know, for undocumented migrants in this country has has
been completely botched.

Speaker 2 (23:30):
There's something about like the suburban neighborhood idea that is
more like disturbing to me, Like like pointing to actual
pictures of people being Are these the kids you grew
up with?

Speaker 6 (23:40):
Yep?

Speaker 2 (23:40):
And like the fight to like preserve this nostalgic idea
of like your childhood neighborhood, it's just so dark to
me now. Invoking great replacement framing, Miller says that Kamala
Harris was bringing these immigrants into your communities and that
they are now taking over America.

Speaker 7 (23:59):
We don't need in this country homeless migrants, criminal migrants.
We don't need migrants consuming and depleting our public resources,
overwhelming our public schools, overwhelming our hospital, taking over our
apartment buildings, and yes, murdering innocent Americans. You have a
right to love the community you grew up in. You

(24:20):
have a right to love your neighbors as they are.
You have a right to want a country that is
of by and for Americans and only Americans.

Speaker 2 (24:34):
Again with that, like, you have a right to love
the community you grew up in. And then of course
like Americans for Americans. And Miller later closed his speech
by yelling, America will be reclaimed for Americans.

Speaker 6 (24:50):
Oh gosh, yep.

Speaker 1 (24:51):
I mean, look, these people suffered no consequences for what
they did the last time, so they're going to keep
pushing further. It's done nothing but work for them. No
one has ever taught them any lesson that, like, hey,
you've gone too far and now there are going to
be negative consequences. That hasn't happened. So yeah, they're just
going to keep getting more and more masked off. This

(25:11):
is where they've wanted to be a miller, certainly from
the beginning, and.

Speaker 2 (25:16):
They've used these past four years as prep work to
build them to this point. And of course none of
what they're saying is like real in terms of like
you know, buildings being taken over the famously pro Harris
liberal extremist group. The Aurora Police Department have continued to
clarify that no apartment buildings have been taken over by
any gangs, nor have tenants been paying gang members rent money.

(25:38):
According to the police, none of the armed men seen
in that viral video, who have all been since identified
or arrested, none of them have any ties to Venezuelan
gangs or organized crime. What happened was slumlords spread a
false story about their apartment complex being taken over by
a gang as a way to get out of doing
repairs on the property, saying it was too dangerous to

(26:00):
to the premises.

Speaker 6 (26:00):
Jesus.

Speaker 2 (26:01):
It was all like a fucking scam by slum lords
so that they wouldn't have to fix their own apartment building.
Denver seven found code enforcement and inspection records dating back
to twenty twenty that show numerous violations prior to the
influx of Venezuelan immigrants in the Denver metro area. The
complex is now under new care, but a similar false
tale of an apartment building in Chicago being taken over

(26:23):
by immigrant gangs went viral in September due to the
efforts of libs of TikTok and Elon Musk, with libs
of TikTok saying, quote, first they did this in Aurora, Colorado,
and now Chicago, which city will be next? This invasion
happened on Kamala's watch unquote. The last thing I will
mention here is all of the blood comments that Trump

(26:45):
has been making the past year. In intervery last year,
Trump said that immigrants are poisoning the blood of our country.
It's so bad, and people are coming in with disease,
people are coming in with every possible thing that you
could have unquote. This clearly invoked like blood framing used
by Hitler and Nazis, and like eugenics in general, and

(27:06):
this is rhetoric that he's continuing to use for the present.
In an interview last month, Trump so that immigrants are
naturally murderers because quote it's in their genes. We've got
a lot of bad genes in our country right now.

Speaker 1 (27:20):
I mean a lot of what this comes down to
is that after World War Two, we really needed to
execute a lot more people, you know, like you could
have quashed the eugenics movement. We needed to go after
a lot of people in the US. There were a
lot of American fascists involved in eugenics, and after Treblinka
and Auschwitz, we really just should have cleaned house, and

(27:42):
instead we let all of these people get into think tanks.

Speaker 2 (27:46):
I'm going to close with a quote from The Atlantic
here quote. When Trump was swaying to music at a
surreal rally, he did so in front of a huge slogan,
Trump was right about everything. This is the language borrow
directly from Mussolini, the Italian fascist. Soon after the rally,
the scholar Ruth ben Gate posted a photograph of a
building in Mussolini's Italy displaying the slogan Mussolini is always right.

Speaker 6 (28:11):
Uh huh.

Speaker 2 (28:12):
And that reminded me of what you said earlier about
how these people just always wanted to be right.

Speaker 6 (28:18):
Yeah, yeah, that's that's the that's the core of it.

Speaker 2 (28:21):
And similarly, like people can surrender their own individual ego
and substitute it with this image of Trump right, Trump
was right about everything.

Speaker 8 (28:28):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (28:29):
Anyway, this is this is kind of what I wanted
to put together, just focusing on on all of these things,
because I mean, as much as you know, foreign policy
in America is always kind of fucked. Domestic policy, I think,
does often get changed based on who is in office,
and this is what we're going to be dealing with
these four years, especially with Miller taking a larger and
larger role inside the White House.

Speaker 1 (28:50):
We sure are, So everybody buckle up.

Speaker 5 (29:11):
Hello and welcome to AKAP and Here I am Andrew Sage.
I run andrewsm Ova on YouTube. I'm joined by the
one and.

Speaker 3 (29:19):
Only Garrison Davis. Hello.

Speaker 5 (29:22):
Hello, Hello, you don't sound p secuarly festive.

Speaker 2 (29:25):
You know, it's a it's been a long week. This
is the last workday of election week when we're recording this.
I just returned from my cabin in the woods, which
I which I got to kind of watch the election unfold.
So now I am back in the real world, not
just hiding up in the mountains of Georgia. So it
feels slightly worse, but we we carry on.

Speaker 5 (29:49):
As you mentioned a cabin in the woods, it actually
reminds me of this movie that came out to Netflix
a little while ago. If you've seen it, Leave the World.

Speaker 3 (29:58):
Behind, Yes, I I've seen that.

Speaker 5 (30:01):
Yes, it's it's pretty after You're in a cabin and
all this was going on.

Speaker 2 (30:05):
Yes, Yes, we actually talked about that movie earlier on
this on this show and some conspiracy theories around it.

Speaker 5 (30:13):
Yeah, oh, the Obama connection.

Speaker 1 (30:16):
That's right, that's right.

Speaker 2 (30:17):
You understand, you're already receiving the messages.

Speaker 3 (30:20):
You already know.

Speaker 5 (30:22):
Exactly. But we're not focused on.

Speaker 2 (30:25):
The US for this episode, thank goodness.

Speaker 5 (30:29):
Instead, we're going to be going back into the past
and the present as well, because the struggle really doesn't end,
and taking a look at the struggle of the Mapuche
in Chile and Argentina. I'd actually mentioned them in my
exploration of Latin American anarchisms that you know, they would
need their own episode. So here we are taking a

(30:51):
look at everything that they've been up to. And it's
really thanks to the work of Fello anarchists m good
Hawk and John Sevreno and there that I've been able
to put together this illucidation of indigenous anarchist history. So
the lands that now bear the titles of Chile and

(31:11):
Argentina have long held the Mapuche people long before borders
were drawn, long before the world learned to cage the wild.
The land itself is considered while mapoo, and it's deeply
entwined with the identity of the Mapuche people. While poo
is of course not just a geographical term, is also

(31:33):
a spiritual one. It's a tapestry of their histories and
their dreams, and also their view of the world through
a lens of reciprocity, because the Uche do acknowledge their
kinship with the land, the rivers, the mountains, and that
worldview that they hold and have traditionally held. Rather champions
balance and harmony and respect for all forms of life,

(31:56):
which is what has been fuel in their ongoing against occupation.
So in a sense, the Mapuche struggle echoes an anarchist
ethos of autonomy and mutual aid. But I wouldn't cau
as far as to call them anarchists, you know, I mean,
they have a very specific cultural and historical and spiritual
context that is distinct from anarchists. Thought. Despite these similarities

(32:19):
and overlaps in there so s, they will be exploring
the history, people, and struggles of all Mapou that have
shaped the Mapuche experience now. Ancient archaeological finds from tools
to pottery have suggested that the Mapuche may have settled
in present day southern Chile and Argentina as far back
twenty five hundred to three thousand years ago. Genetic and

(32:40):
linguistic research connects the Mapuche lineage to other indigenous groups
across the Andes, meaning that their ancestors may have migrated
down the western spin of South America in waves, adapt
into the rainforests, coastlines, and valleys of what's now one Mapu.
Historically and currently, the Mapuch spoken Mapudungun, and the language

(33:03):
itself carries aspects of their cultural identity, others to be expected.
Mapudungun is a polysynthetic language, meaning its words can be
formed by combining smaller parts to reflect complex ideas. Mapuche
itself combines Mapu meaning land and Chay meaning people. Sapuch
lived on the border of the Incan Empire, meaning that

(33:25):
they were in contact with centralized state organizations and hierarchical societies.
I would have chosen to differentiate themselves and the societies
from these status peoples, So how do they do so exactly?
The Puschi way of life would have revolved around, as
I said, a deep respective for kinship, communal responsibility, and
spiritual stewardship of the land. The society itself was based

(33:47):
around the loaf or family based communal unit, each love
holding shared responsibility over a specific territory, ensuring the one's
personal wealth doesn't override the interest and well being of
the environment in the community. The love wasn't just limited
to the people of that family based community unit, it
also incorporated the ecosystem. That unit, incombust and occupied nature

(34:14):
was in a sense part of the family. Rivers, mountains, forests,
and other animals were treated as living relatives with the
spirit and agency that desiled respect. In the Mapuche world view,
all beings and elements possess nuen, the life force, and
so they have to be respected. And that police system

(34:34):
also leads the mapootated practice a sustainable use of resources
and intergenerational land care. And it also compels there as
I said, resistance to colonial resource extraction, deforestation, and industrial expansion.
In Mapuchev's spirituality, Juanumapu or The land of the ancestors
refers to the spiritual realm connected to the physical world.

(34:57):
They've traditionally believed that the spirits of past generations inhabit
this realm, offering guidance and protection the matches or spiritual leaders,
so as the bridges between these worlds. So they're supposed
to do things that conduct ceremonies, heal the sick, and
connect with the ancestral spirits. They've stilled as the custodians

(35:18):
in a sense of spiritual knowledge and medicine, and that
makes them an essential component in each love. The socio
political structure of the Mapuche has been a confederation of
love groups known as the Alaraway system, where the different
loves would come together to make communal decisions and joint actions,
particularly in times of conflict or threat. Each love will

(35:39):
be represented in these confederations by alonco, who would be
bringing their communities voice and perspective to regional councils without
necessarily exercise and centralized authority. The decisions these councils are
based on consensus traditionally and cooperation compromise, honoring the collective

(35:59):
will as much as possible, rather than imposing will from above,
and contrary to popular belief, this lack of centralization has
actually made them more resilient, not more fragile. Rather than
beckering and fighting and split in and splintering constantly than
Pouch have historically united and together resisted multiple attempts at subjugation.

(36:21):
So they centralized alliances have empowered them to respond flexibly
and quickly to the ever changing landscape of the threats
that they're facing, and this resistance can use to this day.
But let me not skip ahead. The Spanish fullst made
their way to Mapouche territory in the mid fifteen hundreds,
initially confident that they could conquer the area with the
same ease they had subdued the InCor Empire to the north.

(36:44):
But the Mapuche were not easily intimidated. Early encounters quickly
to into conflict, and the Spanish found themselves up against
a serious resistance movement. From the start, the Spanish had
underestimated the Impucha's ability to adapt when the conquistadors introduced
horses and new weaponry. Thelpuch observed and learned quickly, incorporating

(37:07):
captured horses and arms into their own defense strategies. Rather
than a simple series of skirmishes, This struggle would become
a prolonged confrontation, one of the longest and most determined
resistances to colonization throughout the Americas. This was Lagira Tirauco
or the Arako War, known for over one hundred years

(37:27):
of protracted, brutal conflicts maintained by guerrilla warfare, and there
would be no definitive battle or grand conclusion to this war.
Thelpuch recognized that they were facing vast resources. They knew
they had to find ways to level that playing field,
and so, using their familiarity with the forests, rivers and

(37:50):
mountains of Albapo, they ambushed, evaded, and outflanked Spanish troops,
cut off supply lines, and employed tactics that frustrated and
exhausted their laws and equipped opponents. The Lapuche were fighting
on two fronts, defending their territories from physical invasion and
preserving their cultural practices from Spanish influence. Those Mupuch are

(38:12):
traditionally egalitarian. They did elect toki or war years during
times of conflict. These figures were limited to their role
in coordinating forces during these conflicts and had no other
political power to yield above others. One of the more
notable of these toki was a man named Lautaro. He
was a young Mapuche who had been captured by the

(38:33):
Spanish as a teenager and had worked for some time
as a stable boy for chief conquistado and governor of Gilet,
Pedro de Valgivia. While working as a stable boy, Lautaro
managed to secretly observe many of the tactics the Spanish employed.
He gained intimate knowledge of what made them tick in
a sense, and eventually escaped captivity and brought this knowledge

(38:55):
back to his people, transforming a Puchi resistance by effectively
using captured horses and new formations to confront the Spanish
on ivan ground. Lautaux was a brilliant military strategist and
by all accounts, a charismatic young man that inspired his
people through several major victories, including defeating a large Spanish
force at the Battle of Tucapel in fifteen fifty three,

(39:18):
which is a confrontation that killed his former master and
a good bit of Spanish morale. Unfortunately, the outbreak of
a typhus plague, a drought, and a famine slowed the
Mapuchier advance to expel the Spanish as they had to
spend some time recovering, but Lautero did try to push
a band of Apoucha as far north as Santiago, Chile
to liberate the country from Spanish rule. Unfortunately, before he

(39:41):
could even turn thirty, he was killed in an ambush,
and well his spirit continues to live on as a
symbol of Ampuche resilience. As the war evolved, they had
cycles of conflict interspersed with uneasy pieces Spanish settlements. The
Mapuche frontier became isolated, vulnerable outpost subject to sudden raids,
so in an attempt to hold the territory, the Spanish

(40:04):
had to divert large amount of their resources to maintain
a military presence, which was a very costly strategy that
didn't end up being sustainable long term. So finally, after
decades of failed attempts to subdue the Mapucha by force,
the Spanish had to adopt a different approach. Resulted in
a series of peace treaties which will be unheard of

(40:24):
in the rest of Clonal Latin America. Among these was
the Parliament of Killin in sixteen forty one, which established
a formal boundary between Spanish controlled Chile and the autonomous
Mapuche territories, granted the mapucha I legal recognition as an
independent people with territorial rights. This is ritually unheard of

(40:46):
across the rest of the Americas, and that's to tell
you how powerful their resistance was at the time. The
Spanish crown recognized Mapuche control over lands south of the
Bbio River and agreed to regular negotiations. And although this
agreement was tenuous and at times violated, it did also
mark an era of semi autonomy for the Mapuche, allowing

(41:07):
them to maintain their land, language and traditions in the
face of surrounding clunal expansion. The fact that they could
even secure legal recognition of their autonomy from a state
power as stubborn as a Spanish in a time like
the seventeenth century, it's just remarkable. But unfortunately, as you
could probably predict that recognition of the autonomy would not last.

(41:39):
In the eighteen hundreds, Chile and Argentina emerged as independent
republics following Spanish clunial rule, each driven by an appetite
for territorial expansion and a nationalist vision. The excluded indigenous
autonomy with new ambitions to civilize and consolidate the nations.
Chilean and Argentine leaders saw them Mapouche held lands as

(42:00):
resources to be exploited. Both governments are justified their encroachment
on Morepouche land under the guise of national progress. To them,
these indigenous lands were free real estate to be conquered
and improved, not sovereign regions held by an indigenous population.
They saw way of life as a barrier as the
economic development to your place with European style land holdings

(42:23):
set the colonies and extractive industries under new management. They
would not respect the sixteen forty one Parliament kill in
as far as they were concerned. They didn't sign that agreement,
and they would never sign an agreement with savages.

Speaker 2 (42:39):
I mean, yeah, we also saw that sort of thing
throughout the Americas, where you would have these like alleged
trities that then either under future rule or even sometimes
under the exact same rule, would later just be completely disregarded.

Speaker 5 (42:51):
Yeah, you didn't sign it with me, you know.

Speaker 2 (42:54):
It's like a common colonial tactic to buy time.

Speaker 5 (42:57):
As well exactly established and sure buery resources for a
later attack. Yeah, and I could just say, well, I
didn't sign that, you know, somebody else signed it, so
I don't have to be behold onto it pretty much,
and so Chileo launched their campaign to annexed Mapuche land,
known as the Pacification of Aracanya, initiated in the eighteen sixties.

