It Could Happen Here Weekly 160

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

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

Speaker 3 (00:25):
Hi.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
Everyone, it's me James, and I'm coming at you today
with one of these little requests that I make sometimes
when there's something that we would like you to do,
when it's very important to do. So today I want
to talk to you about Syria and specifically Northeast Syria.
So with the world's eyes fixed on Syria, many are
rightly celebrating as a brutal dictatorship of Bashara Lasad comes
to an end. But for Kurdish and other minority communities,

(00:49):
recent days have bought violent attacks, ethnic cleansing and occupation
by Turkey's back Jahadis groups in an attempt to take
advantage of the chaos by crushing the Rajava Revolution. Turkey
and it's most openly committing war crimes against the regions
autonomous communities. Many thousands have already been forced to be
displaced and thousands more are in danger. To make matters

(01:09):
worth this remains largely absent from the mainstream media reporting
on Syria. If you'd like to share your solidarity with
the people of northern and Eastern Syria, please call on
Congress to take urgent action by passing the emergency legislation
to stop the violence, hold Turkey accountable, and commit US
sport to the Syrian Democratic forces and the diverse communities
under their protection. If you want to take action today,

(01:31):
you can go to defend Rajaba dot org. That's d
E F E N d R oja va dot org.
If you are able to the most effective action we
can take right now is to call a couple of representatives,
one representative and one Senator.

Speaker 4 (01:46):
A representative would be Gregory Meeks. He's from New York.

Speaker 1 (01:49):
He's a Democrat. He is a ranking member of the
House Foreign Affairs Committee. His phone number is two zero
two two two five three four six one Leevlon Bee.
Senator James rish He's an Idaho Republican. He is a
ranking member's Senate Foreign Relations committee. His phone number would
be two zero two two two four two seven five two.

(02:10):
If you'd like to have some talking points, you can
find those on Defendbrajaba dot org. If you'd like to
donate financially instead, especially to this humanitarian aid effort for
the tens of thousands of people who have been displaced
by the SNA's advances, you can donate to two organizations
that I would suggest to. First would be Heavier Sre
the Curtis Red Crescent. That's h E YVA s O

(02:35):
R dot com and you want to go slash e
n If you want to see their website in English,
you can donate there. The other one will be the
Free Burma Rangers who are currently working in Raka. I
was talking to my friend Habat who works with them.
You can donate to them at www dot free Free
Burma b U r m A Rangers dot com. We

(02:57):
will put all of this in the show notes, although
if you're driving you have to write them down. Those
are the concrete ways that we can help right now
and what is unfolding as a very terrible situation in
No Syria. Thanks, I hope you do an episode.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
Welcome back to it. Could happen to hear a podcast
about Garrison Davis talking to me. Also, the world falling apart?
How do you feel about that? Gear? How you doing?

Speaker 3 (03:22):
I'm pretty used to it by now, honestly. Yeah, we've
been doing this whole thing for quite a quite a while.

Speaker 2 (03:28):
You sure have.

Speaker 3 (03:29):
Have you noticed that some of these some of these
cabinet picks are a little funny, They're a little bit odd.

Speaker 4 (03:37):
Have you noticed that yet? I don't know. I get
kind of a funny feeling about some of these guys.

Speaker 2 (03:42):
You've heard about this? Are you hearing about this? Yeah?
I don't love it either, Gear. They don't seem cool
and good.

Speaker 3 (03:50):
I mean, not all of them are like sticking around.
I guess you know. Matt Gatz is now out of
the job. Tragic, kind of like Icarus. He flew he
flew too close to an elementary sc.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
Yeah, we've already got our scare Mucci. I was gonna
make a Scaremuccie joke, but your joke was much better.

Speaker 3 (04:08):
It was a really fast turnaround for Gates too. Yeah,
and now we're all watching Pete to see if he
if cures the top job at the Pentagon. But today
we're talking about this other guy named Cash Patel. How
do you feel about Cash Ptel, Robert.

Speaker 2 (04:23):
Uh, not thrilled, kind of worry, not thrilled. Matt Gates
really seemed like the kind of guy you used to
make your sketchy Secret police and Cash Pattel as I
guess your backup to that guy.

Speaker 3 (04:36):
Totally, yeah, or at least, like I don't know. Cash
is different in a few ways, Like he does a
lot more kind of dirty work because he's not like
important as a person. He just wants to be seen
by Daddy Trump. And this episode, we're gonna get into
a little bit of Cash's backstory, what his plans are
for the FBI as he is now nominated for the
position of being director of the FBI, as well as

(04:59):
kind of what Cash been up to in the four
years since Trump's been out of office. So let's just
start all the way back to the beginning for background
on mister Patel here. Okay, So, Cash Pattel was born
in New York, but after graduating law school in two
thousand and five, he worked as a public defender in
Florida for nine years before becoming a federal prosecutor in

(05:21):
the National Security Division of the DOJ. He didn't really
want to be a public defender. It's that he really
couldn't get any other jobs because he wasn't like that's skilled.
So he ended up just working as a public defender,
even though it wasn't really what he wanted to do
out of law. But once he got to the DOJ,
he worked as a terrorism prosecutor. According to a DoD profile,

(05:43):
Patel quote led investigations spanning multiple theaters of conflict and
oversaw the successful prosecution of criminals aligned with al Qaeda, ISIS,
and other terroot groups unquote. Patel also worked with quote
counter terrorism units to conduct collaborative global targeting operations against
high value terrorism targets unquote.

Speaker 2 (06:02):
Right, Okay, I'm sure he was good at that job.
I'm sure he didn't have any really embarrassing failures during
that period of time.

Speaker 3 (06:12):
No, No, I say that just for kind of his
like more like surveillance background. But we will certainly get
to his ability to complete these jobs on a reliable
basis and like. Although that info is directly from the
DoD's website, Patel himself has exaggerated his career record, claiming
in a YouTube podcast to have been the quote unquote

(06:33):
lead prosecutor in the case against the twenty twelve Benghazi attackers.
Patel actually was not even part of the trial team,
was only a junior staff member at the DOJ at
the time, and he was removed from this case for
clashing with the US Attorney's office. But this incident kind
of marks the start of a few unfortunate events in

(06:53):
his career that really started to kind of turn Patel
against the justice system. To the New York Times, in
twenty sixteen, Patel was thrown out of a courtroom for
wearing quote rumpled khakis, boat shoes and a too small
borrowed jacket unquote.

Speaker 2 (07:11):
I hate that he's got on my cousin Vinnie in
his record, because that movie is great and it gets
me on his side in a way I definitely shouldn't be.
Did he Did he come in next wearing like a
funeral director's tuxedo or a fucking band leader's tuxedo or whatever.
I don't know how to describe the tuxedo Vinie Weares
in the scene after that, anyway.

Speaker 3 (07:33):
No, he was just kicked out of the courtroom, with
the judge saying, quote if you want to be a
lawyer dressed like a lawyer unquote. Now this judge was
also like a racist asshole. Not defending the judge here.

Speaker 2 (07:45):
And to be clear, Cash Bettel was not dating Marisitome.

Speaker 4 (07:48):
He could never pull Marsitome.

Speaker 2 (07:50):
He could never pull I mean, honestly jokes, who can
That's yeah.

Speaker 3 (07:59):
But this incident is an important part of his career trajectory.
A profile in The Atlantic details Patel as growing increasingly
frustrated and disillusioned by his failure to navigate and rise
up in the justice system, just collecting more and more
personal grievances that fuel an animosity towards the bureaucracy of
the legal system, based on people's apparent unwillingness to help

(08:19):
him excel in his own career. But in twenty eighteen,
Patel got his really first like big break, with Republican
Representative Devin and Nunez hiring Patel to be the House
Intelligence Committee's lead investigator to disrupt the Special Council investigation
into Russian interference in the twenty sixteen election. Trump was
impressed enough with Patel's work under Nunez that he gave

(08:42):
Patel a job on the National Security Council and later
served as chief of staff to Acting Secretary of Defense
Christopher Miller. Trump mused about having Patel as deputy director
of the FBI or director of the CIA in late
twenty twenty after the election, but this led to harsh
resistance from within his own administration, with ag Bill Barr

(09:03):
saying that Patel would only become FBI director quote over
my dead body, unquote. So I don't know if we'll have
any updates on that, yeah say. But instead, back in
twenty twenty, Trump just put Patel on the Pentagon transition team.
Trump basically tasked Patel was doing dirty work and awarded

(09:25):
him with promotions for following orders. Patel advised on the
Ukraine impeachment, spread conspiracy theories that Ukraine, not Russia, meddled
in the twenty sixteen election, created a list of intelligence
agency officials to fire in February of twenty twenty, and
helped manage the now dismissed a classified documents case against Trump.
The former deputy national advisor to Trump, Charles Kupperman, said

(09:49):
in an interview quote Trump wanted to make Cash a
political executioner to root out and fire individuals on the
White House staff who weren't being as loyal as he
thought they should be unquote. So that's kind of a
good look at him as a person, and like what
Cash's rule is like specifically for Trump and with the

(10:10):
possibility of the justice system becoming just more and more
of like a tool to target Trump's political rivals, Cash
is the exact guy that you would pick, especially for
a job that has like an investigative focus like the FBI.
But Cash isn't always good at his job necessarily.

Speaker 2 (10:25):
Well, who amongst us?

Speaker 3 (10:27):
We're gonna talk about one specific incident here that's one
of like the wildest stories in like national security that
I've ever read. In October of twenty twenty four, days
before the election, the Pentagon was planning an operation for
Sale Team six to rescue an American citizen, Philip Walton,
who was kidnapped in Niger and being held in Nigeria.

(10:48):
As the State Department was working to communicate with officials
in Nigeria to clear airspace for the operation, Patel, who
was not part of this operation, just called the Pentagon
saying that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had gotten approval
from Nigeria and the airspace was deconflicted, so as the
Seals were about to land in Nigeria, defense officials couldn't

(11:11):
verify that the flight actually had clearance, leaving the aircraft
to circle over the target for hours as they scrambled
to get approval from Nigeria. According to former Defense Secretary
Mark Esper, Patel was never in communication with Mike Pompeo
about this mission, and Defense officials concluded that Patel quote
made the approval story up. Unquote. Cool guy, this is wild.

(11:37):
You almost caught Sealed Team six like shot out of
the air because you made up a story about having
flight clearance.

Speaker 4 (11:44):
It's like, it's crazy.

Speaker 2 (11:46):
Yeah, I mean, this is exactly the guy you want
running the FBI, for sure.

Speaker 3 (11:51):
A Pentagon official yelled at Cash, quote, you could have
gotten those guys killed. What the fuck were you thinking,
to which Cash replied, if no, but it got hurt.
Who the fuck cares?

Speaker 2 (12:03):
Amazing stuff, amazing stuff.

Speaker 4 (12:06):
Let him cook crazy stuff.

Speaker 2 (12:08):
Look, here's the thing, Garrison, if it had gone the
worst possible way it could have gone, we'd have been
saved at least four interminable books and at least three podcasts.

Speaker 3 (12:19):
So like people like interviewed in the Atlantic, and I
think the author of the profile on Cash kind of
muses that, like maybe Cash just wanted this operation done
before the election to give Trump like an extra win
leading up to the polls. I don't know, it's it's
it's certainly odd, but like Cash has a very like
inflated sense of like personal worth. In an interview with

(12:40):
Glenn Beck, he talked about how like people should should
trust his expertise because quote, I've read the entire JFK file.

Speaker 2 (12:48):
Well, I mean, geez you and Oliver Stone.

Speaker 3 (12:53):
Right, he makes comments like that, It's like no, no, no,
like trust me. I know everything, Like I've read all
the classified stuff that you're not allowed to. I'm like
the smartest guy in the room. I've read everything, right,
Like he's he uses this as like a as a
way to like inflate his own personal worth and like
flex to weird right wing online podcast.

Speaker 2 (13:13):
S grifters people have made this point. But it's guys
like this that have convinced me that there's no at
least no like perfectly known to intelligence smoking gun about
the Kennedy assassination. That shit would have leaked so quickly no,
if not before Trump was in office, then certainly about
the time he was.

Speaker 3 (13:32):
Yeah, because you have guys like Cash Battel reading these files.

Speaker 4 (13:34):
There's nothing in there.

Speaker 2 (13:36):
There's no or at least if there is, it's the
kind of thing there may be a smoking gun that
someone who is deeply knowledgeable at the time period be like, oh,
the fact that this guy was here at this time
really means that this other thing happened, and like, yeah, yeah,
the Cash Hotel doesn't know shit.

Speaker 3 (13:48):
Yeah, he is not smart enough to put any pieces
together or maybe there's even still redacted and the versions
that he's reading don't really have any like pertinent info.

Speaker 2 (13:57):
Right. People are just like, let's not give this guy
the real one.

Speaker 3 (14:00):
No, No, this guy likelying about prosecuting the Bengazi attackers
and almost got Seal Team six killed.

Speaker 2 (14:09):
Now, oh man, and of all this, out of all
the Seal teams to get killed too, that's the one
that would be the biggest news day.

Speaker 3 (14:15):
Do you know who would never kill Seal Team six?

Speaker 2 (14:17):
Robert I'm never gonna say never about killing Seal Team six.

Speaker 3 (14:22):
Well, I mean, hopefully allegedly these products and services would
never wish harm upon Seal Team six.

Speaker 4 (14:36):
All right, we are back.

Speaker 3 (14:38):
I'd like to talk a little bit now about Patel's
actual plans for the FBI. Now, this job doesn't require
a Senate confirmation, so we will see, you know, if
he gets past that process or if he's gonna get
pushed in through recess appointments, which we still don't really
know if Trump will be able to pull off. But
in terms of the FBI, we do have some idea

(14:59):
about what cas has in mind, because he spent the
past two years just talking about it a NonStop in
books and interviews.

Speaker 2 (15:06):
Yeah, because he, like all these guys, cannot shut.

Speaker 4 (15:08):
Up, can't stop talking.

Speaker 2 (15:10):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (15:11):
In an appearance on The Sean Ryan Show in this
past September, Patel said, quote, I'd shut down the FBI
Hoover building on day one and reopen it the next
day as a museum of the deep state. Unquote Okay, okay, cool.

Speaker 2 (15:29):
Sure, I do feel like you're underestimating the expensive office
space and overestimating the availability of it, but sure, why not.

Speaker 3 (15:37):
Yeah, I don't think they can make a whole museum
turn around in one day.

Speaker 2 (15:40):
But I also think you are really really underappreciating docents.
It is not easy to get a docent up to speed, like,
for example, it's a much harder job than you currently have.