(43:20):
Some have argued that this attempted annexation was triggered by
the events surrounding the wreck of Hooven Danielle at the
coast of Hrakania in eighteen forty nine, where erecked Chilean
navy vessel was allegedly looted and its survivors allegedly attacked
on Apoucha territory by members of Apouche society, despite the
Mapuche arguing there had been no survivors, and despite them

(43:43):
handing over some of the accused of lutin to be
tried by Chilean authorities, even retilling in so of what
was allegedly looted. The perception of the incident as a
brutal loot and rape by the Mapuche fueled anti Mapouche
sentiment within Chilean society. Although President Manualnais of Chile dismissed
the opposition's calls for a punitive expedition at the time.

(44:04):
The conquest would eventually come to pass, begetting in eighteen
sixty one. If you dig into this story, by the way,
you come to find out that a lot of the
Loutenant and Mapouche were accused of was actually members of
Chilean society and bazilin the resources from the wreck and
then play into office if the Mapuche were wholly responsible

(44:26):
for the loss of the resources. Some of the same
people who are accusing the Wapouchier looters of stealing all
the all the loot from the ship, many of them
had received some of that loot from the Mahuche themselves.
Thempuche were trying to return the loot and they decided
to keep it for themselves instead of you know, retaining
it's the Chilean government. So it's like the whole trial

(44:47):
was bunked. There was a whole bunch of corruption and
it was a real master And although the president did
you know, dismiss the attempts to attack at the time,
like I said, it would come to pass. The campaign
was justified as every government does by necessity. You know,
the reality however, was a brutal invasion ended up Upuch communities,

(45:07):
displacing thousands, absorbing their lands into the Chilean state.

Speaker 2 (45:12):
This whole strategy also just reflects this just general dehumanization.
I mean, even the stuff with like the treaties and
just like the going back on the treaties, denial of
the legitimacy of treaties, that tactic would not be used
the same way against like other colonial nations. And then
every subsequent development and every subsequent incursion onto land, all

(45:33):
all of it is just based on this like underlying
level of dehumanization that just sees land as resources and
the people there as like acceptable casualties or just fierce
obstacles to overcome in conquest of those lands.

Speaker 5 (45:46):
Exactly, and obstacles they were because Chile knew where they
wanted to reach in terms of what they saw as
their right full borders and were literally a wedge an
obstacle between them and region where they wanted to reach.
At the tip of South America. It was almost like
a race between Argentina and child had to see who

(46:08):
could reach the edge and claim it first, and THEUCH
will something that was keeping them from doing that, and Additionally,
Tapouch would not have been granted the same legitimacy of
a claim as Argentina. You know, Chile and Argentina would
eventually comes in agreement about where their border would lie,

(46:29):
and their respected that agreement. Same couldn't be said for
them Puch. And of course there were a lot of
border disagreements of course in South America following the you know,
evacuation of the Spanish, but of course those are treated
on equal foot in the natives are different matter. So

(46:50):
Chilean forces would corner advance into Aracania forcibly, removed thousands
of families from the ancestral territories and subject those that
remade into the authority to the Chilean government. The traditional
cumin land holdings have remained were fragmented and redistributed, often
to Chilean settlers and the government's imposed European style laws,

(47:11):
education and religion to attempt to assimilate the Mapuche and
suppress the identity. Military outposts and settlements also established in
the newly annexed land, fastily facing the region under martial
law and making it difficult from Pucci communities to resist
openly replace the words Chilean government with Israeli government, and
Mapuche with Palestinian And that's just to tell you how

(47:34):
antiquated the current tactics of colonization are. Very little has changed.

Speaker 2 (47:42):
No, That's exactly what I've been thinking about.

Speaker 5 (47:45):
Yeah, I mean, a lot of the former major coal
powers have found more subtle means of continuing their exploitation
and subjugation of people around the world. So it's very
rare to see something so open and flagrant. You know,
It's something that you expect to see in historical accounts
such as this of landhole ends being chopped up and

(48:09):
give unto settlers, and laws and education and being imposed
and to a native population to suppress and to assimilate
the I dentity. You know, military outpost being established on
New Leanix Land, Marcia law being established for the native inhabitants,
all those things. Hear about it, and pushing of the

(48:29):
American frontier, and you hear about it and throughout South
America and Africa's cooling history. You don't really tend to
think about that here and now it's happening in four.

Speaker 2 (48:40):
K No, Like, that's exactly what I was thinking about
as you've been going through all this like how it
just sounds exactly the same as what Israel is currently doing.
And I think why people latch on to like Israel
specifically so much is because of how like out of
time their tactics of colonial expansion and feel and like

(49:00):
similarly like it. It's just built on this base level
of dehumanization exactly that a whole bunch of other like
imperial powers kind of try to like hide or like
mask a little bit, and with Israels just so mask off.

Speaker 5 (49:13):
So I think about all that time they were like
a century late pretty much. Yeah, if they had starts
in this process like a sentry Elia, they would have
actually probably have gotten away with it.

Speaker 2 (49:23):
Unfortunately, well and they still might get away with it
now to some degree. And that's like that is true.
That's that's kind of the super that's the super frightening
thought is that even though it is this outdated like style,
what if it like still works and if and if
it's proven to still work in Palestine, where like where
else can this be used? Like will we just see

(49:43):
more countries feel like they can get away with it
because Israel did? And like that's kind of part of
looking into the next four years and looking into just
just how how the world is going in this general
kind of far right power grab happening all like all
over the globe. Will more and more countries be kind
of willing to utilize these types of colonial tactics.

Speaker 3 (50:04):
And it's scary and bad.

Speaker 5 (50:06):
Yeah, I mean when you think about how the severity
of the clomb situation it's just going to worsen, and
you think about the pressures at places on the most
exploitive regions of the globe, how that might pressure, you know, migration,
and how that might pressure sort of efforts to resist

(50:27):
the sort of tightening of the hold of expectation up
until the call that was reading this book called one
of People's History of Fashion, just thinking about the whole
textile trade as a whole and how it impacts different
parts of the globe and whatever, and just talking about
this now, I'm just thinking like, if workers in those

(50:47):
countries were to stand up, well, in all this time,
you know, some of the most deadly struggles or taking
place in these regions, in these saturns, but if they
were to stand up and resist, now, I mean it, mind,
you've got even more open and then blatant with the
suppression of those people and those voices, and as they
attempt to try and make their way out of those

(51:09):
those hot spots, those hot regions of instability and violence
and climate catastrophe. You know, we have all this migrant
rhetoric to yes, make the struggle even worse.

Speaker 2 (51:21):
That's like the fucoas boomerang idea of all of these
colonial tactics also can eventually turned inward. And right now
you see the same level of dehumanization being levied against
like millions of immigrants who are here both legally as
refugees and are also here undocumented. But it's the same
like rhetorical tactics that make people okay with this is
that level of dehumanization. And you also see that, of

(51:43):
course levied against like trans people. You still see that
livid against indigenous people, and it's just like a growing
list of people that are no longer seen as like
real humans.

Speaker 5 (51:54):
Yeah, for some reason you're saying that, my mind fixates
it on the fact that you said undocumented, and it's
reminded me of the absurdity of all of this. The
difference is literally some pieces of people. The difference is
literally a rule of the dice spawn point from one
side of the water or another. I have we allow
this to like totally dominate our lives.

Speaker 2 (52:21):
Yeah, it's like a it's like a deep spiritual evil.
So many people don't even like realize the absurdity of it,
and how just like it takes away so much of
like thought and empathy and people people just don't even know,
Like they don't even like process that that's what they've
done to themselves by like constructing this system that they
believe is like divine or like enshrined by God.

Speaker 5 (52:45):
The right to exist defense.

Speaker 2 (52:47):
Yeah, like it's it is. So much of it is
a dice roll. So much of it is situations beyond
anyone's conscious control.

Speaker 5 (52:55):
Yeah, And to sort of pull us back on to
the track, you can also see the mirrors between the
current past Indian struggle and theon Gordmapuch struggle and even
going back to this time that I have even discussing
the Puchi struggle of the past, because despite all of

(53:16):
this conal expansion, the Upuci resisted not only militarily but culturally.
They held on to their language, they held on to
their customs, they held onto their spiritual practices, they held
on to their identity in defiance of assimilations policies and
across the Andes. Meanwhile, Argentina was pursuing a similarly aggressive
campaign just known as the Conquest of the Desert. This
was led by General Julio Argentino Rocca in the eighteen

(53:40):
seventies and eighteen eighties, and this really sort of eradicate
and displace all the indigenous groups through in the area,
including the Mapuch who had lived on the fertile Pampas
and Patagonian regions, to secure valuable land for wait for it,
cattle ranchin agriculture and European settler expansion cattaranchian as in

(54:02):
you know, the whole meat trade.

Speaker 2 (54:06):
The cows are more important than the people.

Speaker 5 (54:08):
Exactly, and the demand for the cows is more important
than people. They see this violence of agricultural and expansion
other places as well, as I said, I was reading
one and one of the things she notes is that
part of what pushed the American westward expansion was that
they were growing cotton, and cotton is extremely intensive and

(54:30):
historically cotton was grown in a polyculture, was grown with
other plants. Right with these cotton monocultures, it really quickly
strips the soil of its nutrients, and so they were
pushing westward because they kept on having to find new
land to grow the cotton on. And of course who
was working that cotton and who was working with plantations,
just explotation all the way down and all that just

(54:52):
to feed this rapacious appetite of expansion. You know, we
had thousands of years of sustainable growth and sustainable cyclical
economy use, but things that that would last, and just
in these last few centuries we've just completely lost that
because above all the line has to go up well.

Speaker 2 (55:13):
And like also part of that quest for agricultural domination.
In order to make that possible, there's the invention of
the international slave trade, which is similarly built on this
level of just base decumanization and the desire for agricultural
production being way more important than the humanity of like
everybody involved in that process, yep.

Speaker 5 (55:34):
And then it's also tied to the petrochemical trade because
to maintaining these soils in this unnatural form, you have
to basically pump the land with these artificial fertilizers, which
are typically derived from Patrick Ammick goals, and.

Speaker 2 (55:52):
Like that, that process of the soil basically becoming dead
like started even as early as like the late eighteen hundreds.
Like this, this is just like a modern problem in
like the wet past, like fifty hundred years all of
that land was like overused and starting to get destroyed
almost like two hundred years ago, but specifically like the
late eighteen hundreds.

Speaker 5 (56:12):
Yeah, and this is what we're looking at here, and
this this particular historical narrative we're just watching. The fall
of wild Mapo, of course, was looking at at a
more grandize sence, the fall of the remaining communities that
actually were maintaining that connection land there being in this
process subjugated so that there is no resistance and no

(56:35):
present to alternative to the extractive model that was at
least part of the goal of this expansion. As we
see in Argentina, the few Mapuche who survived this massacre
because they employed all sorts of tactics rangers from scorch
student policies to force relocations to like outright just you know,

(56:59):
the few that survived for relocated to reservations, tripped to
their land and reduced to laborers within this modern or
rapidly modernized in Argentina and General Rocker's campaign was celebrated
by the Argentine elite as a triumph of civilization over barbarism.
Where have I heard that before? So in both Chile's

(57:21):
passification of Aracanya and Argentina's conquest of the desert. He
had this large scale dispossession of Apucca land. And while
Mapoo now being fully split by the border of Argentina
and Chile, the vast majority of Puce now live in Chile.
There are only a few times one thousands left in
Argentina to this day. Initially, Mapucha leaders and communities launched

(57:52):
uprisings and gorilla attacks against the Chilean and Argentine military forces,
fighting to defend their territories, but as military suppression tensified,
resistance also had to adapt When Puchia communities had to
adopt more fluid forms of opposition, intaining cultural practices, stories,
and languages as an active resistance. Some of Pucci leaders
petitioned for land rights and autonomy through legal channels, seeking

(58:16):
to challenge dispossession through the courts. Others continue to resist
through armed confrontation, often leading isolated uprisings when government forces
overstepped or attempted to cease more landed. The future resistance
that follows this period is basically rooted in the traumas
of this period, as the people were forcibly integrated into
Chilean and Argentine societies, yet never fully accepted. As we

(58:40):
move into the early twentieth century, the Pusche communities continue
to be hit hard by policies that aim to dissolve
the traditional ways of life. The Chilean and Argentine governments
squeeze Onucha onto reservations, but surrounding lands were given to
power for landowners and settlers. Land's guesty was a significant issue,
as from Puchet families often had thoughts too more to

(59:00):
sustain their traditional agricultural practices, and the dispossession led economic
hardship and wide tread poverty further marginalized them from national economies.
The assimilation attempts to frame ndition as community identity as
something to be erased in favor of European norms, pushed
out the Mapundun language and cultural ties and aimed to

(59:22):
impose Spanish as the primary language. Thankfully, today, Mapundum still
survives as the language and the Jucha people at the
time Mapuchi were also forced into the wage labor on
settler farms experience and of course very harsh conditions are
very little protection. Many of them. Mapuchi ended up migrating from
rural areas to cities as the arable land twindled, and

(59:45):
then found themselves in places like Santiago and Temuco beginning
the nineteen thirty years and Anima Puchier families ended up
working as laborers and urban centers where their these new
forms of discrimination. A lot of Mpuche women ended up
going to work as servants within the houses of the
Chilean elite, and during this period of hardship, Iarlimapoucha political

(01:00:07):
movements began to take shape. In the nineteen tens, Wabuchi
leaders organized groups like Societ Dad Kapu Likan Defense Soa
de la Arakanya, which advocated for land rights and civil
protections agent to reclaim the dispossessed land and fight against
the abuse of indigenous laborers. These early organizations marked a

(01:00:27):
significant shift in Mapuche strategy represented a movement towards formal
political approaches to resistance. The assaulstionment of political alliances that
sympathetic groups also strengthened Mpucha cause. In the nineteen twenties
nineteen thirties, indigenous organizations began working with the Chilean communists
and socialist parties, focusing on indigenous labor issues and broader

(01:00:49):
anti landlord campaigns. However, these alliances often prioritized national labor
and Akrainian reform over specific indition's rights, leaving Themapouche to
continue the fight largely on their own terms. But in
spite of this limited political power, these early efforts helped
lay the groundwork for later land rights activism. From the

(01:01:09):
mid twentieth century onward, rapid and gustrialization, extractive forestry operations
and monoculture plantations began to dominate Mapucha land, and pollution increased.
Rivers were contaminated. Forest power of diversity was replaced by
non native species like pine and eucalyptus plantations, and all
of this leads, of course, soiled depletion. The remaining Mapuchia,

(01:01:31):
agriculture and local ecosystems were naturally threatened, which fully compel
their resistance. At the same time, they were still, of course,
working to preserve their language, their cultural practices, their music,
their arts, the spiritual ceremonies. For a small moment, there
was some hope as the government of Salvador Allende, you

(01:01:51):
know this is going passed an indigenous law that recognized
their distinctive culture and history and began to restore Mapuche
Commune a lot. But I think we all remember how
that to end oubt. Bam bam, you have a who
are coop sponsored by the US, and Pinochet is in power.

(01:02:12):
In power, Pinochet calls for the division of the reserves
and the liquidation of the Indian communities. He initially sounds
like a cartoon villain of everything I've read and learned
about him, I mean, who speaks of the liquidation of
a people?

Speaker 2 (01:02:27):
Pinochet is extremely cartoon villain coded, except it was a
real person. So I also have this tendency to not
dismiss super evil people as like unhuman monsters, because I
think that actually limits our understanding of how evil humans
can be. Sure, and this isn't even just a pure principle,
like I don't like dehumanization in general, it's that I

(01:02:49):
think it actually makes these people harder to beat if
you view them as like some monstrous force instead of
something that's actually deeply human and Yeah, he is a
cartoon villain. He's also like a person, and like that's
actually kind of more scary than just viewing him as
some monster.

Speaker 6 (01:03:04):
Very true, And I don't know, it's a.

Speaker 2 (01:03:06):
Frame of thought I've come back on specifically and like
thinking about like anti fascism.

Speaker 5 (01:03:11):
Yeah, I mean, that's something I always think about when
I think of a lot of the most brutal world
leaders across human history. I often think, you know, this
person did not spawn out of the air. There was
a time when this person was a newborn and they
were babbling, learning to speak, learning to walk, became a toddler,

(01:03:35):
small child, pre teen, teenager, young adults, so much nature
and nurture would have gone into the police and they became.
But they had the same spawn point as everybody else.
They all started as a baby, and Pinochet was unfortunately

(01:03:58):
no exception. After the pass and of his decree twenty
five sixty eight to nineteen seventy nine, the number of
indigenous creaties was reduced by twenty five percent and several
Mapuchia leaders were murdered, threatened with imprisonment or excerpt. After
the fall of Pinochet and returned to democracy, uppuch had

(01:04:19):
a resurgionce and identity and political activism for the nineteen nineties.
This revival gained momentum after the passage of Chile's Indigenous
Law in nineteen ninety three, which acknowledged the Puche land
right to advocated for bilingual education, opening new paths for
cultural reclamatia. That same year, Nampuchi representatives at the UN
pushed for Chile to adopt Iolo Convention one sixty nine,

(01:04:40):
a key indigious rights treaty, but Chile didn't actually ratify
the convention until two thousand and eight. Despite the established
run to the National Cooperation of Indigenous Development or KANNADI
in nineteen twenty three to facilitate indigenous inclusion in policy making,
Mapucha involvement in such state institutions has not guaranteed geruine representation.
Several KANNADI leaders who openly advocated from Mapucha autonomy or

(01:05:02):
pushed against corporate interests have been removed from their positions.
In twenty fifteen, Governor Francisco Juanchomia, a Promapuchi advocate in Aracanya,
was removed from his position due to his support for
legal reforms recognizing Mapucha rights. He can'tgo and change the system.
System changes you will gets you out of the way.

(01:05:25):
With the intensification of extractive industries roach lands, a wave
of activism emerged, specifically aimed the protecting secret territories and
the environment. Mapuchi activists frequently have stood up against forestry companies,
hydroelectric projects, and multinational corporations that have aimed to exploit
their resources, the e engaging land occupations and protests for

(01:05:46):
land restitution and environmental protection. The Chilean stage reaction to
Maputa activism is entirely predictable harsh repression under anti terrorism legislation.
Mapoochier activists fe heightened police, civil lands, in prison, lond
accusations of terrorism a toxic which is universally used to

(01:06:08):
delegitimize resistance to injustice and violence, explotation, and destructure.

Speaker 2 (01:06:14):
It is kind of one of those magic words that
has been increasingly invoked in the past twenty years.

Speaker 5 (01:06:20):
Yeah, terrorist is a magic wood. Illegal is another magic wood.

Speaker 2 (01:06:25):
Yeah, they're all just like the humanization terms, right, Like,
you are not a person, you are not an ex
you are not well whatever, you are a terrorist and uh,
terrorists do not have the same rights as humans. It's
not a war crime if you do it against a terrorist.

Speaker 5 (01:06:39):
Luke Skywalker was not a terrorist. You are a terrorist,
you know.

Speaker 2 (01:06:46):
But no like like whether you're like finding in like
an actual resistance movement or you're just attending like a
protest in a in an American city, both of those
can now become quote unquote terrorists.

Speaker 5 (01:06:57):
Or or some like level clerk who just happens to
be within has Aboulah.

Speaker 2 (01:07:03):
Yeah, or you're a daughter of a low level clerk
who is picking up a pager and oops, I guess
your dad shouldn't have been a terrorist in like Jesus Christ.

Speaker 6 (01:07:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:07:15):
Yeah. And then of course the media has a big
part to play in all this. You know, terrorist as
a term is associated with certain stereotypes about various groups
of people. In the past few years, it's been the
you know, machete and ak waven Islamist fightal but in

(01:07:36):
other time periods it was another prominent stereotype, you know,
the Black seventies revolutionary or Vietcong And in the Chilean situation,
media portrayals have also reinforced stereotypes of ampuch violence, which
of course serves the rule of obscure in the reality

(01:07:57):
of their fight for justice and environmental stewardship. It hasn't
all been for not the mapuch struggle. That is, they
have had a few legal triumphs rulans where the Inter
American Court of Human Rights has held Chile accountable in
air quotes as much as any state is actually held
accountable for valuating Mapuche rights. Grassroots groups and as collectives

(01:08:21):
with white have also supported Mapucha efforts. But curly these
small victories and triumphs are really not much. They're not enough.
Within the broader Auch movement, you do have the reformists
and the simulationists, and you have groups like Quording their
Daughter Arako Mayeko or Camp and they're splinter group, which

(01:08:44):
is why chan Alca Mapu and they've adopted separatist stances,
advocating for direct actions such as land occupations and resistance
against state forces because they view autonomy and territorial reclamation
as essential to mapuchia soeignty and they have no interest
in compromise with the extractive industries and government that are

(01:09:05):
responsible for their suffering. Traditionally, these groups have focused on
acts of economic sabotage against companies that are infringing on
their lands and their stewardship. Within wider Chilean society. There's
still some prejudice against some Mapuche, particularly, but not exclusively
from the right way, but she lays twenty nineteen uprising

(01:09:27):
against inequality and government abuses found strong supports and allieship
between wider Chilean society and Upuche communities who had seen
echoes of their own grievances and national protests. The protests
were initially sparked by a Maturro affair hike, but they
quickly became a national movement demanding systemic reform in both

(01:09:50):
urban and rural spaces. Thepuche communities joined or supported protesters.
Were resistant continued to government policies that marginalize their communities
and undermined their cultural rights. Mapuocha symbols and flags emerged
prominently align in aditional struggles with these were demands of
social justice, and the government response can you predict, was

(01:10:10):
swift and severe. Military and police forces were deployed to
use excessive violence. Apuch Ben knew about this, but some
of the Chileans their experiencing this for the first time,
and this mutual experience of repression reinforced alliances between the
Mapuche and the Chilean activists, as both faced the stature

(01:10:31):
of enviolence of propaganda that portrayed them as radicals and
terrorists and extremists. So despite the crackdown, the uprising saw
unprecedented support for the Mapuche cause, amplifying calls for restitution
of indigious lands, former recognition of Appouoche rights in a
reformed constitution, and a declinal approach to governments the respects
indigenous autonomy. The twenty nineteen protests laid the groundwork for

(01:10:54):
a national constitutional reform was significant Mapucha involvement to public
support in a new constitutions with the twenty one raised
the potential for ensurance indigenous rights from Puccier representatives actively
participate in the process and creating renewed optimism for meaningful
legal reprotections the respecting Puja, culture, territory and autonomy. That

(01:11:15):
somewhat progressive attempt at a constitution reform, which also included
gender equality measures, was rejected, and so there was another
attempt just last year enter to twenty three, but it
was a very conservative attempt shaped by the far right
Republican Party, which trickter provisions and immigration, a ban and abortion,
and a free market focus that did not resonate with

(01:11:38):
the majority of voters. Fifty five point eight percent voted
against the twenty twenty three draft and forty four point
two percent in fever. Chile In President Gabriel Borek, whose
administration had supported constitutional change, acknowledged that further attempts that
constitutional reform were unlikely. So for now, Chile continues to

(01:11:59):
be governed by the constitution that dates back to the
dictatorship of Pinochet, while its leaders looking at alternative calves
for address and social, economic, and environments of this suites
in line with Chilean public opinion. If you know anything
about me and my positions, you know that I'm not
confident in the ability of states to meaningfully respect people's
agency and autonomy ever. But I wish them Pucha all

(01:12:21):
the best wherever their struggle goes, and I've personally found
their story very impactful. It's one of resilience, adaptability, and
vase of centuries of advolicity. They've had an unyielding desire
to maintain their connection to the land and cultural identity,
and they aren't going fright. Is really just a testament
to the power of solidarity. And that's it for me.

(01:12:44):
This has been all power to all the people.

Speaker 10 (01:13:07):
Okay, hi everyone, and welcome to it could happen here today.
We're very lucky to be joined by Vladimir von Bilgenberg,
who's an underground journalist who covers Syria, and Curtis Dan
has written two books, including one on the alliance between
the SDF and the Coalition. Is that is that a
fair introduction in Vladimir.

Speaker 2 (01:13:27):
Ye?

Speaker 6 (01:13:28):
Okay, thank you, thank you so much for joining us.

Speaker 10 (01:13:31):
There has obviously been a massive increase, in a massive
change in the conflict in Syria in the last week
or so, just under a week, and I think the
information that's available to people is often very bad, very delayed,
or one side or rather putting out propaganda things which
mischaracterized the situation on the ground, especially with regard to

(01:13:53):
the Syrian National Army, who we're going to talk about.
Would you mind giving us a sort of very reef
explanation of what has happened since last Wednesday when HTS,
who will have to explain later, launch their operation against Aleppo.

Speaker 8 (01:14:09):
Well, in general, I mean the current situation ALAPO came
to a surprise too many many people didn't expect it. So,
just after the ceasefire in Lebanon, the Hayata te Rocham,
which is offshoot of al Qaeda, so they said they
don't have relations with al Qaida anymore. They split off
from al Qaeda. They launched a big operation in Alappo

(01:14:31):
against the Serian government or the same regime, whatever you
want to call it. I think initially they didn't think
that they would go so far, all the way into
Alappo city. There have been agreements between Russia, Iran, and
Turkey and Syria in Astana about the deconflection zone in

(01:14:52):
the northwestern province of Italy. So the HTS insurgents, they
claim they launched this operation towards Aleppo in response to
violation of this Astana agreement. So according to that agreement,
this area will be in control of the HDS and
the other area will be control of the regime and
they wouldn't bother each other. But this agreement was never
really implemented, I mean versus Russia. They were constantly bombing it.

(01:15:15):
Sometimes the HTS would attack regime positions. Also according to
this deconfliction zone, actually the Serian government and I reining
back armed groups. They went actually in that the de
confliction zone was supposed to be controlled by the Seyian insurgents.
So they launched this operation in response to the they
say the violations by the Serian government, and I think

(01:15:37):
because when they realized that the defenses of the Serian
government very weak, they pushed further into Aleppo. And it
was not really planned to take the city of Aleppo,
although there's also a video of Jiulani, the leader of HDS,
saying that my brothers, one day we're going to be
an Aleppo, So maybe it was planned. We don't know
really for sure, but the fact is that the Syrian

(01:15:58):
government defense is collab and for some people in the region,
it was sort of reminded of the days of Mussol
when the Iraqi army they fled Mussol in twenty thirty
fourteen and then Isis took over, although the HTS really
denied that they are similar to ISIS, although they have
a similar Islamish ideology. So they took the city of

(01:16:19):
Aleppo in three days, and they have been trying to
go up towards Hama, a city more up so far,
they haven't been able to take the city. And on
the other hand, you also have another group called the
Seran National Army, which is groups composed of basic groups
that were supported by the Turkish government. They also started
to move. They also started to carry out operations against

(01:16:43):
Kurtish lad Forces also known as the Cerrian Democratic Forces
of the YPG. And also they started to do operations
against the Syrian government in above Albab and also in
northern Aleppo. And they took also several towns in northern
Aleppo and also they advanced and I think their main
reason of that. So while the HDS is primarily mostly

(01:17:05):
fighting against the Syrian government, I think the Serian National Army,
because it's back by Turkey, they also have an interest
to undermine the Serian Democratic Forces because Turkey in the
past they have said they don't want to have a
second Kurdish autonomous region in the region, because you have
already won in Iraq, which was became recognized after the
fall of the Damp, So you have a Kurdistan region

(01:17:27):
in Iraq, and Turkey was sort of afraid to have
a second Kurdistan region in Syria, especially because it's created
by a group which has ideological affiliation with the pik
Ak with they follow the idology of the imprisoned leader
of the pik A k Abdulachlan, which Turkey sees is
a terrorist organization. So it's very complex, which we always

(01:17:48):
keep saying about Syria, but you basically have two different operations.
You have the Turkish back groups that are trying to
stop the Kurts from linking up with Aleppo, and then
you have the HDS, the Islamist groups that are trying
to go up and they already took Alepo and they
also took many areas in the countryside of Hama, and
actually they now control all of the province. So in

(01:18:10):
the past the certain government they control some parts of
lip but now they control the it's as they control
all of Yeah.

Speaker 10 (01:18:18):
So I think if we start by looking, I think
most people who listen to this will be familiar with
the SDF, with the Autonomous Administration in North East Syria,
and with the ri Java Revolution, and they'll be wondering.
Kind of the question I get mostly is like how
does this impact that? That's what people are asking. So

(01:18:40):
with that in mind, I think we should explain. Perhaps
we've talked before in this show about Operation Piece Spring
e Fretty Shield and these Turkish incursions into previously SDF
controlled areas and the genocide or violence that accompanied that,
or ethnic cleansing, however you want to phrase it. Can
you explain what happened in the areas where the SNA

(01:19:02):
have advanced and like what that's meant for the Kurdish
people who lived there or in some cases are still there.

Speaker 8 (01:19:10):
Yeah, in the in the northern Aleppo and Aleppo City,
so you have two Kurdish neighborhoods called Ashrafiya and Chech Maksut.
There are around one hundred to two hundred thousand people
living there. Then you have also two small Kurdish towns
called Tel Aran and Tel Hassel, which have changed hands
constantly during the Serian Civil War between the YEPG, the

(01:19:30):
Syrian government and Iran, then by the rebels done by
ISIS than by al Kaida, like it was a big mess. Yeah.
Then you have also you have like Kurts that were
displaced from Afrine because Turkey they carried out an operation
against the YPG in twenty eighteen, So you have thousands
of Kurts that left Afrine. So the statistics are a
bit unclear, but at least there were around ten thousand

(01:19:53):
IDPs living in camps in northern Aleppo, and you also
have people living outside of the camp, so the statistics
are always a bit unclear, but it's they now say
that they were around ten thousand families that were displaced,
so they were already displaced from Afrine before. And there's
this town of Tararapad, which has been a strategic location

(01:20:14):
in Aleppo because it was sort of like opening up
the way to Aleppo City and the Kurdish back forces
they took actually this town with Russian support from the
Turkish back rebels, so they had like grievances about this town.
But Turkey, even during the Afrine operation, they didn't get
the green light to take this town from the Kurtkish

(01:20:36):
back groups. Also, the Syrian government was there by the
way after dreamings, so this town always was like a
focal point of contention between the Kurts and the Syrian insurgents.
So what happened after HCS took Aleppo, the Syrian National
Army with the backing of Turkey, they moved on towards
Teara Lapad. And also because in the past, there was

(01:20:59):
more bad because you have also two small towns called
Mumble and Zahara. They were like prominently inhabited by people
from the Shia religion, so there were Iranian back groups
there and they were in the back of Telarafad, so
they were sort of as a balance. So they sort
of like the curves, were able to hold out in
Tarapad despite like many offensive by the Turkish back groups.

(01:21:22):
So what happened because of basically all the Syrian government,
they were removed from Aleppo and as a result, like
they were very weakend and completely isolated. I mean until
now there's Kurtish forces in Astrophia and Czech Masud, but
they're completely surrounded and embargoed by the HTS, which is
not something new because before this conflict, this new renewed

(01:21:43):
conflict in Aleppo, the Syrian government was also imposing embargoes
on those two neighborhoods, not allowing food and topping electricity
and bothering people at checkpoints because they had like always
issues with the Kurtish led forces because they're sort of
in the Syrian Civil War, they have always played sort
of a third role, like they want to have their autonomy.
Then you have the Shiran armed groups. They are trying

(01:22:04):
to topple the Syrian government, and then you had the
Syrian government trying to stop this from happening. And then yeah,
the Kurtish led forces were trying to create the autonomous
administration and they got some support from the US in
the fight against ISIS since the Battle of Kovani. Yeah,
so yeah, this is like the situation a lepos. So
now what happened is that thea fat were in twenty sixteen,

(01:22:28):
the Parabs of Telfad, they fled. Actually this after s
THEFYPG took this down. So now the Seen rebels they
took this down, and this time that the people that
fled from after into these towns that they were living
around four or five six IDP camps there, they were
forced to flee. So the Kurdish groups they were like
trying to resist the SNA advances, but they were not

(01:22:49):
able to resist them because they were completely surrounded because
as I mentioned, Nobel and Zaka fell, so they were
like completely pinched from all sides. But before they had
always like Nobble and Zacha behind them, so they could
not not be completely surrounded. But this time they were
completely surrounded. They were forced to leave there or not
able to continue the fight. So I think there was
like a de facto deal or something, because you saw

(01:23:11):
like convoys with actually with fighters with weapons and armed hunvies.
They were like being escorted two checkpoints and they were
allowed to cross towards Sabka actually a town in northeast Aria.
And maybe most likely the US they were involved in
the sort of de facto deal and Turkey, but so
far the US they haven't comment on that, but most
likely there was sort of a deal for the forces

(01:23:32):
in Tarafa to leave with the civilians and they're now
hosted in camps, in displacement camps in the town of Tabca.
And then there are still Kurts living as I mentioned
in Astrapia and chef Marsuda to big neighborhoods in Aleppo.
And then you have also two small Kurdish towns around
the Hassa which are now controlled by the year National
Army the Turkish back groups, so the hyattas their local administration.