Speaker 3 (15:53):
No, like Patel does talk about like trying to like
clear out like the bureaucracy and red tape of the FBI.
And though he has criticized the wide footprint of the
FBI and its surveillance operations though really only the ones
targeted against Trump and his campaign, Cash's ideal FBI would
not in fact have like a more limited presence out
in the world, saying that after closing the Hoover Building, quote,

(16:15):
then I'd take the seven thousand employees that work in
that building and send them across America to chase down criminals.
Go be cops, your cops, go be cops unquote. So
this is what you give like a seven year old
the keys to the FBI, And this is this is
this is the kind of stuff he's talking about. Yeah,
it's like I'm going to send all these administrative employees

(16:35):
out into the world to chase down criminals.

Speaker 2 (16:37):
Now you say that, Garrison, I absolutely would put a
seven year old in charge of the FBI. You know why.
That's a blockbuster movie. Now, to be fair, that's a
nineteen ninety seven blockbuster. But yeah, yeah, it's like that
could thirty years ago. Can you imagine the cat cat
young Mara Wilson running the FBI, fucking FBI. Yeah, perfect.

Speaker 3 (16:57):
You know, if we said it a little bit further,
we could have like will we as like the villain,
you know, like the.

Speaker 2 (17:02):
Evil kid heading the CIA. They also put it, but
they put Will Wheaton in charge of the CIA.

Speaker 4 (17:08):
Yes, damn all right.

Speaker 2 (17:10):
You know what, Garrison, this podcast is done. You and
I are writing a screenplay tonight.

Speaker 3 (17:15):
With the power of AI, I can just generate this
whole movie instantly.

Speaker 2 (17:19):
Perfect, with a truly ghoulish guest appearance by Robin Williams.
Just the worst taste imaginable.

Speaker 3 (17:26):
No, sorry, President Williams. God, oh dear, nightmare nightmare fuel.
Now it's it's really unclear if if like Cash's plans
here are like rhetoric, right, like you know, more vibes
than like actual plan, you know, like expressing some kind
of sentiment rather than like an actual practical like plan.

(17:49):
But last year, Patel published a book titled Government Gangsters,
the Deep State, The Truth and the Battle for Our Democracy,
where he also proposed relocating the FBI headquarters out of Washington,
d C. To quote prevent institutional capture and curb FBI
leadership from engaging in political gamesmanship unquote, though the bulk

(18:11):
of this book also details like why we must root
out politicians, journalists, big tech, and quote unquote members of
the unelected bureaucracy that operate the deep state, so you know,
like the FBI engaging in a little bit of political
gamesmanship is okay. In the appendix of this book, it
contains the names of sixty alleged members of the deep state,

(18:33):
most of them either like former Trump cabinet people who
like turned on Trump or just like current Biden adamin people.
It's all pretty silly, but it's not like he actually
plans to take out political prosecutions away from like the
FBI's operational structure. Like, come on, buddy, this is like
your entire plan. In an interview with Steve Bannon last year,

(18:53):
Patel reiterated the goal of targeted prosecutions against political enemies, saying, quote,
we will go out and the conspirators, not just in
the government, but in the media. Yes, we're going to
come after people in the media who lied about American citizens,
who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We're going to

(19:13):
come after you unquote.

Speaker 4 (19:16):
So that's cool.

Speaker 3 (19:16):
Again, It's this is this is the basic stuff that
Trump's been promising since like you know, the past four years,
going after journalists, going after politicians.

Speaker 2 (19:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (19:25):
This quote specifically also just like reminded me that like
there's like a real possibility that like the head of
the FBI legitimately thinks the twenty twenty election was stolen.
And like then I got to thinking, like how many
of like the people operating the highest levels of government
now genuinely believe the election was stolen in twenty twenty,
which is like kind of kind of threw me for
a loop. I like didn't really like process that like

(19:46):
concept of like how just broken the reality structure will
be with something like so like clear, yep, that's his
FBI plans.

Speaker 2 (19:55):
Yeah, great, Well, seems like it's gonna end well for everybody.
I don't know, what do you think you think he's
gonna get confirmed? Because he's one I'm saying. People are
focusing now that Gates is out, people are focusing way
more on heg Seth, which is probably the priority because
my god, that man should not be leading the Department
of Defense.

Speaker 4 (20:13):
Because he's going to start a war.

Speaker 2 (20:14):
Yeah, he's going to He's going to drunkenly and accidentally
start a war. I'm not even worried about him like
launching a conflict with China, right, Like we're going to
wind up fighting an insurgency against the Portuguese because he
gets fucking hammered and mixes up a couple of letters.

Speaker 3 (20:31):
Like I mean, I'm also like really concerned about Tulci Gabbard.

Speaker 2 (20:35):
Gabbard is top of my list because she is has
just never met a dictator she doesn't like, and yeah,
that's a scary person having that job.

Speaker 3 (20:44):
Patello's really bad and we're going to get into some
more of his like kind of crank beliefs, but there
is a level of basic competence. The fact that Tulci
has been able to get into this position despite very
very clearly having like deep sympathetic ties to Assad in
Russia is like, yeah, super right.

Speaker 1 (21:00):
Name.

Speaker 2 (21:00):
She's evil but smart and incredibly power hungry. That's all
that matters to her is getting into power. And she
has things that she believes, and what we know of
the things that she believes is chilling, like, yeah, but
that's yeah, and we don't we we're talking about someone
besides Tulci today.

Speaker 4 (21:18):
Yeah, yes.

Speaker 3 (21:19):
Now, since twenty twenty, Cash Patel has served on the
board of directors for the parent company of Truth Social
called Trump Media Technology Group, so he's been part of
the team operating you know, Trump's version of Twitter, and
back in twenty twenty two, Patel was openly talking about how,
like the truth Social staff, we're trying to quote unquote
incorporate to QAnon into our overall messaging scheme to capture audiences.

(21:45):
So this is this, this is the section where we're
going to really get into Patel's super super heavy q ties,
which is kind of like a throwback.

Speaker 5 (21:53):
Right.

Speaker 3 (21:53):
We don't really talk about QAnon as much anymore, And
I don't think Patel's interest in this is genuine. I
think it is just to like, no, grow both his
own brand and help boost the stock of truth Social.
It's still like the closest that anyone in Trump's team
has gotten to like openly endorsing q and on and
like repeatedly True Social staff operate an account at q

(22:14):
forms to piggyback off of q Andon's popularity. And draw
in popular Q and on influencers. In February twenty twenty two,
Patel posted a photo of a beer pint and the
arm of someone wearing a flannel shirt, with text saying
he was quote having a beer with Q right now unquote.
Ptel continued to frequently interact with the Q account, make
Q and on related posts, and do reoccurring appearances on

(22:37):
Q and on linked podcasts, most notably the X twenty
two Report, The Matrix Xxx Grove Show, and Red Pill
seventy eight. It's been a while since I've listened to
these types of shows, and it was it was like
a huge throwback, ah man, and they're like all chugging
along and now they're like chugging along better than ever,

(23:00):
which is, you know, not ideal for me on these shows.
Cash has praised the Q and on fandom researchers, saying
both he and the President have been impressed. It's all
like very pandering, but it really works for these people
I've seen.

Speaker 6 (23:14):
On social media, on Trump, on truth social How could
these researchers are? And I kind of wish I had
some of them when I was doing Russia again, some
of these other things you know, Devin and I talk regularly,
and then you know, I talk with the President all
the time as well, and we're just blown away at
the amount of acumen some of these people have and
how quick they are to grab it and suss through
it and sort of thin it down and make it presentable.

Speaker 3 (23:37):
Later in that interview, Patel openly said that he publishes
government documents on his website, Fight with Cash dot Com,
specifically so that QAnon researchers will dig through them to
make QAnon content. He openly said that's like why he'd
like posts these documents.

Speaker 2 (23:54):
You see again, I'm sympathetic. Everything I do is for content, Garrison.
That's that's just the way the world works now. Now
the content must flow.

Speaker 1 (24:03):
You know.

Speaker 3 (24:03):
Patel also has books just like you. Although he's been
signing copies of his with the q andon phrase where
we go one, do we go All?

Speaker 2 (24:11):
I mean, I do that too, and he.

Speaker 3 (24:12):
Has defended his use of the slogan on these QAnon podcasts,
like in this clip from the Matrix xx Groove show
where we go on.

Speaker 6 (24:21):
Where we Go All is, as you said, from a
great movie that I watched a long time ago, and
people took to it and so what you know, it
doesn't mean everyone's a conspiracy theorist. And people keep asking
me about all this cue stuff.

Speaker 2 (24:33):
I'm like, what does it matter.

Speaker 6 (24:35):
What I'm telling you is that there is truth in
a lot of things that many people say, and what
I'm putting out there is the truth. And how about
we have some fun along the way.

Speaker 4 (24:43):
There's so many.

Speaker 6 (24:44):
People who subscribed to the where we go on, we
go on all mantra, and it's what's wrong with it?

Speaker 3 (24:50):
I'm going to quote now from an article in Media
Matters by Alex Kaplan, who's been reporting on Patel and
his ties to QAnon since twenty twenty two.

Speaker 4 (24:59):
Quote.

Speaker 3 (25:00):
On yet another show in June twenty twenty two, Patel
went even further, saying of q and on quote, we
try to incorporate it into our overall messaging scheme to
capture audiences because whoever that person is has certainly captured
a widespread breadth of the Mega and America First movement.
And so what I try to do, is what I
try to do with anything q or otherwise, is you

(25:20):
can't ignore that group of people that has such a
strong dominant following unquote in the interview, Petel also said
of Q and on there's a lot of good to
a lot of it, and he agreed with the co
host who said Q has been so right on so
many things, saying, quote, I agree with you. He shall
get credit for all the things he has accomplished because
it's hard to establish a movement. Let's call it that,

(25:42):
because that's what it is.

Speaker 4 (25:43):
Unquote. Oh boy, do you know what's also hard to establish?

Speaker 2 (25:47):
Robert uh an alibi.

Speaker 3 (25:49):
An alibi, and you know some people's alibis could be
reading ads like the one that we're about to do
right now.

Speaker 2 (25:56):
That's right, that's always my alibi.

Speaker 3 (25:58):
That really is always your fun Yeah.

Speaker 4 (26:10):
All right, we are back now.

Speaker 3 (26:13):
In these podcast guest appearances, he would often plug his
book and advocate that listeners just join truth social and
engagement with these more niche online streaming shows and podcasts
fortifies the right wing online media ecosystem and draws people
away from mainstream news like this is why he was
going on those shows so much back in twenty twenty two,

(26:34):
and Patel basically says as much on this episode of
the X twenty two Report.

Speaker 6 (26:39):
They will never trust the fake news media again and
for us that's always been the championing cause to get
our people and mainstream America listening to your show rather
than CNN and reading the New York Post or excuse me,
the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Speaker 3 (26:53):
And I think part of why he's doing this, and
whether he was told to do it or whether he
just did it on his own volition, is that like
having someone who's seen as being close to Trump, especially
with national secured experience, it helps keep Trump supporters politically
engaged by making them feel like they are getting special
access to like exclusive information. It's all a part of

(27:13):
keeping the mega movement alive when their site is not
in power, while also building up a ground base of
support in preparation for them to take power back. And
that's what he did like a lot in twenty twenty two.
Most of those podcasts were leading up to the midterms
as well, so it is part of this general political
strategy to engage with these like much more niche kind
of smaller QAnon shows, which not only does like you know,

(27:36):
grow their audience over time as well, it does help
their audience grow, it also just establishes like a completely
siloed media ecosystem away from mainstream news like that. That
is part of what they're doing, right. That's why Trump
made truth Social is to create more of these reality tunnels,
more of these like information silos. Now, Patel kept busy
in between twenty twenty and twenty twenty four with a

(27:58):
variety of kind of griff ventures. I'm going to quote
from the New York Times here.

Speaker 4 (28:03):
Quote.

Speaker 3 (28:04):
Mister Patel's company, Trishel, collects consulting fees, including one hundred
and thirty thousand dollars last year from mister Trump's Truth
Social site. He also made three hundred and twenty five
thousand dollars over two years for strategy consulting for the
pro Trump Save America pack and one hundred and forty
five and twenty twenty one for fundraising consulting from friends

(28:25):
of Matt Gates, the campaign committee for the now former
House Republican from Florida.

Speaker 4 (28:31):
Unquote now.

Speaker 3 (28:32):
Last year, Patel's nonprofit charity, the Cash Foundation, received one
point three million dollars in revenue, mostly from donations, though
it's reported expenses totaled six hundred and seventy four thousand
dollars wow, which is the majority of the moundy and
nearly half of that was spent on promotion and advertising.

(28:55):
According to The New York Times, the charity spent more
on ads than they act actually gave away, which is
fantastic charity work.

Speaker 2 (29:06):
Oh fuck, good work.

Speaker 3 (29:10):
Through this foundation, he also sells cash merchandise which is
spelled K money sign.

Speaker 2 (29:16):
H Yeah, that's that guy's gonna really fbi.

Speaker 3 (29:20):
Well, including six packs of wine for two hundred and
forty bucks and fifty dollars golf polo shirts. Part of
these polo shirts have this like, you know, like pro
America branding. I want to read the description of one
of them. Tired of seeing your money go overseas, support
your fellow Americans by purchasing our T shirt. Where do

(29:41):
you think this T shirt's made?

Speaker 4 (29:42):
Robert China?

Speaker 3 (29:44):
Well it's made in Haiti, oh Haiti.

Speaker 2 (29:46):
Oh okay, the America of the Ocean.

Speaker 4 (29:49):
And South America.

Speaker 3 (29:51):
So you know you're still supporting Americans, just South Americans.

Speaker 4 (29:57):
Oh my god.

Speaker 3 (29:58):
Now this foundation is also fun to defamation lawsuits for
a stop the steal activist and his friend and former
boss at National Intelligence. But Patel's grifting does go beyond
his foundation. Just earlier this year, Patel was hawking anti
vaccine supplement pills from the company Warrior Essentials Wow, specifically

(30:19):
the pills that claim to reverse the effects of the
COVID nineteen vaccine.

Speaker 4 (30:25):
I love that.

Speaker 3 (30:26):
What if these pills just give you covid, they're just
COVID pills.

Speaker 2 (30:29):
Yeah, yeah, you just want to get covid.

Speaker 4 (30:31):
Want to reverse the effects of the vaccine.

Speaker 2 (30:33):
It's a performance enhancered you know, if we could conviit, well,
that's to say, if we could convince Joe Rogan covids
to performance enhancer. I don't think we could get Joe
Rogan's fans to spread any more disease than they already do. Yeah,
that's impossible.

Speaker 3 (30:46):
So this product that Patel was selling is called no
Covid Dome, and it's allegedly formulated to quote destroy the
toxic spike unquote caused by the mRNA vaccine.

Speaker 2 (30:59):
Now we should have called the COVID vaccines no covid
it's a good name. That was just leaving money on
the table. Or Novid.

Speaker 4 (31:07):
No It's good.

Speaker 2 (31:08):
Novid would have been a great note.

Speaker 4 (31:09):
It's good. Yeah, Novid's good.

Speaker 2 (31:11):
Yeah, I go.

Speaker 3 (31:12):
According to journalist James Little, these no Covidum pills just
contain basic supplement ingredients like tumeric extract, green tea extract,
and vitamin D.

Speaker 2 (31:22):
Great.

Speaker 3 (31:23):
Yeah, a subscription for a thirty day supply is for
forty nine dollars and ninety eight cents. Jesus chries, and
a single order of pills is fifty nine dollars in
ninety eight cents. They're really pushing the subscription because you
gotta keep doing more pills every thirty days in order
to really keep the vacs suppressed. In a post this

(31:44):
past February on True Social Patel truth Spike the vacs
order this home run kit to ridge your body of
the harms of the vacs.

Speaker 4 (31:54):
Unquote, my god.

Speaker 3 (31:56):
I just can't believe that a guy like this could
be FBI director. It's just it just it makes me.

Speaker 2 (32:01):
It's it's I mean, it probably will wind up being
much more dangerous. But there is a version of this
where the FBI just pivots to selling supplements like where
you get where you get your estrogen and testosterone through
the MBI. Look, as long as it's market it is
like a performance enhancement.

Speaker 3 (32:22):
I would love to believe that a guy like this
will lead to just general and competence. But I just
can't let myself believe that, Like I think it's just
going to become more and more targeted against like people
who are good.

Speaker 2 (32:32):
Yeah, they're going to start, yeah with them. I mean
it looks like just based on his enemy lists, they're
going to start with Biden administration officials and people in
the government. But like it won't end there. It's going
to depend on what happens, Like it'll be a reactive,
violent organization, which to a degree it always has been,
but there's always been like more of a sense of

(32:54):
like predictability that will not be present well.

Speaker 3 (32:58):
And specifically, Like you know, Patel has also been a
recurring Gray Zone guest and is pretty close with that
whole crew.

Speaker 4 (33:06):
That's not great for certain.

Speaker 3 (33:08):
People, but he really is the gift that keeps on
giving in terms of like odd anecdotes, including his trilogy
of books, which will be kind of the last thing
I talk about here. So over the course of the
past three years, Patel has written and published a children's
book trilogy titled The Plot Against the King, where Patel

(33:29):
himself appears as a wizard to defend King Donald from
enemy plots.

Speaker 2 (33:34):
Oh God, the one thing we all used to be
able to agree on is that we don't like kings.

Speaker 3 (33:43):
Here no, but now we have the FBI director who
fancies himself the wizard to protect the king. I am
going to read the description from the first book here
quote a fantastical retelling of the terrible true story. Hillary
Queenton and her shifty nine had spread lies that King
Donald had cheated to become king. They claimed he was

(34:05):
working with the Russianians.

Speaker 2 (34:07):
But how could that be Russians?

Speaker 4 (34:11):
Russian Onians.

Speaker 3 (34:13):
It's it's bad, okay, r U S S I O
N I A N S.

Speaker 2 (34:20):
This is the kind of thing the FBI should be
cracking down on. That's all. That's all I'll say about that.

Speaker 3 (34:27):
Cash the distinguished discoverer joined him as he uncovers the
plot against the king and who was really behind all
the lies unquote. Now Patel referred to this as quote
the first ever children's Russia gate books unquote, which I
gotta give him to him.

Speaker 4 (34:43):
That's probably true.

Speaker 2 (34:44):
That's almost well, no, because okay, you know what, I
don't think it is, but it came from the opposite side.
Do you remember when the fucking Crassenstein brothers put out
that children's book about Robert Muller.

Speaker 3 (34:57):
No, oh, you're right, Yes, this is another lie.

Speaker 2 (35:00):
With Weave Bannon because his hair was a weasel. I think, yeah,
this was another lie. This was another lie from Cash.
The Crass and Steins beat you to this. This is
truly the tear of man we're operating with. I'm going
to start pulling every connection I have to somebody in
Congress so that when he's being confirmed I can get

(35:20):
up and hit him on this.

Speaker 7 (35:22):
You claim to have written the first children's book about
them that I bring in the Crass and Steed brother.
No oh, they're gonna sell MTG on crypto.

Speaker 2 (35:34):
It's gonna be amazing.

Speaker 3 (35:36):
Unfortunately, there's two other books in the series. Part two
Quote tells the fantastical story of how two inquisitive minds,
Denesh and Debbie search for the truth to uncover evidence
of a terrible scheme.

Speaker 2 (35:50):
Who has been forced by a court to announce in
public that he did not uncover any scheme.

Speaker 3 (35:57):
Part two is titled two Thousand Mules. It is no
longer available on Amazon due to like all the lawsuits
around this just being fake.

Speaker 2 (36:04):
Because they broke a bunch of laws, because it was
criminal and lies.

Speaker 3 (36:07):
Yes, search for the truth to uncover evidence of a
terrible scheme to elect Sleepy Joe instead of King Donald
on a choosing day unquote.

Speaker 2 (36:15):
Choosing day just called it election.

Speaker 4 (36:17):
Man, No, because it's fought. It's when they choose their king.

Speaker 2 (36:22):
There are kings that are elected anyway.

Speaker 3 (36:25):
The back of the book reads, come join Dneshan Debbie
as they try to answer some troubling questions. Why did
the counting stop in the middle of the night. Why
were there more votes than people in the kingdom? What
is up with all the glowing Pooh?

Speaker 4 (36:39):
Unquote? That is what it actually says. Now, why I'm not.

Speaker 2 (36:44):
What is the glowing Pooh supposed to be?

Speaker 3 (36:47):
I don't know, because I can't scam Amazon to buy
the book and return it because it's no longer available
on Amazon. I don't know what the glowing Pooh is.

Speaker 2 (36:54):
Sorry, listeners, if one of you has a copy of
this book.

Speaker 3 (37:00):
Oh my god. Then Part three is titled Return of
the King okay quote. It continues the silly yet important
journey of the Maga King as he returns to take
down Kamalala Law and reclaim.

Speaker 4 (37:15):
His throne unquote.

Speaker 3 (37:17):
Okay, so yeah, that's Cash Patel possible new FBI director.
Oh who also produced a song titled Justice for All,
which is a version of the national anthem but sung
by all J six defendants in prison, with proceeds going
to the Cash Foundation. So he also released a song
which was not on my rap this year. Unfortunately.

Speaker 2 (37:38):
That's a shame and I'm just double checking something. Yes,
and he stole the name of his song from a
Metallica album, one of the better Metallica albums. This is
the one that has one on it. Oh my god,
you son of a bitch.

Speaker 3 (37:52):
I mean, it just is so odd to have the
FBI director making a song with imprisoned J six defendants.
You know, it really does is just throw my head
into a little bit of a spin.

Speaker 2 (38:02):
Yeah, it'll be interesting to see the current like FBI
agents react to that, But I guess we'll see. We're
all gonna learn a lot about the FBI, one way
or the other.

Speaker 3 (38:12):
Any closing thoughts here on mister Patel, Now that we've
done a very brief overview of his life story ending
with this children's book.

Speaker 2 (38:20):
He seems like he's qualified to do something.

Speaker 4 (38:24):
That's what everyone's saying that's what everyone's saying.

Speaker 3 (38:27):
You No, Like, like every single person who's like announced,
you know, you get a wave of headlines from people
who work in government being like this is the most
unqualified person ever nominated for this position, and like it
just keeps happening that I don't even feel obligated to
like quote or say any of these things, because like
we all know what's happening, Like, yeah, we all know
why this is going on.

Speaker 4 (38:45):
Like that doesn't that doesn't matter.

Speaker 2 (38:47):
No, And I think that's one of the things I
have no desire in focusing on, Like what Trump is doing.
That's like he's breaking the law, he's violating a norm.
Like I want to hear you know, what are you
again I do to stop it? Right? What is actually
being done to try to resist this? Right? Like otherwise
it's at least when it comes to stuff from elected leaders,

(39:09):
you know, I'm just not interested in like, oh, he
broke an outther a lot, Yeah, that's what he does.
What comes next?

Speaker 3 (39:17):
And he hires guys like Patel to clean up his
messes and do all his dirty work. And if they
do it, they can slow the right to the ranks
and become director of the FBI. Yeah, and that's the
political strategy that they are all working with and have
a run to success yet again in twenty twenty four. Well,
I guess stay tuned for more happenings here as they
continue for the rest of this week and for the

(39:38):
next four years.

Speaker 2 (40:00):
Ah, welcome back. It could happen here. A podcast about
the things that are happening all around us, including, shockingly
in the last week something we did not expect two
weeks ago, the fall of the Assad regime, which our
official stance as a network is that fuck him. This
is pretty good, but a lot of people feel differently,

(40:20):
and to talk with me about that. Another guy who's
always angry about Syria and also has been to Syria, James,
And you know, just as a note, I think a
lot of the people podcasting about this right now are
talking about a place they've never been, although James and
I have not been to EdLib. So you know, it's true.
We're going to be fairly focused on our experiences in
the Kurdish regions, but at least we're not just bullshitting

(40:43):
about a place that we've read about on the internet.

Speaker 1 (40:46):
Yeah, claiming deep on the ground understanding of a place
from ready, Yes, that is not us.

Speaker 4 (40:52):
Yeah we uh. I briefly look at regime held Syria.

Speaker 2 (40:56):
Yeah yeah, yeah over from a comichelo where is kind
of the governance capital of Rojava, but is also a
big chunk of it was held by the Assad regimes.
You would just periodically like see that fucker's face on
the wall as you were a crossing the street.

Speaker 4 (41:11):
It's a good times.

Speaker 1 (41:12):
But my fixer would come around at noon for whatever
reason when I was in Rajava, and like, I hate
to sitting in the hotel, so I'd go out for
walks around the market. Yeah, not advised by the old
safety people.

Speaker 2 (41:23):
But no, one of the sketchiest cities I've been in, Yeah,
because of the presence of regime troops.

Speaker 4 (41:29):
Yes, yes, everything else was lovely. Yeah, people are lovely.

Speaker 5 (41:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (41:32):
I'd be walking down the street and like I'd be
looking around, see has anything interesting to go and see?
And then you can literally take one wrong turn down
the street and walk into to regime Syria, as you
covered in in the Women's War. Like I was walking
down one street and this man walked up to me
and m curtis, she's not very good. Tried to say hello,
told him my name and stuff, and then he starts
getting more agitated, and he just starts repeating a higher

(41:54):
and horror volume, a sad bad man.

Speaker 2 (41:56):
Yeah man, stay away, bro, stay away.

Speaker 4 (42:00):
He's like, you're going to fucking die to be.

Speaker 2 (42:02):
A fucking of all. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (42:04):
Yeah, girl expars to that guy.

Speaker 2 (42:07):
Yeah, barsie barshi.

Speaker 4 (42:09):
Yeah it is. It was a very straight situation.

Speaker 1 (42:11):
It is no longer a straight situation because in the
last week the A Side regime has crumbled. Statues of
him have been torn down all over the country, which
we love to see. It's another of us dancers other
network is fuck a statue?

Speaker 2 (42:23):
Yes, yes, fuck most statues.

Speaker 1 (42:25):
Most statues. There are probably some cool ones. Does a
lady hitting the Nazi with a handbag in Sweden? That's
a good statue, But yeah, most statues, most statues of
dudes in suits.

Speaker 4 (42:36):
Don't love them.

Speaker 2 (42:37):
No, very few dudes in suits. I want to see
a statue.

Speaker 4 (42:39):
Of Yeah, I can't think of any right now.

Speaker 2 (42:41):
Yeah, it's not coming to me.

Speaker 4 (42:43):
Yeah, I'm sure it will.

Speaker 1 (42:45):
So these statues have been torn down because your said
regime has basically crumbled. It failed to really put up
any meaningful resistance to this advance by different rebel groups,
right by HTS, by SNA, by the Southern Front as well,
and despite I guess even what I would have said
two weeks ago, right me, even after they lost Aleppo,

(43:06):
I assumed that they would regroup in Hama or Homs
and they did not. They completely failed to do so.
Their Russian backers more or less abandoned them, focused on
getting their stuff and their people, those who survived out
of the country, and as a result, there is no
more a SAD regime. Right A SAD fled the country
at some point. It was initially speculated that a Sad

(43:28):
had fled on an aircraft on Saturday night as rebels
were entering Damascus. That seems to be untrue, or perhaps
it was true, but the speculation that aircraft had crashed
or have been shut down, certainly it does not seem
to SAD now seems to be.

Speaker 2 (43:43):
I think. Look, I made the call about two days
before the regime fell that I felt he was out
of the country, based on some reporting, including reporting from
the Serian regime, that he'd gone to Iran first. I
think he left days before it fell. I don't think
he's Yeah, he's got enough instinct for self preservation that
I think he got the fuck out of there.

Speaker 1 (44:00):
Yeah, he didn't want to be found in a hole
in the ground right like here, or end up like Canafi.

Speaker 4 (44:06):
I guess, so he left.

Speaker 1 (44:08):
It's quite possible that he was doing a sort of
final please please help Me tour of Russia rum which
turned turned into his eventual exile. In breaking news, Robert,
I don't know. I don't know if you've seen this
telegram post, and obviously we can't confirm it because we
don't have a direct clansi Assad regime. But allegedly he
is planning on setting up a specialized hospital in the

(44:28):
field of ophthalmology in Russia, Abkhazia and Dubai.

Speaker 4 (44:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (44:32):
Great, great place for him to be working.

Speaker 1 (44:34):
Yeah, wonderful, cool stuff. Yeah cool. Yeah, not not at
the Hague where he belongs.