(01:23:58):
They offered the deal to the Kurdish fighters. He said,
you can leave these two Kurtish neighborhoods and Aleppo without
any issues and the Curs that are living there, we
respect them and they can stay there, but the Kurdish
fighters they have to leave. But then there was a
statement i think yesterday by the leader of the SEF,
the Muslim Ubdi. He was saying like we were forced
to evacuate the people because we were trying to create

(01:24:19):
a corridor between these Kurdish enclaves in Aleppo with the
rest of North East area, because they are like Turkish
backed rebels and the certain government in between trying to
trying to make a corridor. So they said this corridor
was actually was broken and they were forced to evacuate.
But he said that the Kurtish forces were still in
Aleppo resisting. So it seems that the YPG didn't completely

(01:24:42):
follow this offer of the HS. But of course we
don't know if there was maybe a backdoor deal with
the HTS to allow first people in nordern Alapo to
leave and then maybe in a later phase that they
will also leave Aleppo because they are there in a
quite difficult situation.

Speaker 10 (01:24:56):
Yeah, a very difficult situation.

Speaker 8 (01:24:58):
But they're now accused by I see rebels that they
are positioning snipers in Aleppo and that they are still
a Leppo. But they never left Czech Masut and Astrapia.
But I also talked to people. They're saying that civilians
they were offered in Czech Masud and Astrapia to leave
that area if they wanted to leave, so they were
not forced to leave, that they had the option opportunity

(01:25:18):
to leave that area if they wanted. But then the
buses didn't show up and they didn't leave, because I mean,
they need only not only evacuated Kurdish civilians from northern Lepo,
but I think they also evacuated the Shia population of
Dubo Zakha. There were sometimes also that they were also
evacuated to North East Ayria because they don't feel safe
for their lives if those rebels take those areas. Yeah,

(01:25:41):
and they are still there. They don't want to be
captured by the rebels and used as hostages or so
most likely they left with the Kurts to north east
Syria and what will happen to them. They probably go
to Iraq or to other areas in Syria.

Speaker 10 (01:25:54):
Yeah, you meet like in Northeast Aria, you meet sometimes
like either former ragimes or people who have left regime areas,
and like they've made their lives there. So now we

(01:26:17):
have this situation right where, yeah, we have these two
little islands, we'll just call them YPG for the ease
of to not introduce another acronym, right of like a
Kurdish armed folks in Aleppo. To complicate this further, and
people will probably have seen this, I want to explain it.
In the Rezor, we have a different situation, right, we

(01:26:38):
have their the SDF attacking Iranian back Relicious and the regime.
Do you feel comfortable explaining what's going on in Derisora
where that's a different calculus.

Speaker 8 (01:26:47):
Yeah. So since former president or the incoming president Donald
Trump when he pulled out troops from Syria in twenty
nineteen when Turkey did an offensive against the Curves and
Telabatasaain at that point in the US, they left, but
then there was so much criticism from both Democrats and
Republicans that he was forced to come back. So until now,

(01:27:10):
there are still nine hundred Jewish troops in Detozor Province
and in Husska Province, which is actually not a lot
because if you look to for instance, South Korea, there
are thousands of troops in South Korea and in other places.
So it's not very a lot. But in the US
discussions it's always discussed all we have troops in Syria,
but actually compared to other countries, is not a very
big number.

Speaker 10 (01:27:30):
Nine hundred people, no, not unto very small footprint.

Speaker 8 (01:27:33):
So they have the small footprint in Detzor and Hassaka
and they basically they worked with the Kurtish led forces
since the Battle of Kobani to basically defeat the Isiskelephate
because it was a threat to European security and US security,
and they were trying to carry out attacks in Europe,
and there were many attacks in Europe and when civilians
were killed, so ye had the anti Isis fight. This

(01:27:54):
is one of the reasons actually why the Kurtish led
forces they were forced to go to Detozor because it
was their last beast on in twenty nineteen when they
defeated the territorial Caliphate of Isis. So since there you
have this the SEF there and they have their own
administration in the Rezor and they have like local forces
and Arabs that joined them in the fight against sizes.

(01:28:15):
So what happened that in the last few years, in
the last one or two years, there have been attempts
by the Syrian government and Iranian back groups basically to
recruit Arab tribes to fight against the SDF. So there
have been several skirmishes and battles since that time. After
also the SDF they arrested a commander of them that
they thought he was like going to portrade them. So

(01:28:38):
since that time, there were like several skirmishes between these
milasies that are calling themselves the tribal army or something
in that regard. And then you have the SCF, so
you had like fights between the Ranian back groups and
the SDF. And recently with all the changes in Syria,
there were a number of villages around seven six villages
that were actually Russian army was based in those villages.

(01:29:01):
It was like the line sort of dividing the US
back as theF forces and the Syrian government forces. And
there's also a river, but those villages they were like
in front of the river, so the river is sort
of naturally dividing the areas between the SDF and the
Syrian government. But there were like still a number of
villages that were not on that line, and actually there
were Russian troops based in that villages. Yeah, but with

(01:29:25):
the whole crisis with Aleppo and the fight now between
the HCS and the Syrian government in Hannah, the Russians
they moved out from those villages. So those villages that
actually are almost empty, there is nothing there. So during
this situation they as UF they just moved in those
villages and there was actually not so much fighting, although

(01:29:47):
on the social media I see that all there's fighting
and this kind of stuff. So there was some over
these like the last one or two years, they have
been heavy fighting between the SDF and Reign Impact Groups,
but in these villages not so much because it was
just anti villages and they just took them over and
there was no one there.

Speaker 10 (01:30:06):
Yeah, Okay, So that leaves us with like I guess
an e S getting a little bit larger in the
south and then how smaller in the west.

Speaker 8 (01:30:15):
Yeah, very much faller in the west. And it's even
not clear if they can keep their presence in Aleppo
because I mean, Chef Marshut and Asia is now completely
surrounded by the HDS, and it seems that the HDS
they have been a little bit softer with the SDF
and YPG than the SNA, because the SNA, I mean,
they have their issues because they're also backed by the

(01:30:37):
Turkish government and the Turkish government they always said their
policy is basically to stop the SDF from treating autonomous area,
and they also said the SDF is linked to the PIKK,
although the SDF they deny links to the pi AK,
although they don't deny their idological affiliation with the prison
pick A k Here.

Speaker 5 (01:30:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (01:30:55):
So Turkey always said that they are feeling threatened and
they have always claim that attacks were planned on Turkey
from northeast Asyria, from Rosava on on Turkey. Yeah, THEFF
deny that. I think there was also there was not
so a long time ago. There was also an attack
in Ankara, and Turkey also claimed that it was a
carry planned from British cities in Syria. Yeah, so that's

(01:31:19):
that's like the situation.

Speaker 10 (01:31:21):
Yeah, they gives Yeah, they give us a pretty good
summary of the situation. I think. So let's talk about
HTS a bit, because I think you're going to see
one of two things. Right when we talk about the

(01:31:42):
SNA and HDS, A lot of outlets will just collapse
them under the same descriptor they will just say Syrian rebels,
and I think people will think of the original largely
secular uprising in Syria in twenty eleven, and if they
have not been paying attention, they'll realize that ISIS has
been and gone.

Speaker 3 (01:31:59):
But they'll think, oh, these must be the same guys.

Speaker 10 (01:32:02):
These are not the same guys. But some of them
may be the same guys who are originally part of
Jiulani was originally sent there by a back daddy way
back to be part of ISIS. But these are not
the secular rebels who originally rose up in Syria. And
so can you explain like HTS has this very interesting
kind of legitimacy project right, like it's trying to build

(01:32:23):
a pseudo state and present like a kind of gentler Jihadism.
I don't know how to say it, but can you
explain a little bit of this transformation of HDS and
what you make of it.

Speaker 8 (01:32:33):
I mean, as you mentioned that Julani, the current leader
of the HS, he was sent by at that time,
I think it was al Kai the are the Islamic
state of Iraq, and yeah, Syria basically to establish like
but at that time there was no ISIS yet I
think so so later basically he refused to budge allegiance

(01:32:56):
and he basically did his own thing. He created Jabalta Nostra,
which was the affiliate of al Qaeda. But then he
decided to basically split from al Qaeda and he announced
like these links to I think at the time that
it was Zawahiri, but I'm not sure. So he basically
split from al Qaeda, and you still have a split

(01:33:17):
off group from al Qaeda in itlyp it's called h
Russell Din, which they actually they had issues with. They
had some problems with them. So HDS, although Isis territory
was defeated twenty nineteen, the HTS or they basically with
all the creates in Syria because I mean they have
been fighting out for all the problems between the Sern

(01:33:38):
government and different armed groups. They managed to sort of
cementa crowd throw in the province of lip and they
created their own little administration there. But despite that, they
say that we don't have any links to al Qaeda.
I mean they're still listed by for instance, the US
as a terrorist organization.

Speaker 10 (01:33:54):
Yeah, there's a ten million dollar bounty on Julani still, right,
they just never took it away from Yeah, I mean.

Speaker 8 (01:34:00):
It seems that the US doesn't believe this moderation idea
that the HS tries to show them more moderately. But
my idea of the HS, it's more like a sort
of a lighter, softer version of ices. I mean, they're
not like ices that they're gonna broadcast people being blown
up or beheaded on the film screen. It's just that
they do it in the back of the screen. I mean,

(01:34:21):
there's people being executed according to the Islamic Shadia a lot,
there are people being imprisoned. I mean, you also had
protests actually it left against Jolani that they were actually
opposed to the authoritarian rule. And I think then you
have separate from the sort of the Islamic Islamics, which
you can actually sort of compare to the Taliban. Yes,

(01:34:42):
I think that's a good comparison, Yes, to the Taliban.
And also I think Taliban they have some relationships actually
the HS, and they also congratulated the HTS after they
took control of Aleppo, so sort of it's like a
Taliban rule, though of course Taliban is very different contacts
related to Syria culture Afghan culture, so it's different of course,
but they're both, yes, Islamist projects with a national project

(01:35:05):
at the same time. So it's Islamist project for Syria
and the Taliban have an Islamist project for Afghanistan, although
you also have Pakistani Taliban et cetera. Yeah, so it's
not like a transnational jihad, but you can call it
like a national jihad maybe.

Speaker 10 (01:35:19):
Yeah, I think that's the crucial difference, right at least
for the US, like that makes them kind of more
amenable than than ISIS or even Al kaider Is that. Yeah,
they have this nationally contained Jahadi vision, so.

Speaker 8 (01:35:33):
They don't do attacks in Europe or in the US.
But of course there are several groups in ITLAB that
are sort of falling under the control of HDS that
are possibly could do external attacks, et cetera. And apart
from that, you have the Syrian National Army. So the
Syrian National Army, it's like a mix of different groups.
As you mentioned in the beginning of the series Civil War,

(01:35:54):
you had the Phisian Army, but then the Free Serrian Army.
They split in several groups. I mean some like linked
to Muslim brotherhoods, some linked to Turkmen groups, other groups
secular groups et cetera. So all these groups that were
basically fighting in different provinces, they were all gathered because Turkey.
They did several Turkish military did several operations in twenty

(01:36:17):
sixteen in northern Syria with the main aim is to
stop the YPG from linking up the Kurdish enclaves on
the border with Turkey. So they did I think the
first one I was Euphraid Shield. Then they had I
think Operation All of Brands in Afrin in twenty eighteen.

Speaker 3 (01:36:33):
Yeah, incredible names.

Speaker 8 (01:36:36):
Then I think the last operation account Recalled was in
twenty nineteen when they took Telaviat and Serkania from the
Kurtish Laud forces the YPGSDA. So they had these three operations.
And these groups are sort of a mixed as I mentioned,
a different groups with also different ideologies. Some are more
Turkmen in nature, some of them are more Islamist in nature.

(01:36:59):
Some there are like sort of leftovers from secular groups
that used to FI. Some of them even they in
the past they received support from the US from the
CIA against the Seian regimes. So some of them they
receive support and this is like a sort of umbrella
of self organizations. So HDS is one group and they
control also other groups in but it's one group. But

(01:37:21):
the SNA there are like a lot of different groups,
and they also have been fighting each other several times
in areas and Turkish control. So this is very different
and there are more sectarian in nature, let's say more.
I mean, they have also been less under control than
the HTS in the way that there have been a
lot of kidnappings for ransom, a lot of like sexual

(01:37:42):
violence against women and rape. This is all documented by
self organizations, Juan organizations. They also have child soldiers, so
they have different kinds of issues, and but they have
been more accused of like more sort of gang style
of activity, and that's why. Also some of them there
were sanctioned by the US and also some of them
they have integrated like former IIS fighters in their ranks.

(01:38:06):
And you also have like first you have some groups
that are frondos or the other are originally for instance
from the area around Mato or Aza. Some of them
they could they were displaced from Gutta, so a lot
of them there also they came because the Serian government
they advanced with Russian support, and then these groups were
brought by buses to the areas under Turkish control. Yeah,

(01:38:27):
so these areas became a sort of like maybe it's
a bad word, or sort of a dumping ground for
all these Srian rebel groups that were not completely defeated
but displaced by Serrian government and offenses with the Russian support.
So I mean before they were an Aleppo and homes
and Hamma and Damascats in all this group they were
moved with buses through agreements between around Turkey, Russia and

(01:38:49):
Syria to northern Syria to it and now these groups
they are coming back because they were never completely defeated.
I mean they had their own administration, so the Syrian
Army they fall under the Turkish back the Cerian opposition
I think they call it the Serian National Coalition or
in Arabic the ital AF, so they have their own

(01:39:10):
interim government administration in THEIRS on the Turkish control, and
then you have the Salvation government under the Ahso the
are t two different administrations. And they also doesn't mean
that they agree with so so just calling them the
rebels it's a little bit like, yeah, it doesn't really
doesn't fit to the reality. But of course you also

(01:39:31):
have to deal with the fact that for media, if
they want to explain complex situations to a general public,
it's very difficult to just say, Okay, you have this acronym,
and you have this acronym, and you have the white
and the Ahs and the SNA. So people they will
lose their interest. So that's why it always becomes sort
of this black and white. So, oh, you have the
Syrian insurgence and then you have the Serian government, and

(01:39:53):
then it's already complex enough to also add Kurts to
the mix. So they also, of course often the Turkish government.
They got very angry that the media keeps calling the
YPG the curse because oh, they don't represent the curse.
But you can't say that with any group in Syria
or anywhere in the world. I mean, I mean you
have in Americans, you have different political parties. You have
different parties in Syria, you have different parties in Turkey.

(01:40:15):
So these groups don't represent all the Syrians, or all
the Arabs, or all the Kurts or all the Allwais.
There are always different political factions and that's what it
makes so complicated in Syria because a lot of these
based groups got fragmented. But actually with versus the support
of Turkey, they actually united on the one umbrella, which
is called the Syrian National Army. And then of course

(01:40:35):
even on the Syrian government side, there's many different groups.
I mean you have you have Iranian back armed groups,
you have groups from Lebanon that are helping the Hezbola
Albani says Bola. Then you have Iraqi Iranian back groups
that are supporting Syrian government. Then you have also Shias
that were recruited from Afghanistan. And then also in the
Syrian government security structure, I mean, in the past there
was no room for malicious but they have, for instance,

(01:40:57):
the NDF, which is sort of like a Syrian govern
want back militia, which even sometimes part with the Syrian
government itself when they tried to become become more too
much powerful, sort of like what you haven't Wagner in
Russia that we try to challenge the Russian government and
then they got third bailed. So it's like even with
a certain sort of the forces back in the Cerian army,

(01:41:17):
it's not like so simple. It's also not you have
just a Serian army that's it. You have also different
kinds of militia, some supported by Iran, some supported by
Russia that are backing the Syrian government.

Speaker 10 (01:41:29):
Yeah, everyone wants I think Ukraine has really reinforced this.
They want war to be like colors on a map
and a front line, and the front line moves and
that's you know, and that's just not how like oftentimes
there's little lines on a map will be in reality
it's people driving around and pick up trucks with dishcas
in the back, wondering where the other guys are and

(01:41:49):
what's going on.

Speaker 4 (01:41:50):
You know.

Speaker 10 (01:41:50):
It's not like Ukraine where you have trenches and people
firing each other from trench lines to gradually move. And
as much as it would be easy to have modelists,
we we just don't.

Speaker 3 (01:41:59):
In Syria.