Speaker 2 (44:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (44:40):
Anyway, he is gone, and we have seen in response,
like some of the worst social media posting that I've seen.
And I don't want this to be like like Twitter review.
I think that obviously that's pointless and pure ut but
I want to address I guess this kind of really
disappointing response I've seen from a lot of people on

(45:01):
the left that oh, yeah, well either I mean you
have the like the grey zone tendency, right that the
sab was great actually in the protection of human rights
in the region, and the like the Syria was socialism
in Karna, which is obviously nonsense, right, Like, this is
a person who, as we have seen in the last week,
whose regime prisons were holding thousands of people, killed tens

(45:25):
of thousands of people, tortured people to death in some
cases in Sednaia prison, which is a big prison in Damascus,
certainly a Damascus i should.

Speaker 4 (45:33):
Say, towards the coast.

Speaker 1 (45:35):
It looks as if there were children in that prison
who were possibly born in that prison and may have
never been out of that prison, which is like one
of the most horrible things I've ever had to think about,
you know, like like a little child four or five
years old never having seen the sky. It's just it's heartbreaking,
Like a lot of the things we are going to find,

(45:57):
the things we're going to hear about in the next
few weeks heartbreaking. And anybody who's prepared to apologize for
that or prepared to say that that was good, I
think you really need to question if there's someone who's
aligned with you. But in addition to that tendency, there's
one that sort of holds that in Syria, like what
will come next is worse? Right, what will come next

(46:19):
to or we don't know, of course, we don't know
what will come next, None of us can see the future,
but what will come next will make a sad look
like it was a preferable option, And like, I feel
that we need to address that because I think it's
one of the long legacies of authoritarian socialist how do
I say this, like the authoritarian socialist media project.

Speaker 2 (46:41):
And that kind of colliding with the Iraq war anti
anti war movement, yes, you know, yeah, the whole hands
off Syria thing that groups like the PSL, the Party
for Socialism and Liberation we're doing when the rebel started
this offensive, being like we've got to stop you know,
these US backed rebels from taking you know, Syria for
the empires, Like, man, the fuck it. It's not the

(47:02):
US that was primarily backing the rebels that did most
of the fighting. Like these guys are Turkish backed, you know, yeah, yeah,
the extent that that even matters, right, Like the that
like this is not the CIA did not orchestrate all
of this. The guys the CIA were really trying to
back in Syria basically all died.

Speaker 4 (47:21):
Like, yeah, they've gone.

Speaker 1 (47:24):
Some of the weapons, sure that the US supplied in
Timber Sycamore are probably stood in the hands of HTS, but.

Speaker 2 (47:30):
Yes, some of them. But like even that's not the
bulk of the weaponry that those fuckers know using.

Speaker 1 (47:34):
The entire weaponry of the Syrian arabambi is also in
the hands of the HDS, which we'll move on to
actually because maybe we should address that now before we
address responses. Actually, yeah, when we talk about international involvement
in Syria, right, we talk about the United States who
has supported the SDF not as a project, and this
is important. They don't support the Democratic Autonomous Administration nor

(47:57):
from Assyria as a democratic project. Support is the SDF
as a partner force in the fight against ISIS, and
that's been very clear when they have failed to defend
the anes against genocidal violence, ethnic cleansing in a free
and right what we're seeing again now in the Talifat area.
I'll use that terminology because if you want to look

(48:18):
it up on Google Maps, that's easier to find the
violence that we've seen repeatedly from the Turkish back Syrian
National Army or Turkish free Syrian Armies are sometimes called. Right,
the United States hasn't defended the people of the ans
against and it won't because that's not what it's there
to do. And as much as we would like it too,
I don't think that as in the nature of the

(48:40):
US mission in Syria, and I don't think it's in
the nature of the US as a state to support
a project which is seeking to build democracy without the state.
It's not in the nature of the state.

Speaker 2 (48:51):
We stumbled backwards accidentally into exactly once supporting the good
guys in the conflict, you know, specifically in the conflict
with I. Yeah, like a broken clock, and we immediately
ever since we have been trying as hard as we
can to pull back and you know, betray them, yes
to their deaths like that. That That is the story

(49:11):
of US support of Rojava.

Speaker 4 (49:13):
Yeah, it's not. This is not a US proxy state.

Speaker 1 (49:15):
Some people trying to tell you it is not a
CIA revolution of some people are trying to tell you.

Speaker 2 (49:19):
Indeed, Now, part part of what gives fuel for that
is there are a number of photos of like US
troops really vibing with the WHITEPG and YPG and they're
vibing with them, And you and I could both say
this having been with those people. They're nice.

Speaker 4 (49:32):
Yeah, they're fun, they're chill folks.

Speaker 2 (49:35):
Yeah, they have good music and they like to done
generally cool people.

Speaker 4 (49:39):
Yes, yeah, I enjoy that company. I have vibed with
the WHITEPG.

Speaker 2 (49:43):
You know, like, it's hard not to see a bunch
of young women who like left isis captivity and immediately
said give me a gun. I'm going to learn how
to use it and be like, yeah, that's pretty cool.
Good for you.

Speaker 4 (49:54):
Yeah, it's one of the coolest things that's happened in
the Middle East in the past century.

Speaker 1 (49:58):
Yeah, And like, the United States does not have a
plan for what has happened in the last two weeks,
and it appears to be trying to think on the
hoof right now. Joe Biden's foreign policy has been dog
shit and it doesn't look like he's going to pull
a one eighty.

Speaker 3 (50:14):
Now.

Speaker 1 (50:14):
We should not expect the United States to save for Java.
We should do everything we can to get the United
States to continue supporting the people who gave more than
ten thousand of their children in the battle against ISIS.
The US didn't want to say ground troops right at
Obama didn't want to have another ground war. Neither did Trump,
and so they got people from the SDF to do
the dying and a lot of the killing were they

(50:36):
maintained an aerial presence, was a light ground footprint. We
shouldn't expect the US to show up for the people
who showed.

Speaker 4 (50:45):
Up for it. That's not in its nature.

Speaker 1 (50:47):
The only state that had a plan for what happened
in the last two weeks appears to have been Israel.
Disappointingly right, Russia and Iran seem to have largely scrambled
extracted their state assets. Russia got some of its people out,
they took some of the aircraft out, it ran.

Speaker 4 (51:04):
Likewise, the US seems to be kind of scrambling.

Speaker 1 (51:07):
I'm sure there are still some like odas, some Special
Forces guys embedded with the SDF. I'm sure that in
the areas where ISIS has written up, because in some
areas where the regime has pulled back, there has been
an increasing presence of ISIS sleeper cells trying to sort
of once again control territory and attack the SDF in
those areas. I'm sure that there are US special forces

(51:29):
like directing air strikes, but I don't think the US
is going to come and say Brisia. But the only
country that had a plan was Israel. And what Israel's
plan was was to invade Syria in the Golan Heights right,
to increase their area of control, and then to bomb
almost all of the aircraft. And perhaps I don't know

(51:50):
it also includes air defense systems, but from what the
IDF is saying today, they have bombed all of the
Syrian Air Forces aircraft that had fallen into rebel hands.
This includes ammunition for the aircraft. It includes the ammunition
dump at Comishlow Airport. About half an hour before Robert
and I started recording here on Monday, I saw a
video from a friend in Kamishlow of the ammunition dump

(52:13):
at the airport, which have previously belonged to the regime
now belongs to the A and E s exploding after
it had been hit by an IDFs. Right. So what
they're trying to do, I guess, is deny any of
those weapons to people who they perceive as a threat
to their interests. Yep, and like there's been I don't
know if you're seeing this also row it by a

(52:34):
lot of like Israeli accounts being like, oh we stand
with the curd Israel and the Kurds are won. And
first of all, I want to warn you. I want
to warn you that we have an advertising breakcoming. Robert
is what I want to warn you about.

Speaker 2 (52:48):
Oh well, speaking of well, actually not speaking of the IDF, thankfully,
but speaking about maybe the California State Highway Patrol. Here's
some ads we're back.

Speaker 5 (53:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (53:09):
Firstly, I think when you're seeing analysis about Syria, any
when he talks about things in terms of these monolithic blocks,
this Israeli counts, often we will support the Kurds. I
would be sometimes I'll maybe use that to refer to
A and E S or the SDF. But I really
trend on too because it's a multi ethnic project. Right,
like the areas that we'll talk about in a minute

(53:31):
where the SDF is being attacked those areas, the largest
component of the SDF is is Arab, yeah, forces right,
and that that is the case in the SDF as
a whole. Actually, the majority of the SDF is now Arab,
not not Kurdish. I would be very skeptic of the
expertise of anyone who refers to things in these monolithic absolutes, right,
the Sunnis, the Shias, yeah, the alah Whites, the Kurds.

(53:53):
There are a lot of different groups in Syria, and
those groups are comprised of individuals, and those individuals shockingly
have different and distinct goals and experiences and desires.

Speaker 4 (54:04):
Like there are.

Speaker 1 (54:05):
Absolutely al of whites who will have remained loyal to
us sad there are others who, like the monstery did not,
as we've seen in the last week, right, And so
I would be skeptical of anyone who tries to paint
things in those terms. And I would be skeptical, to
return to what we were talking about earlier, Robert, of
people who tell you that, like we should expect the

(54:27):
one I see most is Syria to turn into Lebanon, right,
And like you and I have been talking about this
before we recorded, but that's not a useful example in
my mind of what we're likely to see in Syria, right,
And the reason for that is that like in Lebanon, yes,
there was a there was like a US Air.

Speaker 4 (54:46):
Component, as there is in Syria. That's true.

Speaker 1 (54:48):
But I don't understand why we would look at the
example of Lebanon, a place thousands of miles away, when
we have at least two examples of governance in Syria, right,
people who have been governing in one case for more
than a decade significant.

Speaker 4 (55:05):
Parts of Syria. Like they have a government project.

Speaker 1 (55:08):
In the case of the ANS, I don't think it's
fair to call it a state project. Like they would
tell you that they're trying to build democracy without the state,
which is something that which might not be popular with states, evidently,
which doesn't let them the support of many states, as
we've seen. But we have and with HDS in July
and the Salvation government, Right, we have these two governance projects.

(55:31):
They're extremely different, right. The Salvation Government under HDS is
people have been arrested for playing music at their own weddings.
It is, it is neither democratic nor particularly liberatory. And
then we have the an S, which I would argue
is the only democracy in the Middle East. Yeah, certainly,
the only democracy where people of different ethnicities and genders

(55:52):
matter the same amount.

Speaker 2 (55:53):
Yeah, certainly the only like multi ethnic democracy. Yes, in
the Middle East. That's functional.

Speaker 1 (55:58):
Yeah, you know you're you're straining the definition of democracy
if you're constraining it by ethnicity, right, right, So I
think you can make a good case for it being
the only democracy in the Middle East. I saw this
really atrocious BBC interview this morning. I'm trying to network.
Some networks now have reporters on the ground in Damascus,
and I've been trying to watch those to see sort

(56:19):
of what's going on. It can be very hard to
just get your news from telegram. Like I would also
caution people who are perhaps new to this, who who
are finding these telegram channels, to take everything you read
on there with a pinch of salt. You'll see a
lot of disinformation there. One of the BBC had an
expert on and he was like, Oh, every time we
see people pulling down statues of dictators, I'm a bit concerned,
and like, I have to think about how to express this.

(56:42):
It seems to me deeply as lamophobic or bigoted or racist.
I don't quite know the white term to say. Oh,
the people of this country and the places in the
last ten twenty years where we've seen people pulling down
statues of dictators have largely been in the Middle East
right to say that, oh, these people are incapable of
self governance, these people are incapable of living in peace

(57:04):
with one another, But like they're not. We've seen that
in Rajava, and I don't think that the right response
now is to respond with skepticism to like the Syrian
people's ability to live in peace. They've been at war
for fifteen years, fourteen years, thirteen thirteen years, thirteen and
a half years. But I think that there is not

(57:25):
an appetite for more killing and more dying, certainly from
what I've seen and what I've heard.

Speaker 2 (57:30):
No exhaustion is a factor here, Like you really cannot
emphasize enough how long I mean, HTS and the SNA
have been at this and how fucking tired, particularly like
HTS has to be. Like this has been more than
a decade of constant terror and violence. So I do

(57:52):
think that that's going to be a factor, and like
what happens next, I should hope it will be.

Speaker 1 (57:56):
Yeah, I mean some things I don't know how to interpret. Right,
HTS has asked the regime, police and authorities in cities
to stay on Some of that is probably good, right,
Like the people who ensure that the water gets pumped.
I hope that they stay pumping the water. The people
who were the police cybe regime. It's here an Arab republic.

(58:18):
I don't want those people to stay on. I want
those people to fuck off, and I want those people
to be held accountable for the crimes that committed. But
it doesn't point to sort of wild sectarian violence. We
don't have the situation we had in Iraq, right, Right,
we have a US occupation which sits inside its basis
and it only leaves c biglely to kill people. Right

(58:39):
from the perspective of the people living in Iraq, that
that's what the US occupation looked like for the most part. Right,
it's guys in big military vehicles who kill civilians by mistake.

Speaker 4 (58:49):
We don't have that here.

Speaker 1 (58:50):
There's not that resentment, generational resentment that allowed the Islamic
state to grow there. Now, the Islamic state did grow
through capturing a lot of state institutions, which is HTS
is done. But I don't see that same resentment, and
they don't see that same desire for sort of redemptive
violence that we saw. That I might be wrong, right,
that there might be more into communal violence. I have

(59:12):
seen some videos of what looked like summary executions in
Damascus today. That's very concerning.

Speaker 2 (59:18):
Yeah, But also I mean, look, there's some people who
need to be summer really executed in.

Speaker 4 (59:23):
This you know. Yeah, if you've got to shoot someone,
fuck it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (59:27):
If you're looking at the photos of just like thousands
of shoes and decomposed bodies, dissolved acid, its aid Naya prison,
like you're liberating those places, you catch anyone who was
working there. I'm not going to say that that's a
bad thing to do. I might do the same thing,
and there's that you in their circumstances.

Speaker 4 (59:44):
Yeah, I can't blame somewhere. I can understand someone doing that.

Speaker 2 (59:47):
What are you going to do?

Speaker 1 (59:48):
Yeah, I can understand that in the next few days
they will probably be more of that violence, because we
are literally in some cases opening the lid on some
of the west crimes against humanity of this century.

Speaker 2 (59:59):
Yes, yes, and they are going to be catching There
are a lot of mok brat, you know, secret police
guys who didn't get out, who were throwing on We've
got videos of them leaving the palace throwing on civilian
clothes yep, and I'm not going to be shocked if
a lot of the justice process of that is ugly. Now,
I do suspect that Joe Lannie is going to at
least grab a chunk of those guys and do trials

(01:00:20):
because he is really looking for state legitimacy, you know,
and that's one way you get it.