Speaker 8 (01:42:00):
Yeah, I mean, sorry, it's different because of it's more
there are more religious and ethnic groups done in Ukraine.
I mean ucrin Is you have the the Ukrainians and
the Russians, and I mean you also have people speaking
Russian in other areas of Ukraine. But it's where it's
much more complex in in in Syria. Althoio obviously also
have different groups fighting in Ukraine, but in Syria it's

(01:42:22):
a bit more complex and it's difficult for the media
to get a grip on that without like you know,
like trying to also explain to a normal reader of
what is going on in Syria. But also in general
you have all this international media that are cutting down
costs and they're closing there for and bureaus. So also
i mean the money for like extensive reporting in Syria

(01:42:42):
is also getting less or in general in internationally speaking, yes,
And then you have another problem is that you have
the problem of access in Syria. So if you are
wanted to go to the same government area is very
difficult because if you have reported in Syrian rebel areas,
the same government is not going to give you a visa.
You have to be like very l Serian government if
you go to the areas under rebel control to be honest, like,

(01:43:05):
it's very difficult for any journalists to go to HDS
areas or the Eran National Army area. So even if
a journalist wants to report positively about the rebels, it's
very difficult. Then they have like a press adcutation in
Turkey and they have to cross the boarders very complicated,
so there's barely in very rare cases journalists going into

(01:43:25):
northwest Aria and then with the Kurdish controlled areas if
you can call them like that, like northeast here, it's
a bit easier. I mean, there are people flying to Iraqi,
Curtistan and then they can get like a permission from
the Kurdish authorities. They're in Iraqi, Curtistan and then they
can cross the border. So it's a bit easier. But
the number of journals going there is very limited, and

(01:43:49):
most of the interests actually of the Western media was
not so much about the cern conflict. It was more
about this western ISIS woman and ISIS fighters that were
jailed or held in in Northeast Airia. So most of
the focus of the Western media was most of the time, okay,
what's happening in the whole camp, because you have thousands
of ISIS families there or in versus in the prison. So,

(01:44:10):
I mean, the American journals were interested in US doash fighters,
and the Dutch were interested in Dutch ices families are fighters,
and the same for many other countries.

Speaker 10 (01:44:20):
Yeah, the British media is terrible for that. They'll go
to northeast Syria and then talk about Northeast Airia and
this our whole just exists as kind of a bubble
outside of context in that reporting.

Speaker 8 (01:44:30):
Yeah, they just talk about Shamima Begoon and she became
sort of a celebrity in the UK. Yeah, although I
think even on that actress nowadays it's like very limited
because a lot of the zer countries in the UK
they have their own domestic issues. So also in general,
the interesting in Syria has gone down a lot, and
I think also with this current conflict and Aleppo, it

(01:44:50):
will get some intention in the media for a few days,
but at some point it's gonna go down again, yes,
of course, and maybe there will be conflicts and other
parts of the world again. So I think at some
point also this media attention because the media attention for
Sir already was like very low, unless it's gonna affect
Europe in a large extent because it could also create

(01:45:10):
new waves of refugees trying to go to Europe. Yeah,
there's many people that were displaced. Again. It was a
very nice post on X by one Journeys from I
think a Saudi outlet, and he was saying it's very
sad to see. He was basically saying like at any moment,
our people can be displaced at any time or can
be displaced again. So that's like sort of the life

(01:45:32):
of Syrians that live in these different like front lines,
like anytime they can displace, like the people at Traffreine
they were displaced in twenty eighteen and now twenty twenty
four they were displaced again. And then you have people
displaced by the Syrian government living in the houses of
kurts in Afrine and they're also victims of this conflict.
So yeah, so it's a very complicated situation, people being displaced,

(01:45:58):
moving in the houses of displaced and displace living in
other people's houses that are also displaced. So it's like
a very cynical and sad situation.

Speaker 10 (01:46:07):
Yeah, and a very very difficult one for civilians. And certainly,
like with the changing government in the US, it seems
unlikely that we will be reaching out to help those
those displaced civilians in the near future. And certainly we've
seen a lot of Kurdish people who have been displaced
either by Turkish aggression or who there's a whole other
situation with the Kurdish areas in Turkey at the moment

(01:46:30):
and their elections and such which we don't have time
to go into but many of them have come to
the US, and I've interviewed lots of them for this show,
so we've I think people will be familiar with that, right,
I mean, I think that's probably about all we have
time for. But I wanted to offer you a chance.
You have very good tweets, you have a very good
understanding of the whole situation. You have your articles do
an excellent job of making it understandable. So where can

(01:46:53):
people find your writing and follow you?

Speaker 8 (01:46:55):
Well, I mean I you can find my tweets on
my personal the page which is on my name Lady
Melberg at x Vivan Wrockenberg. And also I write for
different outlets and think tanks like first As, I write
for mid at least I fig form from the Washington Institute. Also,
I've been writing some pieces for Carnegie, So yeah, I've

(01:47:18):
been if we're writing for several places on the current situation. Yeah,
and sometimes Side to Interview, Side talked on BBC a
few times on the situation and Aduchavella. So you can
find my work on my Twitter profile. Always post my
articles there and yeah, yep, that's great.

Speaker 10 (01:47:38):
Is there anything else you'd like to maybe suggest that
people follow I think it could be really easy to
get a lot of propaganda when it comes to two sirius,
So I think you'd suggest that people kind of get
their news from well.

Speaker 8 (01:47:51):
I mean, I think in general x is still like
a good platform. It has been from the beginning of
the series Civil War, although of course you have different accounts,
different views supporting different factions. So it's always good to
verify any videos posted, although it's like more difficult to
very five videos than the pictures, but it's always good
to verify locations and the background of people that are

(01:48:15):
posting stuff. And then also I think it's very interesting
and good to follow the maps of the Serian Civil
War because you have several places where they publish maps
of the civil war, so it's easier to follow it
on the map than by tweets or posts on eggs.
But I think in general, I mean, I mean, there
are still like many international media that are trying to
do reporting on Syria, but I think in general what

(01:48:37):
I've seen it's becoming more limited, and it's mostly based on,
for instance, the Serum Observretory for Human Rights. Yes, so
the same observatory for human rights. It's a good source.
They have a page in English and Arabic, although sometimes
they are the English pages are a bit difficult to
follow for people if they don't know the background of
the conflict because it's more written for locals. Yeah, and

(01:48:58):
then also you have fends. There's this civil site organization
that focus on human rights abuses. I think it's called
Seriance for Justice. They are very good reports on the situation,
but it's a bit slow because it's not like twenty
four hours. I mean it's like they're doing investigative reports
on abuses by all sides of the ceriin civil conflict. Yeah,

(01:49:21):
so Johtal I think it is very grud And also
like telegram, I mean a lot of these different groups
they have telegram channels where they post the latest updates,
but of course all of them are quite biased, but
bias you will get anyway in such a conflicts, in
over the war, so.

Speaker 10 (01:49:36):
Yeah, everyone's biased to a degree. You will see dead
people a lot if you go following telegram channels to
the certain civil war. So if that's not something you'd
like to see, that's probably not platform to be on.

Speaker 6 (01:49:50):
Big Death.

Speaker 10 (01:49:51):
Thank you so much for your time. I know it's
late with you, and we'll let you get to sleep,
and we do appreciate you joining us, and hopefully people
will follow you on Twitter and and get good information
about what's happening.

Speaker 3 (01:50:01):
Welcome Dick had Happened Here a podcast that has increasingly

(01:50:23):
become about it happening in other places in the world.
I'm your host via wog with me as caare.

Speaker 8 (01:50:29):
Hello. Hello.

Speaker 3 (01:50:30):
So if I'm remember incorrectly, and it is entirely possible,
I have forgotten several coups that I've covered. I think
this is the second coup that I've covered in six
months that feels right. And you know, when we last
left the dumbest coup I had ever seen in my
entire life. We were in Bolivia and it was a
truly spectacularly stupid coup. That coup ended with the army

(01:50:53):
running away from a bunch of protesters who were just
like yelling at them meanly, so that one had I
thing I've never seen before, which is the army that
the protesters were trying to bring something up to break
a barricade, and the army ran away before they could
get the like anti barricade thing up to the police barricade,
So that was a disaster. Today we are talking about
what I having now studied this like since it was

(01:51:16):
since it started, I genuinely believe this somehow is an
even stupider coup than the last. Like I you have
to go back to like the CIA coup in Venezuela
where everyone just got that like arrested by fishermen to
find a stupider coup than this, it is, and even
that one, like at least they like landed guys with guns.

(01:51:38):
It was over so quick, like yeah, I think the
official number is that the amount of time the martial
law was technically in effect before the Assembly voted to
get rid of it was one hundred and ninety minutes.

Speaker 2 (01:51:51):
Like people could have like slept through this coup, which
is really funny, right, I.

Speaker 3 (01:51:55):
Made an executive decision, right, and I was like, I'm
going to sleep in for one more hour, so I
woke up at eight am instead of seven am, and
I missed like half of it because I was just
iceleft for one hour. So let's let's let's get into
a bit about what happened here because you know, as
as dumb as this looks now, because it failed this

(01:52:16):
was for people who don't know there was a there
was an attempted coup in South Korea. I don't know
what day it's gonna be when I don't know what
day it's gonna be in Korea when this comes out,
because yeah, but on on Tuesday day, on our Tuesday
in like the the it was I think ten thirty

(01:52:36):
night there the hideously unpopular president of Korea, Sok yel yun,
tried to declared martial law. Une is. His approval rating
is like half of Joe Biden's approval rating. Like his
approval rating is like twenty percent. He is staggeringly unpopular.

(01:52:58):
He yeah, so you. And he won one election in
twenty twenty two, very narrowly, in a race where neither
of the candidates were particularly good. And he is a hardline,
far right dipshit. He's you know, I mean, one of
his big things. He has this unbelievably hardline in North Korea,
which is not you know, doing anything productive at all.

(01:53:20):
He's also you know, and this is like if you
want to look at like, who are his twenty percent
of supporters left? He was the guy of the unbelievably
unhinged Korean misogynist movement. I guess you would call them,
who are some of the worst people on earth. I mean,
these are guys who will just There was a court

(01:53:40):
case recently that decided that you can't just like beat
someone up for having short hair because you think they're
a feminist. Like, that's the kind of like unhinged misogynists
that we're dealing with. That's that's Union's base. However, a
couple of things have happened since then. One is that
he's racked by like a thousand scandals everyone in his
in his cabinet. He keeps getting impeached for doing corruption.

(01:54:01):
There are so many different corruption scandals with him going
on right now that I was considering like reading out
a list of all of them as a joke, but
it's too long. One of the important ones is that
he was like basically doing like a pay for play
thing to like fuck with his own party's primary process.
Nice and this has pissed off basically his entire party,

(01:54:22):
which is great, which is exactly the thing you want
to be doing right before you auld take the stage
of coup, is piss off your own political party. So
all right, let's get to the coup. He major problem,
one of his very major problems is that he hasn't
been able to do anything basically since he's been in power.
And the reason he hasn't been able to do anything
is that his first sort of like off election was

(01:54:44):
this unbelievably crushing electoral defeat for his party. The National Assembly,
which is their like parliament, is just straight up controlled
by the opposition Democratic like Liberal well, okay, let me
be very cific about this is controlled by the opposition
Democratic Party, who are the sort of like Korean Liberal
Party and also a bunch of like minor allied opposition parties,

(01:55:07):
and they keep on again impeaching all of his cabinet members,
which is very funny. You know, he was trying to
get a budget through and the budget got eviscerated and
he hasn't been able to do it. So he's been
very very angry and very frustrated, and so his plan
apparently to deal with this was just to knock out
the National Assembly.

Speaker 2 (01:55:25):
This is so funny because like, because of who I am,
I was talking about this at the bar last night,
just completely insunderable. And the one thing I couldn't put
together is like what his exact motivation was besides like
rooting out like political enemies.

Speaker 3 (01:55:38):
No one knows that he like.

Speaker 2 (01:55:39):
Labeled us like quote unquote anti communist, right, But let's
like we were talking about, like how funny this all is,
and like I still can't quite understand like why he
did this.

Speaker 3 (01:55:48):
No one news like this this is Jenny Why, Like
nobody has any idea why the fuck he thought this
would work? Like the best thesis and we'll get to
this a bit. The best thesis that I've seen is
that he wanted to do this because he was pissed
off with the fact that he hasn't literally been able
to do anything his entire time in office because he's
really mad at the National Assembly and also his own party, And.

Speaker 2 (01:56:11):
It's so funny to do that and then have that
be underscored by them like be like, oh god, no,
actually you can't do a coup. No, no, thank you,
nice try legally you cannot koubi.

Speaker 3 (01:56:26):
Yeah, Like the I think the the semi serious part
of this is that it doesn't make any sense to
me how this could have been done if there also
wasn't a faction of the Korean military that wanted this. Right,
the Korean military is I mean, most of Korea's history
still to this day, but I think I think it's
still a majority of the amount of time South Korea

(01:56:47):
has been in existence has been under military dictatorships of
various kinds. There's been a whole bunch of them. They
were staggeringly hideous. They killed unbelievable numbers of people, they
tortured unbelievab numbers of people. They were full back by
the United States, and the military has also always had
this real chip on its shoulder about sort of liberal

(01:57:09):
civilian politicians, and they have their version of like all
of the conspiracy things that we have about how all
democratic communists and how they're all like secretly et cetera,
et cetera. So for this is like they're all secretly
North Korea supporters, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 2 (01:57:21):
Right, And this is something I was also seeing yesterday
people being like, oh wow, when did South Korea become
North Korea? And they're like, oh my god, that's so
that's like what a weird like orientalist racist comment. This
is this is the most South Korean thing to ever happen.

Speaker 3 (01:57:37):
Yeah, this is like military coup and then military coup
being overturned by protesters is the single most South Korean
thing ever, right, Like, this is just how South Korean
history has been.

Speaker 2 (01:57:48):
Having the fucking Assembly have to like break in in
the middle of the night to vote.

Speaker 3 (01:57:53):
Yeah, it's so funny. It's just it's Yeah, we're gonna
get to the actual details of it a second, but
I want to I want to go back to what
was actually in this declaration of martial law. So the
Korean constitution does let you declare martial law, but you're
only supposed to do it if there's like a war
going on, or like.

Speaker 2 (01:58:06):
If there's like an actual crisis happening.

Speaker 3 (01:58:09):
Yeah, instead of just like I'm mad I can't pass
my budget, which used to be what was happening here.

Speaker 2 (01:58:14):
You feel bad on a Monday night and you're like, oh,
I guess i'llnucular martial law.

Speaker 3 (01:58:19):
Yeah, so okay, I'm gonna read some I'm gonna read
a thing about what was going on here, about how unhinged.
This was from Hawkura, which is a Korean media outlet.
Quote Commander park Ensou announced quote martial law Command Proclamation
number one, which, by the way, that's how you know
you're dealing with people who have done this before. When

(01:58:41):
when they start doing their like Decree number one, Decree
number two. Oh yeah, that's that is an that is
an experience the side of like very very experienced military
coup people announced martial Law Command Proclamation number one based
on the contents of prohibiting all political activities of the
National Assembly and local assemblies. The acclaimation also included contents

(01:59:01):
that controlled the press and publications and prohibited citizens assemblies
and demonstrations, as well as strikes and workstop wages by workers.
It is also notable that it included the content quote
all medical personnel, including residents who are on a strike
who have left the medical field must return to their
original work within forty eight hours and work faithfully, and

(01:59:22):
violations will be published in accordance with the Martial Law Act. Now,
it's important to note here if the thing you are
trying to do is impose martial law on Korea according
to the Constitution, and obviously if you're in the state
where you're opposing martial law, the law has kind of
got out the window. But you can't get rid of
the National Assembly. That is not a thing that marshial
law allows you to do. With In fact, very explicitly

(01:59:43):
in the Korean Constitution it says that like the National
Assembly can't be gotten rid of by martial law. So
this suggests to me that, yeah, this was something that
was also being sort of spearheaded by parts of the
Korean military. Because if you're not someone in the army
who has their own interest in doing a coup, and
someone asks you to just like overthrow the parliament, which

(02:00:07):
is a thing that they're not allowed to do, you
just say no, which which also makes the failure of
this and how unbelievably stupidly it was all put together
even more baffling, right, because if we assume that parts
of the clicks in the army had to have been
involved with this, and like we know and this only
FPR talks about Un is like fucked right. There's no

(02:00:28):
way he's holding onto power. He's screwed and he's gonna
be That will make him the second Korean president in
seven years to be ran out by mass protests, and
dream the last set of politicians who were getting rid
out by mass protests. The army actually started drafting like
procedures for how they were going to do a military
takeover to like to knock out the protests, and they
never did it. But this is a this has been

(02:00:49):
a thing that's been in the background for a long time,
and the liberal the liberal establishment has been talking about
how the right wants to bring back military rule for ages.
This is a situation that in some ways is similar
to Brazil, where the right has always been a sort
of like, we like military rule kind of thing, but
nobody actually seriously thought they would do it until they did.

(02:01:11):
And you know, I'm gonna read one more thing before
we go to ads here, which is he claimed that
the National Assembly was quote the mastermind behind the downfall
of the country, which, okay, that's pretty normal coup stuff,
quote monsters and quote anti state forces seeking to overthrow
the system. Now again he has just described the National Assembly,

(02:01:32):
which is the Korean parliament as quote anti state forces
seeking to overthrow the system, which now gives us the
specter of the Anarco Parliament.

Speaker 2 (02:01:46):
I do wonder how much of this type of stuff
is influenced, like by Trump's victory and like the enemy
within rhetoric. I'm not sure how much influence Trump has,
I know, guess a degree of influence like pop culture,
why something in Japan. I'm not sure of his influenced
in South Korea, but like in terms of just like geopolitics,
like that's very similar to the type of like deep

(02:02:07):
state enemy within rhetoric that like Trump used to success. Yeah,
I not to like tie everything back to America.

Speaker 3 (02:02:15):
But like this like subversive shit is like stuff that
you can trace back to like the original dictatorship. Right,
Like this is a very very old, long running thing
in Korean politics. Okay, we will get to the coup
after I guess we get to a faction that didn't
back the coup, which is the Korean capitalist class.

Speaker 2 (02:02:34):
So here are some ads salute to our comrades.

Speaker 3 (02:02:47):
We are back now. I will say it is true
that this whole thing folded so quickly that we never
really got a chance to see how the Korean capitalist
class would have reacted, other than the fact that all
of the newspapers immediately were like, what the fuck are
you doing? So it's also worth noting if you're trying
to do a coup, right, there are four things that

(02:03:07):
you need to do. You need to arrest your senior
opposition political figures. You need to seize the radio stations
that this includes you know today, like newspapers, TV stations.

Speaker 2 (02:03:16):
Like podcasts obviously, you know streamers.

Speaker 10 (02:03:18):
You know.

Speaker 3 (02:03:19):
Yeah, yeah, we're a vital part of the media infrastructure
that must be controlled.

Speaker 2 (02:03:23):
I show Speed or whatever his name is, he has
to come under your control. You gotta get Aiden Ross
locked into cage fast fast.

Speaker 3 (02:03:29):
I think Speed would have fucking gone just gone sicko
mode on their special forces guys, given how just like
unbelievably their asses got kicked. You know, you have to
seize the airports and you have to take the major
government buildings. Right, So how many of these did this
coup manage to do? They did like zero, right, They
sort of kind of took most of the National Assembly.

Speaker 2 (02:03:49):
Yeah, but that last and what like an hour?

Speaker 3 (02:03:52):
Yeah, yeah, Well we'll get to that in a second.
So it seems like what we have reporting from the
Democratic Party of Korea. They claim that the military attempted
to arrest the head of the National Assembly, the head
of the Democratic Party, and then also the head of
the PPP, which is People's Power Party, which is Yun's
own party. So he tried to have the head of

(02:04:14):
his own party arrested by Korean special forces, and it
didn't work because none of them were at their offices.

Speaker 2 (02:04:21):
It's so funny because they kept putting out they think
arrest worts for like, but like the opposition party his
own party, and the Assembly was like, oh.

Speaker 3 (02:04:33):
Tryser And you know, they did legitimately shut down some
news outlets and that was it. You know, that was
sort of genuine.

Speaker 2 (02:04:39):
I saw reporters like fucking like fighting with the military
in the streets.

Speaker 3 (02:04:44):
It was sick. Yeah, well, this is why this is
such a bad idea, right, Like, in the words of
a football commentator whose name I'm forgetting right now, who
had the greatest cast light at all of human history. Oh, no, disaster,
what a idea like? I okay, just just from the

(02:05:04):
logistics of this, right, pretty up on the list of
countries you don't want to try to hold by by
military force is South Korea. And there's a lot of
reasons for this one. You know, you're dealing with like
one of the largest GUESTI bases in the world. The
other thing is like, this is an entire country of
protesters and capitalist protesters, very scary. Well, but like everyone
fucking like fucking everyone in this country either like was

(02:05:25):
a protester when they were a fucking kid or was
one now to the extent we're like liberal members of
parliament know how to build barricades. It's so cool. This
actually matter enormously, like like fucking guys who are just
like random aids where and there are videos of this
of the of like just like random staffer guys like
holding barricades from like against like paratrooper units and like

(02:05:47):
like just random staffers like shooting fire extinguishers at army
special forces units. Like can you fucking imagine that shit
in the.

Speaker 2 (02:05:54):
US, Like it was very cool to see.

Speaker 3 (02:05:56):
Yeah, like this is this is why this is such
a terrible idea because everyone has a whole bunch of
institutional memory and experience of this, right, not just because
you know the Democratic Party, right, which is which is
the party that this was largely targeted at most of
Like the elder statesmen of this party used to be
Korean student protesters, Like they are all veterans of the
campaigns that brought down the military government. And it's not

(02:06:18):
just that there's like a there's a memory of it.
It's like there are a protests outside the National Assembly
like every fucking day, right, Like again, the last time
they brought down a prime minister with maths protest was
seven years ago. This is a whole country of people
who know how to do this shit, and for some
reason these idiots were like, we have no popular support whatsoever,
and we're just gonna be able to like roll over
this entire country in one night. So I think the

(02:06:39):
plan was to hold the National Assembly and prevent the
National Assembly from convening so that there was nobody who
could override the martial law order.

Speaker 2 (02:06:48):
Yeah that sounds pretty basic, right, just to keep them
out of the building so that they can't do anything.

Speaker 8 (02:06:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:06:52):
So they failed, easy, right? Oh oh no, they failed? Yeah.
So so the thing that the problem here again is
that you're dealing with an entire country that has been
doing this for fucking ages. Right, So they did this
at like ten thirty at night, and immediately what happens
is just like a bunch of drug guys in bars
like show up to the National Assembly. Like the moment
I knew it was doomed, was there. I was reading
in the New York Times they had an interview with

(02:07:13):
this guy who showed up. This is again the part
I'm I'm talking about this being a country of protesters.
Like these guys aren't like leftists like revolutionaries, right, this
Like one of the guys they were talking to the
New York Times, like their journals on the ground, pulls
over a random guy and he's a sixty year old
real estate agent. Right, this is a guy who should
be like, this should be the base of a military coup. Right.

(02:07:33):
This is a sixty year old man who doesn't real
estate it and he heard about this and immediately his
life was quote, this is the end. So he drove
for a fucking hour at like one in the morning
to show up to the National Assembly to go fight
the army. There was just no way this is good
to work. And so people, even though it's really late up,
people just flood out. And suddenly there's all of these
protesters in front of the National Assembly and they're doing

(02:07:55):
shit like there's this unbelievable video of this soldier like
tries to take a guy's phone, and this guy has
some kind of e martial arts trading. It just grabs
his arm and just spins him around.

Speaker 2 (02:08:05):
The coolest thing.

Speaker 3 (02:08:07):
And the guy just like I'm just like, well, fuck,
guess I'm not dealing with this ship and there was such.

Speaker 2 (02:08:11):
Like a resignation. Yeah, in the movements of that military
officer be like it's just like, well, shit, we could
keep fighting, but why like yeah, what's the point? Like
why am I out here? It's midnight? I should be
in bed. What's going on?

Speaker 3 (02:08:32):
And like and part of this too also, and this
is this is a smart decision by someone, is that
these guys weren't issued with actual bullets. So when I
say these guys and this is this is the you know,
the actual loving part about this is that these were
largely Korean paratrooper units, and Korean paratrooper units are some
of the most unhinged like fascist troops in the entire world. Like,

(02:08:55):
these are people who didn't just fight in the Korean War.
A bunch of these guys fought in Vietnam. Like on
the American side. They are notorious as the people who
the military has always used to sort of put down protests.
One of the most famous examples of this is the
Guandra Uprising in nineteen eighty, which was a pro democracy
uprising after one of the various stages of insane military

(02:09:16):
coup stuff was going on in South Korea in nineteen
eighty and there's a large democratic uprising from sort of
students and workers. There's a bunch of strikes. They take
this area and the paratroopers come to shoot them all.
They killed probably several thousand people, and a lot of
the paratrooper units that were deployed to take the National
Assembly were literally the same units that were sent into
crushes uprising in nineteen eighty, So this was in some

(02:09:38):
ways very very scary, right because these are like, again,
these are the units that were sent in to shoot
a bunch of fucking civilians in the streets in order
to keep military rule intact. However, this time these para
units just got their shthanded to them. So it's sort
of unclear exactly what was going on in the National Assembly.

(02:09:59):
It seemed like some National semi members were still there,
but somehow, and we don't part of how this happened,
which is protesters were just there's a video of I
think it was like the opposition leader. The protesters like
like pushed him up over a fence so he could
break into the National Assembly and get past the military barricades.
Like like one hundred and ninety lawmakers somehow like got

(02:10:22):
into the National Assembly and barricaded themselves in.

Speaker 2 (02:10:26):
This also shows a level of like dedication. Yeah that
I suspect none of none of our lovemakers would do. No,
they're not gonna they're not gonna break into the capital
when it's surrounded by military guard.

Speaker 3 (02:10:39):
You know, we had this with January sixth, right, and
like what what what did our congress people do dream
January sixth they all ran and hid.

Speaker 2 (02:10:46):
I mean these are slightly different circumstances.

Speaker 3 (02:10:48):
Yeah, this is true, but like but like you know, okay,
so if if you look at there's been a lot
of shit talking of the of the American people's willingness
to protest and stuff in the light of like watching
the Career, and people overturned this coup in like three hours.
And I will point out that in twenty twenty, this
was this was literally four years ago. Like we put

(02:11:09):
the President of the United States in a bunker. People
fought the Secret Service hand to hand outside the gates
of the White House. Like the police in this country
lost control of the centers of several major American cities.
So like Americans will fight, right, but can you imagine
like Nancy Pelosi or like like Chuck Schumer or whoever
it was around like trying to set up, like setting

(02:11:30):
up barricades to stop the army from like marching into
Like no, it's unreal. And these were good barricades too.
These were very well constructive barricades. These are barricades that
like are better than a lot of barricades I've seen
set up by protesters over the like in the US
over the last few years. And the consequence of this
was that the National Assembly just voted for the coup

(02:11:51):
to be over, because they can just vote to say
that the martial laws over. And then the military kind
of was just like, well shit and just kind of left.

Speaker 2 (02:12:01):
I mean they waited in the wings for a little bit. Yeah,
and we were all curious to see what the president
was gonna do after this. Emily was like, uh, nice,
tryser and I guess we will talk about that after
another message from these ads.

Speaker 3 (02:12:25):
And we are so back. We are so back. It
has never been more over for President UNI. That is true,
it has never been more over. So part of the
weird part about this is that you just like vanishes
for most of this, Like we don't hear from him
until like the morning when he announces that he's going
to roll back the martial law thing, but he needs

(02:12:46):
his cabinet there to do the vote, so he's gonna
do it later. I don't know. But the troops have
already all pulled out by this point and like they
go back to their barracks after the National Assembly is
like what the fuck. So there's been a lot of
haymade about how one hundred and ninety members of the
National Assembly showed up and every single one of them
voted to end martial law and like that's cool. But

(02:13:06):
I've seen a lot of people be like, oh, look
at how democratic the PPP, which is the right wing
party that UN's a part of, is from, like they
voted to do it, but like, okay, yes it was.
This was a unanimous vote. I need everyone to understand
that there were three hundred members of the National Assembly
and that means that means one hundred and ten of
them didn't show up, and that of the people who
showed up, there were only eighteen members. Yeah, of the
PPP who showed up to this now, and part of that,

(02:13:29):
like it is true, it is. It was a bit
difficult to get through the fucking military occupation fit with
paratroopers but everyone else you have managed to, so you know,
and UN's own party also just hates him because again,
like one of the scandals he's going down for is
like fucking with their primaries and like getting a bunch
of people who had safe seats, like losing their safe
seats so he could put his guys in. And again

(02:13:49):
he also tried to arrest the head of his own parties.
So like, these people don't like him for very immediate
person or reason is not because the PPP is somehow
like a party more committed to democracy than the Republican
Party is here like no, these people all suck, like,
oh god, But this leaves us with the aftermath of this,
and the first thing I want to kind of go

(02:14:12):
over is what the fuck were they doing? Because again,
if you look at the sequence of events here, right,
there's this coup, right, the martial law goes into effect,
the army backs it and tries to occupy the National Assembly,
but then the National Assembly votes that the martial law
is over, and then the army just leaves. Now what

(02:14:36):
if you go back to remembering when I was talking
about the beginning of this, right, seizing the National Assembly
is not something you are allowed to do in a
state of emergency or a martial law in position, right,
that's something explicitly the army is banned from doing. They
did it anyways, which means that like probably like a
bunch of generals are also going to prison for this.

(02:14:57):
But then they also immediately back down when it be
came clear that you know, they were gonna there was
going to be resistance, and that if they were going
to try to stop this, they were either wouldn't have
to beat the shit out of or just like actually
shoot a bunch of lawmakers in the National Assembly. And
I understand that that's a bad idea, and I get
why these people didn't want to do that, just like
from their own things politically, But if if you weren't

(02:15:17):
willing to do that, why did you do this in
the first place? Like, how did you think this was
gonna go? The only thing I could think of was
that they thought they could just should have. I thought
it was ten thirty at night, we can just shock
and awe everyone. Yeah, we'll just roll them over. But like,
do you know what country you were in?

Speaker 2 (02:15:34):
I mean, yeah, it's a massivest calculation. That's what makes
this the worst Cup since Bolivia.

Speaker 3 (02:15:39):
I think it's worse in Bolivia.

Speaker 2 (02:15:40):
Oh, absolutely, because like it shows a complete like disconnection
from understanding the country that you're in.

Speaker 3 (02:15:46):
What were they doing?

Speaker 2 (02:15:47):
Yeah, like the willingness of the people to like get
mobilized at ten thirty, yeah, and the willingness of your
own lawmakers, uh, to try to put like some level
of resistance to this, even if it's not like physically
fighting the art, which is something that I ended up doing,
which they did. They fought the army, Like, ah, what
a world.

Speaker 3 (02:16:08):
And also with Bolivia too, you know there's other Okay,
so a with Olivia, there's a lot of debate over
where that coup was real or not. I lean towards
it was. There's a lot of people think he was staged.
But also if it wasn't staged, the excuse they have
is that the general who was leading it was about
to get fired, so he just had to go, right.
It's like, well, yeah, okay, it looked like a completely
half cocked coup because it was they just they had

(02:16:29):
to go before he got fired. This one, there was
no time pressure. He could have just done this whenever
with better planning, And I don't know it's it's all
very very deeply weird in terms of what's happening next.
I mean Yun was finished anyways, Like he again he
had a twenty percent of proof of rating going into this.

(02:16:49):
Coming out of this, there's immediately a Democratic party is
trying to impeach him, Like a bunch of the PPP,
who's again supposed to be his party, are also going
along with it because they hate him. There was some
very funny comments from PPP guys who were like his supporters,
who were like, well he literally one of them said
that he did this thing and as anyone thought about
like the pressure of burden placed on him, maybe someone

(02:17:10):
should have gotten to talk to him or did this
because he was lonely, which is the most insane thing
I've ever heard of my life. Like he just he
just tried to argue that this guy you need a
coup because he was lonely. What the fuck?

Speaker 2 (02:17:21):
It's the in cell evolution. It's finally happening in South Korea.

Speaker 3 (02:17:26):
Yeah, and like he is going to get impeached. The
only way he's not going to get impeached is if
the judiciary steps had to save him. And I can't
imagine them trying it after again, he just tried to
do a coup. He's going to prison, like probably his
defense secretary is going to prison, Like the Defense Minister's
going to prison. Probably a bunch of military guys are
going to prison. Like this is it's so funny. They

(02:17:48):
have just effectively annihilated their own political power for a generation.
Like this faction of people who have been running the
country is just gone. I mean they'll still be the PPP, right,
this will be like conservatives, but like, they just have
obliterated themselves in maybe the most spectacular fashion I have
ever seen. And you know what happens when they are

(02:18:09):
sort of unclear? Is it right now? We're recording this Wednesday, Yeah,
Wednesday at like ten am. Yeah, so it's it's unclear
exactly what's gonna happen in the time between when this
when we record this and when this goes out, but
uns finished. This is it's pretty yeah, and I'm I'm
hoping that we see a serious attempt to actually like

(02:18:31):
deal with the fact that the army is ran by
a bunch of people who tried to do a coup.
We won't and we might well no like it. Here's
the thing in the US, absolutely not South Korea. Maybe
there's a chance, there's like a there is a slight
chance that people get purged from this, right and in
a similar way to like Lula kind of purging some

(02:18:52):
of the army.