Speaker 1 (01:00:25):
Yeah, that's his project now, But that's not going to
be how all these guys go down. Some of these
guys are going to die, and uh, yeah, they're just
gonna get fucking got yeah. Yeah, And look, they got
a lot of people they kind of had it coming
to me and not particularly concerned about that. I'm more
broadly concerned with, like what are you doing on the left?
If you see people in the streets, you see people

(01:00:47):
tearing down statues of dictators, you see people celebrating the
end of a regime that oppressed them for decades, and
you immediately go to, oh, this is bad, Like why
do you even bother? If we don't believe that people
can govern themselves, if we don't believe that the people
in the street are normally the people who are right,
and if we don't believe that the downfall of tyrannical

(01:01:09):
regimes is.

Speaker 4 (01:01:10):
A good thing.

Speaker 2 (01:01:10):
Yeah, what what do you believe? You know, if you're
just torturing it to be like, well no, you know,
you and I both read that there was a post
earlier today with someone being like these leftists purity politics,
you know, to be angry that aside kept a lid
on radical Islam and isis and just didn't do it
super cleanly. And it's man, he was fucking guessing children,
like what do you? Where are you here? Yeah? What

(01:01:33):
is wrong with you? Come on? Man?

Speaker 1 (01:01:35):
Yeah, this is yeah, this is a person who drop
chlorine gas on blocks of flats with little children in them, right, like.

Speaker 2 (01:01:41):
Yeah, fuck this guy.

Speaker 1 (01:01:42):
It's good that he's gone. I wish he was dead.
I'm sad that he gets to go and be an mphalmologist,
like he, of all people, needs to be held accountable
for his crimes.

Speaker 2 (01:01:51):
Yeah, yeah, some could have. We could have a song
on Anteleirian kind of situation, right, Yeah, who's the Armenian
who shot a member of the Turkey government in Berlin?
Yeah we could have something like that, go down God willing?

Speaker 1 (01:02:04):
Yeah, yeah, you never know they yeah, I guess people
there he's in Russia.

Speaker 2 (01:02:09):
Now he's in Russia.

Speaker 4 (01:02:10):
Someone will find him in his high end eye clinic
one day.

Speaker 2 (01:02:13):
Yeah, he's probably going to be going back and forth
to Dubai. There's some Syrians who wound up in Dubai.
Somebody might stab them.

Speaker 4 (01:02:18):
Yeah, we can hope.

Speaker 1 (01:02:21):
But I want to take one more break talking of stabbing.
Maybe maybe we will get an advert for knives, you know. Yeah,
I've never had a knife advert, have.

Speaker 2 (01:02:29):
We No, I don't know that we have. And I
would sell the hell out of knives.

Speaker 1 (01:02:33):
Yeah, almost any knives, even crappy gas stach night, Like,
if you make the ones that look like an oil slick,
get in touch with the advertising department at iHeartMedia.

Speaker 4 (01:02:42):
We'll pimp them. All Right, we're back.

Speaker 1 (01:02:53):
The last thing I want to talk about, Robert, is
how the rebels won, because there was not a lot
of fighting after the collap Civil EPO, but before there
was fighting, and in part how that fighting went I
think led to the downfall of the morale of the
Syriat army. Right, so there are some things here that
both Robert and I are somewhat nerdy about about conflicts, right,

(01:03:15):
like it there's something even when we're not attending was.
We like to read about them, and you and I
both take a great interest in history, and I think
we'd be unwise to not look at this and learn
from it, especially with HTS who massively professionalized since the
ceasefire in twenty twenty. I think professionalists is probably the
right word. Like that command, the technology, that the way

(01:03:39):
they operated looked a lot more like a modern military
than it did, you know, the militias, like I'm sure
you and I both remember the early Syrian of a
war for people who are a bit younger than us.
Like some of the most incredible improvised weapons that I've seen.

Speaker 2 (01:03:55):
Oh yeah, there was literally at one point they had
an Ottoman era black powder or cannon on the back
of a flatbed that they were using to hit regime positions.

Speaker 1 (01:04:05):
That they had literally taken out of the museum in
a leopard to yaket it out of the museum.

Speaker 4 (01:04:12):
Fucking amazing stuff like theredible.

Speaker 2 (01:04:15):
Only I thought the top of like that sort of
thing was when fucking insertance in Afghanistan would use seventeenth
century Jazils to shoot at US troops. But the Ottoman
cannon is really a was that's a flex.

Speaker 1 (01:04:27):
Yeah, with a huge flex they they also worked, you know,
they fired propane cylinders out of huge tubes, these improvised
motors they called hell cannons, Like really incredible and like
it speaks to the ingenuity of people and their desire
not to be oppressed, right, they desire to fight against
state tyranny. But when we compare that to what we

(01:04:48):
saw with HTS in twenty twenty four, a world of change. Right.
In particular, I think it was very interesting that they
captured armored vehicles and and they were able to combine
armor and infantry very effectively, which is not easy to
do right, that has eluded even some professional militaries. They

(01:05:10):
also very effectively used drones, both drones to drop bombs
and drones to adjust their artillery and mortifier, which I
think is something that again like that modern militaries do,
but it's not easy to do right, And it's not
like HDS could do massive exercises in the lead up

(01:05:31):
to this operation, like they seem to have professionalized very quickly.
Another area that they were you can see that they've
learned a lot from the conflicts in Ukraine and perhaps
in Miammar too, was their use of FPV drones, a
first person in view drone. How do you describe it.
It's like your eyes are on the front of the drone.
Is that a good description, Robert, Yeah, it's like you're flying.

Speaker 4 (01:05:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:05:54):
And there are videos of whole classrooms of hts I guess, soldiers, militants,
whatever you want, and called them practicing flying drones or
using the controllers to play like a computer game where
you have to like go through checkpoints and follow a
route and things. And they seem to have developed like
a training course that then gave them this drone brigade,
which they used incredibly effectively. They had these massive first

(01:06:17):
person view drones that were almost like a sort of
Ersat's cruise missile, and it was I think one of
those that penetrated some kind of command headquarters in Aleppo
in the early days of the battle there, killed several
important offices and commanders and helped to then spread that
panic which they rode all the way to Damascus. Right, So,

(01:06:37):
like this use of drones was extremely consequential. The other
thing that they used in which we've seen the SDF
use a lot, is these pulse art thermal optics. So
a thermal optic sees heat, right, I guess would be
the easiest way to describe it. And it maps heat
in a visual fashion for the user, and in this case,
they put them on their rifles and they're able to

(01:06:58):
see other people. At our friend Carl, who we had
on last week week before maybe Carl made a really
good video about thermal versus night vision on his Arrange
TV channel. I'll link it in the notes because I
think it's worth people checking out. They're not familiar with
this technology at all. The optics he used were not
the optics they're using, but these thermal optics. You've seen

(01:07:18):
them a lot with the SDF, especially in a freen
like they'll do these night missions, right, and when you
look at the recording from the thermal optic, it it
looks like people are glowing because they are the hottest
things in that area, and it makes it very easy
to target people. And HDS us these a lot when

(01:07:39):
they were attacking a LAPPA, right, these thermal optics that
they mounted on their rifles, and they allowed them to
pretty much. The United States used to talk about owning
the night right. Yes, it had night vision where no
one else does. Night Vision's proliferated a long way now,
and that means that some of the ways that they
used to use night vision they can't anymore. Like, for instance,
they used to send out lasers that were any visible

(01:08:00):
and the night vision to aim weapons. If your adversary
has night vision as well, you've now created a giant
line that goes right back to you if you're using
a laser aiming device, So.

Speaker 4 (01:08:11):
You can't do that.

Speaker 1 (01:08:12):
But these thermal optics, especially when they're fighting against Assyrian
Arabami who I mean, these conscripts are massively demoralized. Right,
They're underpaid, they're under fed. Did you meet any when
you were in Jab did you meet any people who defected?

Speaker 2 (01:08:24):
Yes, yes, I've met a number of people who had,
and some who had also had to flee, like from
Aleppo and whatnot, because they had been on like rebels
fighting the Asad regime, and some had wound up in
the SDF, some more just civilians living in the area.
I also there's also a number of folks who commuted
like to and from regime held territory just because like
if you were someone that wasn't particularly wanted, you could

(01:08:45):
do that. Yeah, it was a very confusing situation for
a lot of people.

Speaker 1 (01:08:50):
Yeah, extremely And I think when you meet the people
who have been regime soldiers and come across often they're
like they seem to be happy being waiters or working
in the mark in Risjaba because their pay was so
bad and their lives were so miserable as conscripts that
they'd rather just come and work, you know, any job
they can get in ans. And I think when you've

(01:09:12):
got those guys going up against well trained people from
HTS with these thermal optics, with these using torones, that
communications were solid. You know, you can tell from their
appearance that a lot of these guys are professionalized. They
were almost indistinguishable from US troops. Like I think you
and I had both responded to this tweet about some
YouTube guy was shocked that people were wearing helmets and

(01:09:36):
body armor, which that has been the esthetic of violence,
at least in places where the US has operated for
I know, half a decade. Would you say, like the
sort of US Special Forces?

Speaker 2 (01:09:48):
Look, yeah, I mean, and that's just the norm for
dressing if you're fighting in a war anywhere on the
planet now, yeh, Like, whether you're the Russian Army or
some militia in Syria. It's you know, play carrier, usually
like some sort of fast helmet, you've got you know,
belt with sidearm mag pouches, and then usually either in

(01:10:09):
akm or some sort of aar style weapon. Like everybody
dresses that way. Everybody looks very similar. Yeah, now because
it's just the most kind of I mean, number one,
there's a lot of that gear lying around and it's cheap.
And number two like it works, it's a load out
that works.

Speaker 4 (01:10:22):
Yeah, it's very practical. Yeah, for what they're doing.

Speaker 1 (01:10:25):
I think number three as well, like we should not
understate the desire to look like your avatar and call
of duty.

Speaker 2 (01:10:31):
Yes, yes, it's also looks cool. It looks like being
in a movie, and that is a that matters a
lot to the kind of young men who start fighting
in wars.

Speaker 4 (01:10:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:10:40):
Yeah, people, I think if you've not been you won't
realize how young a lot of these people are. This
incredible professionalism or incredible professionism. I'm overstating it, but this
dramatic change in the appearance and conduct of these rebels,
particularly HTS, occurred over about three or four years from
the cease fire in twenty twenty to this offensive in

(01:11:02):
twenty twenty four, and I think it gives us an
insight into the way that war is changing, right, that
access to information is easier than it ever has been,
and access to a lot of these technologies has proliferated
massively because we've seen in Myanmar, right, drones proliferate people

(01:11:26):
three D print little night vision goggles in Memba. Spoke
to Milk about it about a year and a half ago.
People remember Milk from our Meanma series about three D
printing little night vision goggles that use the camera from
you know those security cameras, Yeah, that can kind of
see at night. They use those and then a tiny
LCD screen. Of course, drones are everywhere now, right, things

(01:11:47):
like plate carriers even you see rebels in Meanma wearing them,
buying them from Ali Express. Like all of the technology,
all of the tactics are also much easier to find
on the internet. You know, Robert and I have both
spoken to people who go said they go on YouTube
to learn about like military tactics and small arms even
and you know, how to use different weapons systems when
they capture them. I think it's a real change in

(01:12:11):
the way that conflict is conducted, and it's one that
we will probably continue to see as like, you know,
the world isn't getting any more peaceful, Nope, and waste
a lot of you know, Russia and Iran took a
massive l in Syria. That doesn't mean that they're not
gone as sort of global actors. We will continue to see,
particularly Russia obviously fighting in Ukraine. And I think it's

(01:12:34):
worth looking at what happened in Syria so that we
can understand what we're going to see in other parts
of the world.

Speaker 2 (01:12:39):
Yep. One of the ways I like to think about
it that is crucial for people to understand is that
Syria has largely been the laboratory in which the twenty
first century was cooked up, Like all of our futures
have to some extent been built in Syria. Both like
this is where we get a lot of the fuel
behind the right wing surge that has been occurring over

(01:13:01):
the last few years, started because of the refugee crisis,
you know, but also a lot of the tactics and
weapons shit that like Israel is doing right now in Gaza,
like Cereal, was the lab to a significant extent for
how authoritarian regimes would crack down. And it was also
the impetus behind a lot of the most significant things
that have been happening over the last decade and change.

Speaker 4 (01:13:22):
So it might still be already.

Speaker 1 (01:13:26):
Yeah, siem and the Netherlands have stopped processing asylum applications
from Syria, which is yeah, which is concerning yep. But yeah,
I think it's worth continuing to keep an eye on.
I will continue to post about it, we will continue
to inform you about it here, and we will continue
to bring on people who have more expertise and insight
than we do. So yeah, we hope you'll keep an
eye on it. And I just want to end by

(01:13:48):
saying that like the democratic project in Rojava is under
a great deal of threat, Yes, currently more than it
has been for perhaps a decade.

Speaker 2 (01:13:56):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (01:13:56):
They do not have an ally in the United States.
They do not, as far as we know, have an
ally in Israel. And from what we've seen, it's one
thing what Israel says, it's another thing what Israel does,
and what Israel has been doing today is bombing ammunition
that they already have in the Anes, and that means
that it's more important than ever that you do what
you can to support them. If you go to the

(01:14:19):
Emergency Committee for a JAVA, you can find them online.
You find them on all different kinds of social media.
They have a toolkit for supporting JAVA right now, I
would urge you if you care about that project, if
you care about building democracy without the state, care about
building a place where women and men are equal. And
the revolution was led by women, it's not a revolution
that include women, it's revolution by women for women. I

(01:14:40):
would encourage you to do what you can to support them.

Speaker 4 (01:14:44):
All right, yep, that's all.