Speaker 2 (02:18:53):
My South Korea does good things card is to already
full up because of yesterday.

Speaker 3 (02:18:57):
That's true.

Speaker 2 (02:18:58):
I can't imagine they're gonna you more because it's South Korea.

Speaker 3 (02:19:02):
Well, I will also say, like one of the things
that's happening is Korea is like major trade union federation
is like doing a general strike until until the impeachment happens.
So you know, there was a lot of pressure to
clean house here, and like a lot of Korean liberalism
is based on this, the sort of mythos of like
of the student protesters, and like the protesters, you brought

(02:19:23):
down the military dictatorship and trying to do a military
coup and immediately failing is like the best possible thing
you could have done for them. The consequences of this
for you and are going to be extremely bad. I
hope we get a better Korea out of this. I
hope this sort of starts to stem the tide of
the unhinged right wing surge that's been happening there for

(02:19:44):
a while now.

Speaker 2 (02:19:45):
Be n I said this was like the tip of
the bell curve. Yeah, in the global far right takeover. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:19:52):
I mean it's wow, it went bad. I may every
single right wing attempt to do this go this because
good lord, what.

Speaker 2 (02:20:02):
A heartwarming tale.

Speaker 8 (02:20:03):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (02:20:04):
Well that's that's been it for us today. You're at
It could happen here. Tune in tomorrow for more exciting
tales of political collapse.

Speaker 3 (02:20:15):
Yeah, and quite quite possibly, quite possibly, this is going
to happen to you too. And I want everyone to
understand that in terms of military cues in the last
six months, the protesters are two to zero in the
army's zero and two. So if this happens to you soon,
Whitchie very much might go get them. Welcome to You

(02:20:50):
could happen here a podcast that is quite often about
abortion in this country. I'm your host, Na Wong. Things
have been very bad under the last administration and the
administration before that, and the administration before that, and going
back a long long time, things have been not good.
They've been steadily getting worse, and there is a lot
of fear, and I think a lot of is very

(02:21:12):
justified that things are going to get even worse under Trump,
and to talk about what we need to be afraid
of and what we don't is Kate Bertash, who's the
executive director of the Digital Defense Fund, and also Crystal,
who's an abortion worker and also a volunteer for abortion hotlines.
So both of you two, welcome to the show.

Speaker 11 (02:21:31):
Excellent, Thanks for having us on.

Speaker 12 (02:21:33):
Yeah, thanks for having me.

Speaker 3 (02:21:35):
Yeah, I'm really excited to talk to you both, and
I'm also excited to let Kate talk a little bit
about what the Digital Defense Fund is.

Speaker 13 (02:21:42):
Excellent, thanks so much, longtime listener, first time caller.

Speaker 11 (02:21:45):
I suppose.

Speaker 2 (02:21:46):
So.

Speaker 13 (02:21:47):
The Digital Defense Fund is an organization that's been around
for actually since the last election. It was started in
response to Trump winning for the first time, and we're
an organization that was put together to provide free digital
security and technology resources for the front lines of what
then was just the abortion access movement. We've since moved
to support other variety of autonomy and liberation movements, but

(02:22:11):
we provide free digital security evaluations trainings. We do a
lot of project management work to help people set up
what they'd like to change about their systems and security
and we also help people pay for it, which is
a really wonderful way to get to kind of see
through our values. So I'm excited to be on here
today to talk a little bit more about the implications
for both organizations and individuals.

Speaker 3 (02:22:33):
The very first wave impact of this election has been
a lot of sort of fear about what's coming, and
I wanted to, I guess, ask you about what kinds
of fears you've been seeing and maybe talk a little
bit about which ones are more justified than others, because
I think, I mean, there's been some concern that I
think is justified as good, and there's also been some

(02:22:54):
stuff that is kind of not rooted in what the
threats are.

Speaker 13 (02:22:59):
Yeah, I think it's a great time anytime this happens
to sort of get to ask and answer the question,
which is like how do we know? And I think
we're sort of lucky in this way that we know
what are likely to be risks now to both people
who are seeking abortions as well as people who help
them get their folks as well, like Crystal, I know,
will provide some additional color to this as well, But
we know what kind of threats face people facing abortions

(02:23:22):
in those who help them, because unfortunately a lot of
these threats have been happening for the last several decades,
people have been prosecuted for suspicion of ending their own pregnancies.
We get a lot of really incredible and insightful data
from organizations like IF one how who put out these
reports that are called self care Criminalized, and they look
backwards across all of the different cases that have happened

(02:23:45):
to this space and try to come up with sort
of like these key aspects. And one of the big
things that we know that I'm sure we're going to
talk about a lot through this episode is that the
core way that people come to the attention of law
enforcement for seeking to allegedly end their own pregnancies is
through usually someone they know reporting them or someone responsible
for their care. So that might be like healthcare worker,

(02:24:06):
social worker, other representative agent of the state, and it
can be really devastating to kind of hear and I
think internalize that it's often people's family members like X
or friends, neighbor who might turn somebody in expecting or
misunderstanding that it is a crime to end your own pregnancy.

(02:24:26):
I think one of the things that's really hard about
this is that it involves some of the ways in which,
like I guess it's what you would call very unfortunately
typical policing practices, the way in which people's rights are
violated when they are interrogated, when they are pressured into
disclosing information. There's something called consent search that it unfortunately
ends up being a very common feature of these kinds

(02:24:47):
of cases, which is where you're put in a room
and you're talking to representive agent and state or a
police officer, and they sort of pressure you into agreeing
to unlock and disclose often your phone and other device
or to or whyse share information quote unquote voluntarily. And
it's easy to see why people kind of get pressured
into that. So that is something that tends to happen

(02:25:09):
in many kinds of prosecutions of crimes or alleged crimes.
And I think it's hard for a lot of people
to imagine what that's like to be pulled over and
searched in this way, or like they're often like people
are not the targeted victims of something like stop and frisk,
and so it's sort of hard to imagine in your
mind the way in which somebody is information or their

(02:25:31):
data or their case comes to the attention of law enforcement,
and so we like tend to then imagine these other
threats that feel perhaps closer to our daily experience, especially
as like often people who are not racially targeted by police,
who are not targeted by the family policing system, or
have their pregnancies surveiled by the hospital systems. So people
like to imagine then that. I think a big one

(02:25:53):
that we all hear and I think we're all going
to take a deep breath at the same time is
period tracking apps was kind of remarkable, as Crystal.

Speaker 11 (02:26:02):
I'm sure you've heard this too, mm hmm yea.

Speaker 13 (02:26:05):
And I would love to lease space, Crystal for you
to add any context to sort of like the threats
that are that are present versus stuff that people imagine.
I know we're going to spend a lot of time
talking about our friend, the period driver.

Speaker 14 (02:26:18):
So at the time of recording, it's been like about
almost a month since election day, and uh, you know,
I answer the phone for a couple of different places,
places for both work and volunteering, and there's been a
lot of fear, you know, and not saying that like,
abortion access has been without fear up until this point,

(02:26:38):
but people are very afraid. And you know, I'm getting
a lot of questions about people asking like can I
be arrested for giving you my information, funding in my ID,
giving you my real name? Ordering medication online? Can the
United States get my records if I order from this

(02:26:59):
provider overseas? Such as women on web and just yeah,
people asking like can I be arrested?

Speaker 12 (02:27:05):
You know, can I do this? Will I be in trouble?

Speaker 14 (02:27:08):
And it is something that is going We're going to
see an increase in criminalization and increase in abortion bans.
It is a complicated answer, you know. The strait of
it is that yet you can access abortion medication online,
even if you're in a band state, even if you're
in a state with a total abortion ban, you can
order the medication from reliable resources online and have it

(02:27:30):
mail to you. And people do this every day, hundreds,
hundreds and hundreds of people do this every day without
any issue. But there is also risk and it's kind
of like what Kate was saying, where people tend to
it seems like people don't know what the risk has
been or what it looks like because like Kate was saying,
there's like I been all these years of pregnancy criminalization,

(02:27:52):
and we know what it looks like, and it tends
to not be what people are worrying about right now,
where people seem to be thinking like that the police
are going to come up arrest them for putting in
this order along with hundreds of other people in a
given day, or that the police or somehow are going
to get their period tracker information on their on their phone,
and you know, like, of course, you know, practice dicial

(02:28:14):
security in a way that makes you feel comfortable. Like
if you don't want to use a period tracking app,
you know there are safer ones to use, or you
don't have to use it. But the fact of the
matter is is that even if you are using pen
and paper to record your period, if you have an
abusive partner, they're going to be able to take pictures
and collaborate with police. So the biggest threats are always,

(02:28:35):
you know, as the data shown, like Kate was saying,
going to be healthcare workers and the people that you
know such as partners, family members, neighbors, friends, et cetera,
who are going to get access to pictures, screenshots.

Speaker 12 (02:28:51):
And of course, the police and warrants.

Speaker 14 (02:28:53):
It's not going to look like the Handmad's sale, where
somebody's like coming in and going and forcing you to
do something and.

Speaker 12 (02:28:59):
Dress a certain way, et cetera. It's not going to
be like anything new and fancy.

Speaker 14 (02:29:02):
It's going to be the same old police surveillance and
criminalization that we've been seeing. But there are ways in
which we can protect ourselves when we're doing that. When
somebody calls and they ask me, can I get in
trouble for ordering this medication online? And people can get
really in trouble for anything in the United States. You know,
if the police want to go after you for something,

(02:29:24):
they're going to find something, So you just have to
not leave evidence. Like so, yeah, you can order the
medication online, but you can also use signal and we
can know that Kate's probably going to go more into this,
but you can make sure you have disappearing messages. You
can use encrypted emails and search engines. You have to
make sure you're thinking about who can see your data

(02:29:44):
and you know where your data is being recorded. And
that's really like if you want to protect yourself in
terms of avoiding criminalization for abortion and pregnancy outcomes and
you know, having a secure and safe abortion in the
United it stays. Then you have to look at the
basics like this, And I'm going to let Kate talk
about that a little bit more because I know that

(02:30:05):
you have all the good information that the Digital Defense
Line has looked into about the apps and then how
to delete data and what data to delete and how
to think about this.

Speaker 13 (02:30:15):
Yeah, I think one of the really tough things right
is that, like so like neither I or Crystal or attorneys,
but often people are just getting a lot of advice
from attorneys, and some of our work here is to
make sure that like when you get sort of this
idea of when something might be criminalized, or often like
in this circumstance where we just like don't know actually
how it's going to show up a lot, yet we're

(02:30:36):
trying to think about sort of what are the ways
we can have our digital devices and our technology sort
of support us with these by default type of settings.
One of the things that's really tough to I think
understand until you've been through it is sort of like
what it looks like when you go through any kind
of investigation. I think the other hard kind of like

(02:30:57):
context to get from the way we talk about it
now is that a lot of how pregnancy is criminalized
that sort of scaffolding that infrastructure was built during the
drug war. So one of the most common kinds of
pregnancy criminalization in America is drug testing people who are
pregnant or come to give birth without their consent. And
you know, so we basically consider like being an alleged

(02:31:18):
drug user to be the sort of like primary way
that our decision of like how much the digital evidence
matters has like kind of come to take shape. So
often when an investigation is happening, the police will look
for where are all the sources of information I can
find about this, because like the human body is like
not super compliant with like digital forensic evidence.

Speaker 11 (02:31:39):
Every dadiary processes.

Speaker 13 (02:31:41):
I think it's like one of the most magical things
about humans is that, you know, our bodies defy the
letter of law in so many wonderful ways. But that
means that they sort of have to then go to
this like digital body of evidence to kind of tell
the story or as like all the wonderful lawyers that
advise us, like to say, to sort of like be
able to draw the dots or the blndes between the
dots and form this kind of like coherent set of

(02:32:03):
facts of what happened between one moment to the next.
So often when we're like imagining all of the data
that lives in our phone, because unfortunately, in many cases,
when you are perhaps coerced into consenting to the search
of a device, they will often take your phone and
then have you unlock it. It gets plugged into a
device that makes clone of the entire drive, and then

(02:32:25):
they can sort of with many different techniques kind of
leisurely look through it for keywords to kind of tell
where there might be evidence somewhere on your phone that you,
for example, when on the internet, search for and purchased
abortion medication. So yes, like period track and data might
be one portion of that. But unfortunately, in all the
cases that we've seen, or at least in most of

(02:32:46):
the ones that we're most familiar with, all of that
quote unquote plain text data. So where you've just written
out in your own unencrypted words into a search bar
in the search engine on your phone, or you've sent
a text message to a very close contact with somebody
telling them how you feel about your pregnancy. That you
desire to end it, perhaps your plan to buypills, even

(02:33:09):
the receipt that comes into your inbox. It's not necessary
then to go to all these companies and go file
a you know, for a warrant and get all that information,
because now it's in just plain text, quote unquote on
your phone, and that is far more information than the
like abstract information that might come out of a period tracker.
So unfortunately cops don't tend to use these in cases

(02:33:30):
that we've seen because it's quite simply not necessary. That
kind of like plain text admission of your state of
mind or the statement of your intent has unfortunately been
the sort of core evidence that comes up. And I
think this has like a lot of like really quite
sad implications. I know, in prior to prepare for this episode,
we were discussing a couple of cases that I know
folks might be more familiar with. A big one that

(02:33:51):
came up is, you know, the case of a mother
and daughter out of Nebraska who were having a discussion
around allegedly helping the daughter to find and end for
her pregnancy over Meta's Facebook messenger. And I think what
I find really quite devastating about it for many reasons,
is that these messages were actually ones that like I
think any of us could hope to have with a

(02:34:12):
very supportive parent or other person in our life. Is like,
why we have, you know, these conversations so that we
can feel connected and supported through such a complex and
affecting process. It then becomes very sad to me that
it becomes a criminal matter just because it was in
a place that that conversation, you know, Meta did not
have this family's back in terms of encrypting those messages

(02:34:33):
or ensuring that they were free to speak of what
they wish when they wish by default. So I think
like when we start to give out advice, it's been
important for us at Digital Defense Fund to kind of
work backwards. I know it's been an existential crisis I
think for everybody in the digital security space to know
that like the list of advice I could give you
on how to protect yourself when going through these transactions,

(02:34:55):
or when seeking support, or like just having a normal
you know, questions and going on the Internet being able
to google them and get them answered. That we have
to kind of like start from the basics, because like
you have the right to find information from reliable resources.
You have the right to buy pills from a reliable source.
You have the right to like seek that kind of
connection and support from people in your life. And so

(02:35:17):
we're trying to cut down on like all the infinite
amount of advice that we could give and try to
like narrow it to like what is actionable, what has
the greatest impact potentially in the cases we've seen.

Speaker 11 (02:35:27):
And I know we're going to dig into it, but
I would love to.

Speaker 13 (02:35:30):
Leave room to tack a little bit more about that whenever,
it's a good time in this conversation to go through
our top three action items.

Speaker 3 (02:35:37):
So before we get to that, unfortunately we are under capitalism,
which means we have to do these ads. Moving back shortly.

Speaker 12 (02:35:56):
And we are back another lawsuit. This is a little different.
It's not a criminal charge.

Speaker 14 (02:36:00):
It was a lawsuit in Texas, and I want to
bring up just as an example of like, how are
you know our data can betray us.

Speaker 12 (02:36:08):
In these moments?

Speaker 14 (02:36:09):
Is there was and this was a really silly lawsuit
has been dismissed, But there was a Texas man who
filed a wrongful death lawsuit accusing three women of helping
his exoife obtained abortion pills.

Speaker 12 (02:36:21):
I believe. I think it was dismissed last year, or.

Speaker 14 (02:36:23):
Maybe it was earlier this year. It wasn't even under
the aid and event in law in Texas. It was actually,
you know, they say, sought a different avenue. There actually
hasn't been a successful lawsuit against an abortion seeker under
Aida bet law or any other law in Texas in
the last two years, which I think is just something
worth bringing up, is that, you know, we actually haven't
seen that happen yet other than this case.

Speaker 12 (02:36:46):
But what happened in this.

Speaker 14 (02:36:47):
Case is this person was planning on terminating their pregnancy.
They were talking to some friends who were helping them out,
and their iPhone was synced up to their iPad. So
if anyone's familiar with that, you have your your I
messages appear on both devices. The I messages that are
coming to your phone are also going to be going
to your iPad. And her ex husband took pictures of

(02:37:11):
the I messages coming through on her iPad, and that
was what was used. Even though the lawsuit was dismissed
because it was a very silly lawsuit, total waste of time.
But that is the kind of thing that we really
you really need to be asking yourself, is you know,
where are my messages going?