Speaker 2 (01:15:05):
Hey everyone, Robert Evans here and this is it could
happen here. Obviously. One of the things that's been happening here,
probably the biggest story of the last week or so
at least, is the shooting of United Healthcare CEO Brian
Thompson by an alleged shooter named Luigi Mangione. Meggione is
an interesting character. People have had a lot to say

(01:15:26):
about him, and so I went through his online footprint,
everything I can find on his social media, and I
wrote an article for my substack, shatter Zone, and I'm
going to be reading that in a slightly amended form
for you now as today's episode. I've spent much of
the last ten years reading manifestos and being a fly
on the wall in different little online boltholes where extremists

(01:15:48):
plan and seek to incite mass shootings. When Luigi Mangione,
the suspected shooter of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, was
arrested at a McDonald's, it didn't take long for digital
sleuths to put together a comprehensive record of his online activity.
I will tell you now that nothing he read or
posted explains why he gunned down an insurance executive better
than this single image in the background of his Twitter

(01:16:11):
profile and the images, of course, of an X ray
showing four screws in someone's lower base spine, apparently due
to a lumbar spinal fusion surgery. The day after I
wrote this article, The New York Times published a piece
after finding Luigi's read it. The piece by Mike Baker,
Mike Isaac, and my old boss at Bellancat, Eric Tohller,

(01:16:32):
confirms that he had a spinal fusion surgery, that he
had dealt with back pain for years, which had been
minor and then gotten much worse after a surfing injury,
and had grown even worse after slipping on a piece
of paper caused persistent problems, including pain when he sat down,
twitching leg muscles, and numbness in his growing in bladder.
According to The New York Times, he had that spinal

(01:16:53):
fusion surgery, which he had been deeply frightened of ahead
of time, but which resolved those symptoms, and then he
continued to have other symptoms, probably unrelated to the back pain.
It's unclear if the back pain came back, but what
is clear is that he wrote constantly online about pain
and about his struggles with various other health issues, including
a persistent brain fog that he seemed unable to get

(01:17:16):
care for. His friend R Jay, who lived with him
at an intentional community for digital workers in Honolulu starting
in twenty twenty two, confirms that Luigi suffered an injury
shortly after taking a basic surfing class after moving there.
This laid him up in bed for about a week,
unable to move. His friends had to seek the special
bed to help him with the pain. In general, we

(01:17:37):
have ample confirmation that he was someone who dealt with
a series of escalating health issues that changed him from
an extremely active, physically fit young man into somebody who
felt like they were no longer able to do or
enjoy the things they had previously been able to do
and enjoy. Now this is most of what we know
about the health history of Luigi Mangione as of December tenth.

(01:17:59):
Now when I record this twenty twenty four. As I
write this, a purported manifesto is making the rounds online
which discusses health issues his mother faced. It's still unclear
if that manifesto is real. kN Klippenstein has finally gotten
access to what he claims is the draft of the
manifesto that the shooter had on him when he was

(01:18:20):
arrested by the police. I don't know if that's a
manifesto or something he wrote while nervous, because he largely
addresses the cops in it and tells them you know
what to expect when searching him. But again, at the moment,
this purported manifesto that was also posted on substack, very
unclear as to whether or not that's real. So for
this today, we're going to stick with what we can verify,

(01:18:42):
and what we can verify is that Luigi Mangione suffered
from chronic back pain. He had five different books in
his Goodreads that he read about dealing with back pain
and healing from back pain, as well as other chronic
health issues. If he is the shooter, then we can
confirm he also chose to act out by targeting and
insurance CEO. The New York Times has stated that he

(01:19:03):
was arrested with a two hundred and sixty two word
manifesto which has since been leaked, and in that manifesto,
he describes the executives who run insurance companies as parasites
who quote continue to abuse our country for I mince
profit because the American public has allowed them to get
away with it. In addition to all this, we know
that Luigi came from a wealthy family. His grandfather made

(01:19:24):
millions running a series of country clubs, nursing homes and
office buildings and hospitals. One of his cousins is a
Republican state legislator. It is unclear if Luigi had any
access to the family money, but he was clearly financially
comfortable enough to move to Hawaii and pay to join
an intentional community. He had engineering degrees and a promising
early employment history. This is a man who had options.

(01:19:46):
He could have been almost anything he wanted to be,
and the thing that he ultimately chose to do with
his life after suffering a debilitating series of health issues
was to shoot the CEO of United Healthcare, Luigi Mangione.
Radicalized by pain. It's a well known fact that most

(01:20:13):
terrorists tend to be radicalized in communities. Much of my
career was spent watching eight chan turn from an imageboard
dedicated into gamer gate into a machine for generating white
nationalists mass shooters. These people often appeared as lone wolves
to the untrained eye, but they were radicalized intentionally in
and by a community. Much will be made in the

(01:20:34):
coming days and months about Luigi's online footprints. I will
go into some detail about where he spent his time
and how we should characterize it, but I want to
be clear at the outset that his intellectual diet does
not seem to be what made him choose to take action,
although it may have influenced the specific kind of action
he took. Luigi followed a lot of accounts on Twitter
that are wildly popular with young men, like Joe Rogan.

(01:20:56):
He listened to Jordan Peterson and Tucker Carlson and agreed
with them on certain things, but he also had cogent
criticisms of their arguments and presentation. Here's what he said
about Jordan Peterson on May fourteenth. This is why Jordan
Peterson always bothers me. Overcomplicates everything he says aloud, wasting
everyone's mental bandwidth and having to decipher it. The best
teachers are the best communicators, clear, succinct, simple language, which

(01:21:20):
does kind of gel with the fact that he wrote
three words on the bullets he used to shoot that Ceo.
Luigi also expressed frustration with wokeness and expressed opinions common
on the libertarian tech influenced right, like a belief in
the social benefits of Christianity, without expressing popular religious beliefs himself.
I've found one post where he talks about how nature

(01:21:42):
abhors a vacuum and shares an article about how Christianity's
decline has unleashed terrible new gods. Some of his posts
took the form of memes typical to online discourse of
this type, but I've also read an essay that he
wrote when he was fifteen years old, discussing how Christianity
persevere over paganism in ancient Rome and that essay exhibits

(01:22:03):
a long standing interest in this topic and a capacity
to treat it with nuance. His paper is very well written,
particularly for a fifteen year old, and while his conclusions
are highly arguable, it's not the work of someone hopelessly
brainwashed by culture war bullshit. Luigi liked to think and
read and come to his own conclusions. He was interested

(01:22:23):
in AI, in cryptocurrency, in life extension, and in a
constellation of tech bro adjacent attitudes and philosophies often described
as the Gray Tribe. I found one post where he
talks about a senior speech he gave on the Future
quote topics ranging from conscious artificial intelligence to human immortality.
The term gray tribe was coined by an influential rationalist

(01:22:46):
blogger and psychiatrist named Scott Alexander Siskin. He used it
to refer to an intersection of nerd culture with Silicon
Valley influenced ideology descending from the online rationalist movement. This
community existed outside of traditional right left eye ideology. Now
I've not found any evidence that Luigi was a specific
fan of Scott, but he expressed appreciation for several figures

(01:23:07):
associated with this big tent movement, including Peter Teel. If
we describe Scott as representing the more liberal flank of
the Gray Tribe, Luigi seemed to be drawn to folks
closer to the right wing side of things. The worst
person to use this terminology would probably be Teal associate
Bilaji Shrinivasan, who has used Gray Tribe framework to describe

(01:23:27):
his ideal big tech takeover of San Francisco and purging
of progressives. However, I must stress that Luigi Mangione never
expressed any support for this end of the ideology that
I can find. He was a young man of libertarian
inclinations who worked in big tech and had ties to
San Francisco, but he was also clearly someone still making
his mind up about the world. As information about him

(01:23:50):
has come out, I have seen people on the left
who initially saw his axis heroic lament that he was
a bigoted tech bro. Scott Alexander has been credibly described
as a eugenic supporter, as have many other people adjacent
to the strains of rationalism and big tech ideology in
which Mangione dabbled. Luigia's Twitter account does indeed include weird
posts from his time in Japan, where he theorizes on

(01:24:11):
how to solve falling birth rates by banning pocket pussies
and video game cafes. At other points, he complains about
Japanese citizens acting like quote unquote NPC's but race science
and eugenics don't seem to have been a focus for him,
and I would caution anyone against being overly reductive about
a twenty six year old beliefs based purely on a
handful of posts that bear no relation to his actions

(01:24:34):
in the world. The evidence that we have of his
online footprints suggests someone who was not unmoved by certain
arguments rooted in social justice. He expressed admiration for a
quote from Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse five about criminalization of poverty
in the United States. Quote America is the wealthiest nation
in the world, but its people are mainly poor, and
poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the

(01:24:56):
American humorist Ken Hubbard, it ain't no disgrace to be poor,
but it might as well be. It is, in fact
a crime for an American to be poor. Even though
America is a nation of the poor, every other nation
has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely
wise and virtuous, and therefore more esteemable than anyone with
power and gold. No such tales are told by the
American poor. Neluigi is certainly not the idealized leftist icons

(01:25:21):
some had hoped, but he doesn't easily fit into any
other box. We've got. His interest in gray tribe adjacent
thinkers and self help books written by productivity hackers like
Tim Ferriss is incredibly common among young men. Much has
been made of the four st Hour Review. He gave
industrial society and its future the manifesto of Ted Kazinski,
But as with the rest of his media diet, he

(01:25:42):
did not view Ted through the simple lens of hero worship.
Here's what he wrote quote, he was a violent individual,
rightfully imprisoned, who maimed innocent people. While these actions tend
to be characterized as those of a crazy Luddite, however
they are more accurately seen as those of an extreme
political revolutionary. I know those words his condemnation of Kazinsky

(01:26:02):
maiming innocent people are not just words, because we have
seen the attack he allegedly chose to carry out, not
a series of bombings that killed and maimed innocent people
with no real power in our society, but a surgical
strike against a man at the very top of the
system he hated, and one that caused no collateral damage.
He was capable of appreciating some of Kazinsky's conclusions, but

(01:26:24):
ultimately the quote he chose to highlight in his review
came not from the manifesto, but from a Reddit post
made by a guy with the user name boss Potatoess,
who otherwise mostly commented on the Grateful Dead. This post
praises Kazinsky for having the balls to realize that peaceful
protest has gotten us absolutely nowhere, and complains economic protest

(01:26:44):
isn't possible in the current system. As a result, violence
against those who lead us to such destruction is justified
as self defense. Quote. These companies don't care about you,
or your kids or your grandkids. They have zero qualms
about burning down the planet for a buck, so why
should we have an equalms about burning them down to survive.
This is not the kind of radicalization pathway our media

(01:27:06):
is good at discussing or analyzing. The things Luigi read
and the people he interacted with online absolutely influenced what
he did and how but Boss Potatoess is not some
nazi on eight Chan trying to provoke a shooting spree
for the lulls. He's a random dude angry about the
things seventy percent or more of the country is angry about,
and he's expressing a lack of faith in a peaceful
way forward. If you read this post in its entirety

(01:27:28):
as Luigi did, you can't miss the pain there, anxiety
and horror at the inevitability of climate change and the
looming knowledge that everything good and green on this earth
is being fed into the bloody maw of an industry
concerned only with maximizing profit. In more ways than one,
Luigi Mangione was radicalized by pain. I know many people

(01:27:59):
who suffer with chronic pain and ongoing medical issues. I
will tell you that it is not uncommon, in dark moments,
after fruitless, hours long calls about dropped medications or receiving
surprise bills, for them to joke about what they'd like
to do to the executives who run these companies. These
are jokes made in moments of despair and pain. No
one I know would ever act on them, because they

(01:28:20):
all have lives. People to care for into whom they
are responsible, they would never really do anything because the
consequences to their own loved ones would be so severe.
In the months before the shooting, Luigi had cut off
all contact with his family. He admitted this in court.
His parents eventually filed a missing's persons report in November
of this year, and we have evidence that friends tried

(01:28:42):
to contact him on his family's behalf via social media.
As was first noted by a Twitter account, Luigi Mangione
expressed interest in the works of Paul Scalis, a tech lawyer, writer,
and prominent poster who writes about the Lindie effect, a
concept that boils down to this the only effective joke
of things is time. Scalus is popular among the set

(01:29:03):
of people Magngione found himself drawn towards and writes about
the wisdom of ideas from antiquity. It's not hard to
grasp what a man with an academic interest in ancient
realm might see in him. On December fourth, twenty twenty four,
Paul made this post. Look, if you don't have any
kids and you want of these guys just floating around
the big cities. You got your education, but you never
really used it. To make money. You got a dead

(01:29:25):
end back office job and a future of just working
somewhere until you're seventy five and then dying, Go ahead
and do something. It's been suggested that this may have
influenced Luigi, and I think the timeline makes it clear
that cannot be the case. Luigia cut off contact with
his family in most of his friends months before this.
The evidence suggests that he had planned this attack for

(01:29:46):
quite some time. He arrived in New York City on
November twenty fourth, on a bus bound from Atlanta, where
he did not reside. So I don't think this post
represents a piece of his radicalization journey. Nor was Scalus
advocating for people to kill CEOs. But the situation in
mindset Scallus described does speak to a lot of young
men like Luigi, young and educated, but without intense responsibilities

(01:30:08):
or much hope for the future. This subset of society
has always overproduced terrorists, revolutionaries, and of course, mass shooters.
The United States has a mass shooter culture over the
last several decades since Columbine, we have grown used to
the idea that people who are angry and no longer
care if they live or die will sometimes choose to

(01:30:29):
go down killing strangers. In most cases, these shootings are
totally random, the victims chosen with no concern beyond maximum
body count and maximum attention. More recently, especially since twenty nineteen,
mass shootings have become increasingly politicized. Different extremists, mostly right wing,
have used them to put theory into praxis and earned

(01:30:50):
free pr for their causes. Most people abhor these actions,
but we have grown used to the idea that other
people will use such acts as a way to spread
messages that might otherwise getting gnat It is not coincidental
that the white genocide conspiracy theories from Brenton Terrence christ
Church Manifesto are now mainstream talking points and conservative politics.

(01:31:10):
Luigimanngione grew up with all of this. He would have
come to the same conclusions about the role shootings play
in our society as any other reasonably aware person. What
he did, was, of course, not a mass shooting, but
the assassination, his actions afterwards, and his possession of a
manifesto were all clearly plotted out by someone who knew
the social script for how this kind of thing goes

(01:31:31):
in the USA. In the wake of this shooting. Every
media organization commenting on it has had to grapple with
the waves of public enthusiasm for Luigi's actions. Right wing
media figures condemning the left for celebrating this assassination have
been criticized by their own readers and listeners. Insurance companies
have pulled down lists of their executives from the Internet.

(01:31:51):
This is because they too, understand the shooter culture of
the United States. Like everyone else, they know that any
mass shooting that meets with massive media coverage and in
nas trist will spawn copycats. The assassination Luigi is believed
to have carried out was new and exciting. It demanded
the public's attention in a way that most mass shootings don't.
At almost the same time, the United Healthcare CEO was

(01:32:13):
gunned down, a gunman walked into a religious school near Oreville, California,
and shot two young children before killing himself. This shooting
drew almost no national attention. It was entirely drowned out
by the execution of an insurance industry ceo. The armed
and disaffected young men who are most drawn to this
sort of thing will not miss this fact. I believe

(01:32:34):
Luigi Mangione was radicalized by pain. The shooters who follow
him will all have their own reasons for what they
do for their own journeys to that violent end, but
ultimately they'll do what they do because Luigi proved it's
what gets attention.

Speaker 5 (01:32:49):
For Now, welcome to it could Happen here, a podcast

(01:33:11):
where I your host Miya Wong, talks about inflation. We
have covered inflation on this show extensively, and now it
is once again time to return to it as we
head into a world where concerns about inflation and the
economy are the most cited justifications for people voting for
one Donald Trump. But unlike our other Oh God, had

(01:33:33):
so many episodes about inflation, this one is going to
be a bit different. Is going to start out somewhat
similar in that I am going to lay out a
brief explanation of the sort of material causes of the
inflation cycle and talk a bit about inflation theories, which
is what we've been largely doing on this show for
a while. And then I am going to explain why

(01:33:54):
none of that shit mattered, why none of what was
actually causing inflation mattered a single bit, because ultimately our
experience of inflation and more importantly, of price in general,
is based on a sense of justice, or as the
academics call it, a moral economy, and not on anything
that's sort of going on. So let's begin with what

(01:34:15):
is going on with inflation.

Speaker 4 (01:34:19):
Now.

Speaker 5 (01:34:20):
As we've discussed before on this show, most economists do
not understand why inflation happens. People will take theories. Those
theories are usually quite bad. There is no mainstream consensus
on what is going on. As both me and my
friends at the magazine Strange Matters have pointed out, former
Federal Reserve Governor Daniel Tarulo said quote, the substantive point

(01:34:41):
is that we do not at present have a theory
of inflation dynamics that work sufficiently well to be of
use for the business of real time monetary policy making.
So again, this is a guy who used to be
a Federal Reserve governor who has admitted that they have
no idea what the fuck is going on within inflation.
Looking at the extent to which people don't know what's

(01:35:02):
going on to inflation and how the various theories simply
don't work is a large part of Steve Mann's notes
towards the theory of inflation, which is a Strange Matter's
article that a lot of this will be pulled from.
And we've had Ze on the talk about this before.
So there are a lot of theories about inflation, and
none of them work very well. Inflation on a fundamental

(01:35:23):
level is just prices going up. People have this tendency
to think about inflation in terms of the value of
money going down, but on a pure level, all inflation
says is that prices go up. Now, the most common
theory of inflation is inflation is based on there being
too much money in the economy. And the thing about

(01:35:44):
those theories is that they don't work outside of like
a very few specific examples of hyperinflation that loom large
over our understanding of what inflation is, even though they
have absolutely quantitatively and theoretically, they have absolutely nothing to
do with the inflation that we've seen over the past
four years. So instead of talking about that Shaite anymore,

(01:36:05):
Man and the Strange Matter's crew developed what they call
the supply chain theory of inflation. So I'm going to
read the quote from Notes Towards the Theory of Inflation.
As economist JW. And Mason recently remarked, on his website.
Inflation is just an increase in prices. So for every
theory of price setting, there's a corresponding theory of inflation.
If inflation theory is downstream of price setting, this is

(01:36:27):
still a quote from that article, but not the JW.
Maansing quote. If inflation is downstream of price theory, then
no account of inflation can begin with the macro economy
at all, since prices are set at the micro level. Rather,
you need to look at particular industrial sectors, their supply chains,
and ultimately the pricing decisions of their firms. Only then

(01:36:49):
are the true causes of inflation, both the internal failures
of the industrial system and external shocks to it which
can cause price rises revealed. Man's price theory is fairly simple, right.
It flows from the basic observation that prices are set
by guys in offices, not by something you know abstract
as like market forces and supply and demand. In economic terms,

(01:37:11):
what this argument amounts to is the argument that corporations
are price makers and not price takers. Right, there's a
bunch of guys they sit in offices and develop a
strategy of but what prices are going to be? And
that's you know, how they're set, and what matters to
the people who develop prices are things like goodwill, which
is to say, not pissing off their customers by raising prices,

(01:37:32):
and things like their balance sheets which reflect, you know,
their incomes and costs. Price in this model is just
cost plus markup. And we know this is how prices
are actually set because, as Man points out, people have
gone through and done surveys of pricing managers and ask
them how they set prices and the answer is costless workup.
So what would cause these guys in offices to increase

(01:37:56):
their prices, Well, these are companies that are all part
of a global supply chain, a very very broad global
supply chain, and a very complicated global supply chain. This
means that if the cost of the stuff they buy
from other suppliers on the chain in order to produce
what they're selling, if those prices go up, because there is,

(01:38:16):
to use a purely hypothetical example, a giant global pandemic,
those costs increases eventually had to be passed down to
the people paying the products, so that the corporation can
maintain its balance sheets and maintain its sort of price
plus markup as something that you know, covers their costs.

Speaker 1 (01:38:33):
Right.

Speaker 5 (01:38:34):
This is what set off the giant inflation spike in
the US and the Biden administration. You know, the cost
side of cost plus markup exploded.

Speaker 4 (01:38:42):
But it doesn't really.

Speaker 5 (01:38:43):
Matter why the prices increased for our purposes, and our
purposes are looking at sort of why Trump won the election.
What was important, you know, about inflation wasn't even the
price increases, It was the narratives around inflation and how
we understand the economy at a moral level. So that
we're going to turn to one of the most popular
accounts of inflation, so called greedflation. Now, as we've said,

(01:39:08):
price is cost plus markup, and you can raise prices
because of cost, but you can also do this because
you want to increase your markup. And this is something
that happened during the inflation search. Companies realized that consumers
were willing to accept higher prices without the usual good
will hit because they thought the prices were going up
because inflation was happening, and because they were willing to

(01:39:31):
accept the higher prices and not you know, try to
shop somewhere else, corporations went, fuck it, let's just keep
jacking the prices up, and this really really pissed people off.
It still does, and this is something that was true
across the entire political spectrum.

Speaker 4 (01:39:44):
Right.

Speaker 5 (01:39:44):
People were very, very angry about this sort of reflation thing.
And that rage is more important than the technical details
of why inflation happened, because the way we understand inflation
is not through conventional economics. We understand it through the
moral economy. And when we come back from a different
kind of economy, which is to say, this ad break,

(01:40:07):
we are going to examine what the moral economy is,
how it differs from our sort of regular economy, where
it came from, and why it's relevant to our situation now.
And we are so back, all right, let's talk about

(01:40:31):
the moral economy. The moral economy is a concept developed
by the British historian E. P. Thompson in the early
nineteen seventies. Thompson was attempting to explain the previous century
and a half of bread riots by what he termed
the English crowd by applying anthropological principles to their actions.
I'm just going to read from Thompson's The Moral Economy

(01:40:52):
of the English Crowd here. It is, of course true
that riots were triggered off by soaring prices, by malpractice
among dealers, or by hunger. But these grievances operated within
a popular consensus as to what we're legitimate and what
we're illegitimate practices in marketing, milling, baking, et cetera. This,
in its turn, was grounded upon a consistent traditional view

(01:41:15):
of social norms and obligations of the proper economic function
of several parties within the community, which, when taken together,
can be said to constitute the moral economy of the poor.
In outrage to these moral assumptions, quite as much as
actual deprivation was the usual occasion for direct action. Now,

(01:41:35):
the moral economy of the English crowd in the eighteenth
century is about a very specific period in British history,
which is to say, the seventeen hundreds, and about how
people thought bread should be sold. Peasants and the new
urban workers had very specific ideas about bread, about how
bread should be produced, about who should be allowed to
sell it, about where and when they should be allowed

(01:41:57):
to sell it, about how it should be sold, how.

Speaker 4 (01:41:58):
It should not be sold.

Speaker 5 (01:42:00):
And because of this, you know, because of their experience
in sort of previous systems, that before the sort of
imposition of the free market system or quote unquote free
market system. They have a very specific series of hatreds.
They hate middlemen, they hate grainhoarders, they hate all of
the aspects of the new quote unquote free market that
impose additional costs and burdens on them. And they also

(01:42:23):
believed that elites have a kind of moral duty to
the masses based on the norms and traditions of their society.
And when they welch on that deal in a way
that makes people's lives worse, people get extremely pissed off.
These peasants, and you know, urban workers particularly hated price increases,
and they hated price increases so much that this frequently

(01:42:45):
turned into riots. But the actual contents of these riots
are very interesting. Instead of simply seizing all of the grain,
they do something else entirely. Here's Thompson again.

Speaker 4 (01:42:58):
Quote.

Speaker 5 (01:42:58):
The central action in this pattern is not the sack
of grainaries in grain or flour, but the action of
quote setting the price. From a few lines later, they
might then order the farmer just end quote convenient quantities
to market to be sold quote and at a quote
reasonable price. The justices were further empowered to quote set

(01:43:19):
down a certain price upon a bushel of every kind
of grain. So, if you follow this here, right, what's
happening in these British bread riots is that the revolt
isn't just about their you know, being a price to grain.
It's that people have a very very specific moral understanding
of what the price of grain should be, and they
take direct actions that are designed to set the price

(01:43:42):
of grain to the level they thought it should rest at.
And this kind of action is extremely common sort of
across Europe in this entire time period. Right, it's also
a hallmark of the French Revolution. You can see in
this right, in this sort of rage of a price
in the sense of justice, the outlines of our current
moral economy. You have, you know, staggering outrage's price inclerease

(01:44:05):
is seen as on jests, which is reflation or just
inflation in general, because people are just mad about the
concept of the price going up, paired with rage at
the elites, which manifests the sort of hatred of Joe
Biden the Democrats for being the people who presided over
these price increases. We also have our own rage about
price gouging in immediate market terms. And this is something

(01:44:26):
that the most annoying libertarians and the defenders of the
market love to point out. There's nothing actually wrong by
market economics about say Martin Skrelly jacking the price of
medicine up until you can't afford it anymore, or you know,
other things that we find extremely terrible, like people jacking
the price of water when people need water, like bottled

(01:44:46):
water dreat hurricanes. We are all outraged, So why do
we feel morally strong about it? And that is the
moral economy. Maybe this is something that you know, these
these reactions, right, the emotional reactions we have to this,
the sense of injustice that we feel, are almost entirely
outside of the realm of what you would call traditional economics, right,

(01:45:07):
And that's because we're functioning on something that is, in
some senses older than that kind of economics. But there's
something else going on here at a fundamental level. And
what's important about you know, price and the reaction to
inflation is that it's an outrage based on a sense
of justice.

Speaker 2 (01:45:25):
Right.

Speaker 4 (01:45:26):
This rage is not a measure of direct.

Speaker 5 (01:45:28):
Exploitation necessarily, I think it was the political scientist James C.
Scott who wrote his own book called The Moral Economy
of the Peasant, and Scott argues that, you know, and
ib Thompson also argues this that it's the moral angle
that causes people to revolt, not the direct level of exploitation.
You can, in fact, you know, inflict hideous exploitation on

(01:45:49):
people as long as they think that it's just. But
when you violate these moral principles, that's when people really
lose it. But it also means, right, the fact that
the sense of outrage is not necessarily directly tied to
the exploitation level. It means that rich people could be
bad about inflation even though they're completely fine, because these

(01:46:10):
people also still have this sort of sense of justice
about what prices should be. Now, it's also worth noting
here that it is possible to have high inflation rates
and have everyone be fine. In fact, we have discussed
scenarios like that on this show. In my episodes about
the rise of Lulah of the current president of Brazil,
we discussed how military dictatorship in Brazil produced an economy

(01:46:33):
that was you know, you had twenty percent on year inflation, right,
but also you had forty percent yearly wage increases, and
so everyone was like kind of fine with it because
the amount of money you were making was going up
every year, So nobody really cared about even things like
the military dictatorship itself. There was not an enormous amount
of opposition to it. But then Brazil's trade unions figured
out the government had been lying about inflation numbers, and

(01:46:55):
this started off a series of protests that you know,
would send Lula like into his blame his political career,
and eventually this is one of the sort of dominoes
that leads to knocking down the military dictatorship. And that's
because you know, the level of exploitations people were living
ut or hadn't changed. But the deal that they had made, right,
the sort of deal with the military government of like,

(01:47:16):
we won't do anything, our wages will continue to go up,
and inflation will continue to work at a certain level
such that we're still getting paid. That deal was violated,
and that sense of injustice was powerful enough to really
kickstart in extremely powerful Brazilian labor movements and kickstart at
the fall of a dictatorship. Now, one of Thompson's arguments

(01:47:38):
was that the success of Adam Smith and his Cohort,
and Smith is moving around and making his arguments about
what the free market is in the period where we're
dealing with all of these sort of grand crises. His
argument is that the success of Smith was moving economics
out of the domain of morality where it was born.
Economics was originally an aspect of moral philosophy, right, it
was part of that discipline. But you know, Smith and

(01:48:00):
as people move it out. And this is why liberal
economists find the anger about inflation so incomprehensible. They see
it in purely statistical terms and go like, look, the
economy is great. Why is everyone mad? And you know,
I could get into hear a bunch of arguments about
whether or not this is actually true. I mean, I'm
going to return to by sort of classic argument about like, well, yeah, okay,

(01:48:22):
even if you believe all of the economic indicators are
great versas people like I'm trans for me, the economy
is it has an unemployment rate of like nineteen thirty
six US great depression. So you know, there are a
lot of people for whom the economic outlook is not good.
People for whom you know, even the wage increases that
they got in this period still leave them in sort
of hideous and crippling poverty. And none of that shit

(01:48:44):
matters because the statistics that these people are trying to
use to try to get everyone to calm down are
not operating in the inside of the moral economy. They're
operating outside of it because they're from a tradition that
is specifically about not working inside the moral economy, and
the people that're interacting with are in the world economy.

Speaker 4 (01:49:01):
But why is it like this, right? Why do we
have a moral.

Speaker 5 (01:49:06):
Economy that functions this way in the case of the
peasants and you know, the working people of the seventeen
hundreds across Europe, and you know this just goes on
through the eighteen hundreds too. Right, we can trace the
moral economy to a very very specific set of conditions
and traditions and expectations rooted in how people traditionally bop bread.
But what are the conditions of the modern American moral economy?

(01:49:28):
To understand that, we need to turn to the concept
of price itself. But first, do you know what guarantees
low price? Actually, I probably shouldn't say the word guarantee,
That is probably staggeringly illegible. You know what probably has
low prices. It's the products and services that support this podcast.

Speaker 4 (01:49:55):
We are back.