Speaker 12 (02:37:29):
Who is seeing my messages, who is seeing my emails?
What is it connected to?

Speaker 8 (02:37:33):
Yeah?

Speaker 12 (02:37:33):
Because yeah, because it can just look like that too.

Speaker 11 (02:37:36):
I would say that's exactly right.

Speaker 13 (02:37:38):
Is I think I had a good friend who works
in another area of security who and this is like
how we learn these things, right, is that folks who
work in the parts of security that deal with, for example,
intimate partner violence or the sort of quote unquote in
household surveillance threat model I think is vastly underestimated. I
can't recall the figures at the moment, but one of
those more recent reports from if one how actually had

(02:38:00):
detailed just how frequently actually that sort of like how
it is also this like intimate partner violence situation that
comes up also in a regnancy or abortion criminalization case.
And so you know, this person challenged me to think
about the exact threat model of the unlocked iPad on
the on the family coffee table and thinking about like
when we share information and we share devices kind of

(02:38:23):
like where does it go? So like, actually, our first
piece of recommendation that we often give is is it
can sound deceptively simple and it doesn't sound technical at all,
but it is to think about like who you are
telling about your experience and about like you know, your
abortion or wanting to have an abortion, and then understanding
whether you've like been clear about your boundaries, like do

(02:38:43):
you expect them to not share or tell with others?
Like can you delete any messages with them? Would they
ask if you ask them after the fact to delete
things for you, would they absolutely do that? I think
you've can be really challenging to kind of like zoom
out and realize, like you know, it's often not as
easy as it sounds to like kind of do this
mental inventory and think about all the different ways that

(02:39:03):
like me and my best friend talk, or you know,
when I mentioned things to people offhand, we don't have
a really good I think like social practice of you know,
understanding the implication of like sharing other people's information without
their permission, and so, like you know, it's very impactful
but also very difficult, and it can't be very individual
for all of us to kind of think more carefully

(02:39:24):
about with whom we share things and how we ask
people to keep our confidence, and how we can even
offer each other the ability to like delete things that
we don't want to exist indefinitely. I think one of
the biggest sort of existential struggles that crosses over to
where people get support for abortions from like organizations, also
includes the fact that I know has been discussed many

(02:39:45):
times on this podcast, that there is a difference in
how much information is kept depending on where you were
having a conversation on your phone. So an SMS text message,
those little green bubbles that go back and forth between
you and possibly other people who are on iOS like
iOS and Android combination conversation you're friends with and an
Android might have a green bubble come back to you.

(02:40:07):
That basically means that that is going as an SMS
text message to your phone carrier, and that means that
it's going quote unquote in plain text, totally unencrypted to
the cell tower, and it's being held by that phone carrier, unencrypted,
readable as it is as you typed it in as
far as we know forever. It can vary depending on

(02:40:28):
whether or not you move to a different carrier. But unfortunately,
phone carriers have a very long history also of disclosing
that information readily on request, either from law enforcement or
from other agencies, and I think that is troubling. I think,
like no person would really like to know that, regardless
of what that you intend to do with your text messages.
But it's why we often then encourage people as like
sort of a second step to try and use encrypted

(02:40:51):
chat with Signal or another trusted and encrypted chat. Again
sounds overly simplistic, but I think having those disappearing messages on,
especially between people who are seeking support from one another,
whether it's somebody in your life or another organization that's
helping you to get your abortion, there really is something
to that ability to again speak freely, to be best friends,

(02:41:12):
helping your friends you know, allegedly get abortion medication, or
to being a mom you know, there to support your child.
No matter what, I think, it's just something really wonderful
about how using disappearing messages with Signal like reflects the
values that we actually have already with each other and
just like make sure that technology companies or corporations or
law enforcement don't get to get in the way of

(02:41:33):
how we want to live our lives.

Speaker 14 (02:41:34):
So yeah, yeah, so really supporting somebody through an abortion
includes digital security.

Speaker 12 (02:41:41):
Yes, same with providers to people who are answering the phones.
Digital security is one of the number one priorities.

Speaker 14 (02:41:46):
And yeah, if you're supporting somebody with an abortion, that
should be your number one priority as well.

Speaker 8 (02:41:51):
Well.

Speaker 13 (02:41:51):
And like I bet people like you know when when
you talk to people like you're often I imagine one
of the first people that they're expressing themselves to it
all about what they're going through. And you know, I
know that that the point is to help people get
to their procedure, but often they're bringing a lot of
other things with them and they're not sure.

Speaker 11 (02:42:07):
If they're important.

Speaker 13 (02:42:08):
I remember, like you mentioning this, but just the amount
of weight that is for y'all as a sport too.

Speaker 12 (02:42:13):
Yeah, and like people are scared for good reason.

Speaker 14 (02:42:16):
You know, we do live in a fascist country and
a police surveillance state, so you know, their fears are founded,
but there are a lot of excellent resources. They're not alone,
like you know, you and I know this case, but
there are so many people who's got the back of
everyone who needs an abortion, and you know, you may
not know the safe way of going about it, but

(02:42:38):
there are people who are committed to digital security and safety.
And you're in you're and you avoiding criminalization, So you know,
part of the service is also reassuring people of that too,
that it is possible to have a safe abortions.

Speaker 12 (02:42:52):
Even still, the next thing that.

Speaker 14 (02:43:03):
I know that we were talking about Kate in terms
of like really practical, like what you can do now
to protect yourself is having a plan for when you
need to go get health care and you have to
interface with like a medical team, a medical site such
as an er a clinic.

Speaker 12 (02:43:20):
I'm an obgyn, a doctor of any kind.

Speaker 14 (02:43:23):
Because I think I believe the number one source of
criminalization like who's reporting who who is criminal? Like who's
calling the police, who's reporting these and giving over the
information is as often healthcare worker.

Speaker 12 (02:43:39):
I believe that is the number one source.

Speaker 14 (02:43:41):
So you know, you do that is something to keep
you to I am a healthcare worker, but it's just
it's just a fact that that's something that we all
need to be mindful of. And as a patient somebody
is seeking healthcare, it's completely appropriate to be thinking of
your own security and your safety when you're if you
need to access health care. So you know, one thing
is that luckily abortion is very safe and very effective,

(02:44:05):
and if you don't feel comfortable going to an er
for very good reasons. There are many good reasons to
not want to go to r including costs, including your
safety and security, the chance of criminalization.

Speaker 12 (02:44:19):
There is a free medical resource and a free legal.

Speaker 14 (02:44:22):
Resource that you can call. I'm going to talk about
the medical resource first. There is the Miscarriage an Abortion
Hotline or MA hotline dot org. But you can call
and get some you know, feedback from a doctor about Hey,
do I even need to go to the er?

Speaker 12 (02:44:39):
Is this normal?

Speaker 14 (02:44:40):
Is something wrong? You actually can run that by a
safe person before just going to the er. And that's
like one example of like having a plan, you know,
like Okay, I think I might need.

Speaker 8 (02:44:51):
To go to the er.

Speaker 12 (02:44:53):
You know, let me check with a trusted resource.

Speaker 14 (02:44:55):
Let me check with the Miscarriage and Abortion hotline if
I can get some feedback on what's going on with
some of my symptoms. And you know, it's like this
extra kind of added support that you can access as
a pregnant person or you know, if you're having a miscarriage,
if you're having an abortion, to assess your risk and
to see if you can avoid even going to a

(02:45:15):
medical slight given that you know, going to an emergency
room in a banned state is something that does increase
the risk of criminalization.

Speaker 13 (02:45:26):
Yes, and I think it was from our peers M
and a hotline, and then I know the other hotline
that if you have questions, also, the repro Legal Hotline
is a wonderful resource that I know in all the
show notes will include these. We try to include along
with the miscarriage and Abortion hotline, so you have folks
you can call who are professionals to ask about medical questions.

(02:45:46):
If folks you can call who answer questions about legal
questions about your abortion or pregnancy experience. I know that
it's really hard because often when folks are in a
hospital setting, we're sort of socialized to disclose everything. You know,
we want to tell our doctor what's wrong and tell
them everything we took, and you know, you worry it

(02:46:07):
might be relevant. But I was reassured, I think by
many other professionals in the space that doctors treat based
on the symptoms that you present with, regardless of how
they got there. You might be at a physician where
you don't know, so you know, if you just tell
folks what's going on with your body, what you are seeing,
what you were feeling and experiencing. It is their job
to treat you regardless of what you choose to share.

(02:46:29):
And I would say that that's actually a true regardless
of what healthcare condition you come into the ear with,
it is your right to only disclose as much as
you feel safe doing so. So I think, like that
was something that I know, again we're not used to
thinking about that as like a digital security measure, but
it is an information in security measure, and I think
an operational security measure that you know, we've had to

(02:46:50):
like then realize that that's actually probably almost more important
to tell people before we start getting into this nitty
gritty of like things to do with your phone, is
to understand that those principles that we believe that you know,
the human again, the human body is very varied and
how it experiences something like pregnancy, miscarriage, and abortion, and
that you know, folks have a responsibility to treat you

(02:47:11):
regardless of you know, what's in your phone or what
happened before that, or the like statement of facts that
are relevant to a courtroom and not to your care.

Speaker 3 (02:47:19):
So, yeah, do you too have anything else you want
to make sure the audience knows before we head out.

Speaker 11 (02:47:25):
Yeah, just kind of like.

Speaker 13 (02:47:26):
One more piece. It's kind of our last piece of
the puzzle, So you know, just to reiterate because I
know it's good to hear things repeated again, you know,
with the actual kind of pregnancy criminalization, digital security advice,
we talk about understanding who you're disclosing stuff too, making
sure they are clear on your expectations. Try to if
you can have conversations with them in a secure place
or a private place like signal with disappearing messages on.

(02:47:48):
For our second item, we're going to make a plan
for if we need to get care after the fact
and ensure that we're trying to again have our support people.
Also understand that you know, doctors treat you based on
the symptoms you present with That is I don't have
to tell them anything else that you do not wish
to disclose. And the third thing is that something that
I think as digital security practitioners we kind of forget
is super important, which is that like you know, I

(02:48:11):
think I run into this conflict where as like experts
or smart people, we try to like imagine in our mind,
like how we would have this perfectly like footprint free abortion,
you know like this like use signal, use Tori's bitcoin,
kind of like strange way of architecting, you know, privacy
in our mind, And I call it the ghost abortion,
like that it's it's a myth. You can't have one.

(02:48:32):
There's no such thing as an abortion that leads no footprint.
But I think we forget then that it actually is
super meaningful to delete what's within our power to delete.
So our third recommendation for folks is to like be
aware of what's collected and then ensure that you know that.

Speaker 11 (02:48:46):
You can delete your browser history.

Speaker 13 (02:48:48):
You can delete your Google Map's history from like driving
in to the clinic. You can delete your emails, you
can delete messages on certain platforms, and I think, just
like understanding that deleting what you can is actually super meaningful.

Speaker 11 (02:49:00):
Well, I actually didn't know untill.

Speaker 13 (02:49:01):
I got this job that certain platforms, like even Google products,
like if you delete something from it, it is purge
from the servers like something like two and a half
months later. So when you delete stuff, it's very meaningful.
I think there you get more options than ever to
decide like how long you want to keep something, And
it does make it so that that primary thing we
talked about, like if somebody were to take my phone
from me and to like you know, make a clone

(02:49:23):
of it and try to look through it, at least
it's deleted. That copy is no longer on my device.
Even if they would have to go to like you know,
get a warrant later, that is still great. It still
gives me and my council time to respond and also
allows me to access my right to do process. And
I think so like these are like these three simple
things I know that will give to link that our
guide that kind of puts this all in a row

(02:49:43):
and very plain language. We also have a Spanish language
guide for it as well. But just to know that,
like you know, these things are within our power. I
think it's really easy to get tangled up in the
idea of like abstract data and things that are really
tough for us to always know when they're generated, like
ad tracker data or you know, who is reselling or
doing something with my period tracking apps. There are great

(02:50:04):
options that are local only to your phone, like Yuki app.
If you are concerned about that other apps seeing whether
or not they use best practice of security. If they've
responded and said like how they would respond to a
legal request.

Speaker 11 (02:50:15):
That's awesome.

Speaker 13 (02:50:15):
I think that just sort of taking that uncertainty away
is great because tracking your period is really important. As
Crystal would tell you, it is an essential way that
you're going to know how pregnant you are and find
the option that's safest for your circumstances. So yeah, and
that I'll pass to Crystal for anything else you think
our folks should know before we depart.

Speaker 14 (02:50:32):
Yeah, tracking your period is important because if you don't
know what's going on with your period and you get pregnant,
it can delay your care.

Speaker 12 (02:50:42):
And you know, optimally you're.

Speaker 14 (02:50:44):
Getting the safest, quickest, most comfortable care for you, right,
so it's really good to track that.

Speaker 12 (02:50:51):
I use Yuki.

Speaker 14 (02:50:52):
What I love about Yuki is that it has a
pass code, and it stores everything locally and you can
set to autoda your data and I love all of
those things. So you know, and you know, I don't
like using my paper calendar. If you love using your
paper calendar, go use your paper camp, you know, whatever
you want to do. But it is very important to

(02:51:13):
know when your last period was because it can just
make your care more timely. And that's really important given
the abortion restrictions and the abortion bands. Now we are
only you know, admittedly they're going to get worse. This
is going to get less safe. There is going to
be greater risk of criminalization. So when people call, when
people call and they ask like can I access pills.

Speaker 12 (02:51:35):
Yes you can. You know, no matter what Trump does.

Speaker 14 (02:51:38):
You're going to be able to get abortion pills. There
are countries all over the world that have total abortion
bands and they have these abortion.

Speaker 12 (02:51:47):
Pills all the time. You know, it's not new in America.

Speaker 14 (02:51:51):
But you know, you do have to have a digital
security plan while you're doing that, Like so, yes, you
can order pills online, but yes, also have a digital
security plan and keep this stuff in mind. It's really
it's part of your healthcare plan now.

Speaker 13 (02:52:03):
Yeah, because you have the right to use safe, accessible,
common sense like amazing technology products to actually obtain the
abortion that you want. We really really do believe that
like that part of autonomy. It includes digital autonomy as
well as bottle of autonomy. They're all part and parsonally
can't have one without the other. So thanks for having

(02:52:24):
us on.

Speaker 12 (02:52:25):
Yeah, thanks theah.

Speaker 3 (02:52:27):
Yeah, and I want to close with one more thing
that is related to this, but it's also what general advice.
Don't talk to cops. Oh god, you know, I think
that the common thing people say it is it is
legal for them to lie to you, And that is true,
but it's not just that as legal for them to
lie to you. It is their job to lie to you.
You cannot trust a single word that comes out of
their mouths because it is their job to get you

(02:52:47):
to confess to a crime or to get information out
of you. They'll let you confess your crime, so invoke
your right to remain silent, get a fucking lawyer, don't
talk to them. And you know, listen, this is advice.
It's not just coming from me, right like this, This
is the advice you will get from every single person
who does who does any kind of from offense. This
is what you'll get from a public defender. This is
what you'll get from anyone who has even sort of

(02:53:10):
interacted with the legal system. And this is also true
even if they tell you, oh, you're not a suspect,
you're just a blah blah blah. We're trying to get information.
It is their job to lie to you. Think about
it roughly the same way of like if you're dealing
with like a country secret police. How much information would
you give them? The answer is do not. Simply do
not do this.

Speaker 13 (02:53:29):
Exactly, and you know, no, no matter what that there
are people again like Crystal Sapho will support you. Yeah,
there are amazing teams across the United States, from medical
support to legal support. We're there for you and they
would all, I think wholeheartedly endorse as do we. Yes,
please do not talk to cops. And that's a great
note to end on.

Speaker 8 (02:53:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:53:47):
Yeah, well, thank you to you both for coming on.
And maybe we live to see a world better than
this one where you could just do this stuff and
not have to have any concerns.

Speaker 12 (02:53:55):
Yeah, one day, but until then we can do this
very securely.

Speaker 11 (02:54:01):
Yes, we got our own backs. We can do this together.
Thanks for having us on.

Speaker 1 (02:54:08):
Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week
from now until the heat death of the universe.

Speaker 11 (02:54:13):
It could happen.

Speaker 6 (02:54:14):
Here is a production of cool Zone Media.

Speaker 1 (02:54:16):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 2 (02:54:26):
You can now find sources for it could happen here,
listed directly in episode descriptions.

Speaker 11 (02:54:30):
Thanks for listening,

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