Speaker 5 (01:50:00):
Now turn to price. The political economist Shimsheng Bickler and
Jonathan Needson argue that price is the unit of what
orders capitalist society. You know, price is like the fundamental
unit of political economy. It's it's the thing that orders
and structures the entire society. If you want to know
more about this, read their book Capitalist Power. It's quite good.

(01:50:22):
I am mentioning them because I'm about to misuse their
argument completely in tandem with a quote from Marx that
I am also about to misuse. And I am going
to do this to make a different point. So I
agree with Bickler and needs in that price is the
unit that orders capitalist society. But what I'm interested in
is price is what's called a social hieroglyphic. Now, social

(01:50:46):
hieroglyphic is a term that's a one off term that
Marx used wants to talk about how price like mystifies
at hure value.

Speaker 2 (01:50:53):
Whatever.

Speaker 5 (01:50:54):
I don't care about that. I care about it because
there's something very interesting about price itself, and there's something
interesting about the notion of a hieroglyph Now March is
using hieroglyph in the term of like it's something you
have to be decoded, right, because he's writing in the
eighteen hundreds.

Speaker 4 (01:51:09):
This is you know, everyone's obsessed with hieroglyphs.

Speaker 5 (01:51:11):
I am using hieroglyphs because hieroglyphs are also a method
of encoding complex information into a single character.

Speaker 1 (01:51:17):
Right.

Speaker 5 (01:51:18):
Price as a social hieroglyph is important because price is
the mechanism through which we understand and often through which
we fail to understand the world.

Speaker 4 (01:51:28):
Our entire lives.

Speaker 5 (01:51:30):
In the eyes of the people who rule this world,
our entire lives are captured in a single number. Everything
you do at work is ultimately just a price on
a corporate spreadsheet. The entirety of the labor process of
producing a good, every hour worked, every drop of sweat,
every tier, every broken body, and shattered city and trade
union is lined up in front of a firing squad,

(01:51:51):
appears in the end as a simple number price. To
express it another way, heals Daniel conn At the painted
bird from their the butcher's share. Let's take a walk
around the old bizarre, where every little thing has trafficed far.
Every pair of pants and grain of rice contains this
poorer story in its price, a story of the power

(01:52:13):
people wield, a story about factories and fields, a story
of which you'll never have to be aware, just as
long as the butcher gets his share. Price, this single
number is how we understand the world, and it causes
us to treat price and thus inflation, as a matter

(01:52:34):
of morality and not economic rationality, because price is the
way that our society causes us to interact with people.
It's the way we interact with objects. It is the
thing that structures the way we all behave and understand
the world. But price has another function. It is the

(01:52:55):
gatekeeper of capitalist society. Because price and a man with
a gun is what's standing between you and the ability
to live your life. Outrage of the moral economics of
price increases are similar, but not identical, to the impulses
behind looting. Everything that you ever need and have been

(01:53:15):
unable to get is when you walk into a grocery store,
just sitting there right in front of you, but between
you and it is a number and a man with
a gun, and the man with a gun fucking hates you.
So the moment you're free, you just take it. Price
in the entire economic system behind it is organized very specifically,

(01:53:37):
so you don't do this. E. P. Thompson argued that
the moral economy was pre political. The movements that it
produced could be extremely well organized, but they fundamentally were
not the real movement which abolishes the present state of things.
In twenty twenty, we for a brief moment saw the
outlines of that movement. The uprising was crushed in its place.

(01:54:01):
We saw the emergence of pre political concerns about price.

Speaker 2 (01:54:05):
Right.

Speaker 5 (01:54:06):
We saw once again a massive panic about inflation. And
this is not to say that you know, inflation didn't
hurt people.

Speaker 2 (01:54:12):
It did.

Speaker 5 (01:54:12):
It was in large extents of fiasco. But look at
the politics for a moment that this has produced. Right,
What the media understands is economic anxiety, and what I
think we can now better understand as the moral economy
that is a result of the fact that our entire
economic system is structured by price, and that we encode
all of the information in our life into prices that

(01:54:34):
we sell ourselves for, and that we in turn are
sold things for those prices going up. The product of
it was Trump, right, and there's I think a reason
why these sort of pre economic explanations are preferred to
the answers and you know, to the actions that people
saw in twenty twenty four years later. Portland, one of

(01:54:55):
the centers of the uprising, now has almost every grocery
store the exit of it is armed guards with guns.
And these guards are there to maintain the price system.
They're there because for a very brief moment, people started
thinking something dangerous. They started thinking, what if this didn't
have a price?

Speaker 4 (01:55:35):
It's it could happen here.

Speaker 5 (01:55:37):
The podcast that's happening right now, this is maybe the
foremost of the Putting Things Back Together episodes. I'm your
host Miya Wong with me as James Stout guy. He
likes it to put things together. Yeah, and you know,
on the subject of putting things together over the last
I don't even know three four weeks, the question I
have been asked the most by everyone is how do

(01:56:00):
I start organizing? And you know the problem with how
do I start organizing is that it's not a question
that has cleaner, simple answers. Now, the most common answer
you get is just join an org. And the problem
is that most of the people who you were hearing
this from are already in an org. And want you
to join their org.

Speaker 4 (01:56:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:56:20):
Also, the problem is a lot of the orgs that
are currently dominating left to spaces in the in the
United States.

Speaker 4 (01:56:26):
Are trash, yeah, and bad for people, bad people in them,
bad people who are not in them. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:56:32):
Here's a little test you can you can do. Is
your org currently sad that Basha a Lasad is no
longer governing Syria? Because if that's the case.

Speaker 4 (01:56:41):
Leave yep.

Speaker 5 (01:56:43):
And that's that's a lot of orgs that that's not Yeah,
that takes most of them right now. We'll come back
to orgs in a bit. But what I'll say about
orgs is that, Okay, if you know an organization in
your area that you like and you think does good
work and most importantly spends their time actually doing work
instead of either in fighting or talking about doing work,

(01:57:04):
you join them. It will be good. But the important
thing about organizations, and this is something we'll come back
to you later. The important thing about organizations is they
have a lot of people. Yeah, And the thing that
makes organizing work is people. It's not organizations. It's not
even necessarily ideological labels. It's there being a bunch of
people who you can use and who want to do things. Yeah,
but something I realized that the more I had these conversations, right,

(01:57:27):
you know, I'm having it with friends, I'm having them
with strangers, I'm having them with other organizers. And the
more I had these conversations, the more I realize something
sort of startling you. The person listening to this almost
certainly already knows how to organize, but you don't know
that that's called organizing. Yeah, that's a very good point.
I have encountered some of the most stunning or I

(01:57:49):
mean organizing that like I can't discuss the specifics of,
but like some of the best organizing I've ever encountered.
I have ran into you in the last three weeks
some people who don't think that they're organizers and started
talking to me about their stuff. I was like, what, Like,
people are winning victories that like the like hardcore committed
organizers haven't been able to do in like thirty years. Yeah,

(01:58:10):
and it's just by random people who don't think they
know how to do anything.

Speaker 4 (01:58:13):
Yeah. Can I tell a little organizing story?

Speaker 2 (01:58:16):
Do we have time?

Speaker 4 (01:58:16):
Yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah, go for it.

Speaker 1 (01:58:18):
So I remember in like twenty eighteen, I am on
a trip with a friend. We're coming back and we
see the arrival of the migrant caravan. One of the
migrant caravan is the one that everyone decided to have
a fucking cow about right before the twenty eighteen mid terms.
And at that time, they were corraling the people of
the migrant caravan in a baseball stadium in Tijuana, and

(01:58:38):
like it was raining every day, So the baseball stadium ends.

Speaker 4 (01:58:41):
Up looking like the Battle of the Psalm after like
a couple of.

Speaker 1 (01:58:43):
Days, right, you know, kids in leady mud and shit,
and I particularly know what to do, but evidently there
were people there who were hungry and thirsty, and so
I get three of my my friends. At this time,
I was still making about half my money riding bicycles
and in the other half writing. So my friends and
I supposed to do a long bike ride. All of
us are people who make a living riding bikes, right,

(01:59:05):
we're not like expert organizers. And I was like, hey, guys,
this is fucked.

Speaker 4 (01:59:09):
Which we do.

Speaker 1 (01:59:10):
We called a friend who has a company who makes waffles,
where we obtained like as many waffles as we could
physically carry across the border. At that time, we weren't
able to get in. We found a way to get in.
We began distributing the waffles. After that, we put something online,
people sent us money, and we continued feeding people for months.
None of us, I think, had a particular plan or

(01:59:32):
a scheduled. Yeah, it is a bit chaotic at times,
but we were able to do that and with a
lot of other people. Clearly wasn't just us, right, but
we were able to process tenths of thousands of dollars
and feed thousands of people.

Speaker 4 (01:59:44):
Be everyone there, And.

Speaker 1 (01:59:46):
I've seen this countless times, especially working and organizing with
well with refugees. For the most part, people are so
good at organizing each other in themselves. Like when we
got there with bottles of water and food, there are
a thousand people who have not had sometimes a drink
for days, let alone more than a thousand, I think,
let alone something hot to eat. Right, Everybody made sure

(02:00:08):
that the children and the sick people got what they
needed first.

Speaker 4 (02:00:11):
Organizing is something that is very inherent in us as people.
It just we don't call it that. Yeah, And that's
part of what I want to try to the myth.

Speaker 5 (02:00:20):
I want to try to puncture with this because I
think particularly in the US, but this is true in
a lot of places. There's this way in which the
organizer sort of TM capital T capital O. The organizer
gets held up as this sort of I guess, even
a particularly masculinist thing, which is it's this this guy
with specialized knowledge, and that's just not true. This brings

(02:00:43):
us something that I think is actually really important, which
is what what even is organizing?

Speaker 2 (02:00:48):
Right?

Speaker 5 (02:00:49):
And the answer is that most organizing is you get
you get a group of people together, you get them
to show up to something, and then you do something right.
And the thing about this, right, that's something all of
you know how to do. If you can organize a
dinner party, right, if you can get eight people to
show up to a place to eat dinner, you can

(02:01:10):
do this. It is it is largely the same skill sets,
and all of the skill sets that make people good
organizers are skill sets that you have to develop to
you know, work a job right.

Speaker 3 (02:01:22):
You know.

Speaker 5 (02:01:22):
Like one of the things that comes up a lot
in this which is less discussed and also kind of annoying,
but you know you have to manage it is that
organizing is about people and sometimes you have to you know,
you have to do things like you have to manage
people's egos. But like, I don't know, almost all of
you work jobs or have work jobs, right, you have
had to like deal with your boss being on one right,
you have the skills to do this. You know how

(02:01:44):
to do the interpersonal relationship stuff. It's just that you
don't think about that as organizing, even though that's that's.

Speaker 1 (02:01:53):
Just what it is.

Speaker 4 (02:01:55):
Yeah, that's the core of it is getting people to
do stuff, like like you do it every.

Speaker 5 (02:02:01):
Yeah, and the way you do this is by building
relationships with people, right, And this isn't necessarily friendships, although
that works. And like, one of the easiest ways to
start organizing is by getting all of your friends together
because you're already friends, you have pre existing relationships, and
being like, Okay, motherfuckers, we gotta go do something.

Speaker 4 (02:02:19):
And actually I love that.

Speaker 5 (02:02:20):
The first thing that you brought up was an admittedly
sort of medium ish scale lift version of this. But
one of the very easiest things that you can do
is you can just get food of some kind. You
can either buy it or you can make it yourself,
and you and a group of like eight people, not
even eight people, you can do it with lower I
know people who've done this just solo.

Speaker 4 (02:02:40):
Is that you can just go give food to people. Yeah.
Literally it was this morning, so I'm tired.

Speaker 1 (02:02:46):
Yesterday morning, I have some mine house neighbors right and
it was cold, and so I went out and gave
them some hot breakfast, so hot coffee. It's super easy
to do if you are struggling socially wherever you are,
maybe you're finding a hide to make friends. I know
that's the thing people often struggle, especially if you've moved
to a new place or post pandemic, or you're still
concerned with Liuvede gatherings or any of those things. Like,

(02:03:07):
if you start doing that, you will find other people
who want to do it too, Like so many of
my friends I organize with are people. Like when we
had the end of Title forty two and people were
in between the fences that a lot of the people
who I organize with now or who helped people with now,
I didn't know. I just showed up with a giant
sider generator that I happened to have and some stuff

(02:03:29):
that we had to whip around a CAOL zone for
and like people who care about the same things as
you are generally cool and it's a good way to
make friends, and then you can go on from there.

Speaker 5 (02:03:40):
Yeah, and there's a second compounding thing here too, which
is that you know, feeding people it's a way to
build relationships with people, and also it's a really good
way for people to get to know you in general
and know that you are someone who will help them
with things. Yeah, and from there, and this is a
very common except I mean this is I literally had
this conversation with one of my friends who's like an

(02:04:02):
old school Food Not Bombs organizer. Food Not Bombs is
a very very it's a cool organization. You can just
like found a food out Bobs chapter. They have like
a couple of principles, or you can just do your
own thing. And I'm pretty sure it's still like the
largest anarchist project in the world. Yeah, because all it
takes is you and like three other people and you
just go feed people. But the thing is from doing that, right,

(02:04:25):
if there's other things that you're concerned about, people will
bring you their problems and you can help them doing it.
And this is a very good way to get into
other kinds of organizing because suddenly, once you start building
these relationships. Everything sort of cycles and cycles, and you know,
you get involved in more and more things. Yeah, and
that's kind of a that's kind of a late stage
thing that we're sort of jumping to a bit. But

(02:04:46):
I want to go back to the beginnings of how so,
how do you get a group of people together to
do a thing? And the answer is you kind of
already know how to because you presumably at some point
in your life have like organized a group of friends
to go do something, right, Like I've gotten a group
of people together to go accomplish a task.

Speaker 1 (02:05:08):
Yeah, and it could literally be anything, right, like, yeah,
if you've got some people to go to a bar,
you have the skills.

Speaker 5 (02:05:14):
One way I've been thinking about it recently and in
my project is putting is thinking about it as like
putting together a heist crew.

Speaker 4 (02:05:22):
And so, okay, I could vouch for this right.

Speaker 5 (02:05:27):
The feeling of walking up to eight people and telling
them individually, I'm putting together a team and I want
you it is.

Speaker 4 (02:05:35):
It feels you can just do it. There is nothing
stopping you.

Speaker 5 (02:05:38):
There nothing in the world can stop you from just
walking up to your friend and going I'm putting together
a team, and it feels exactly as good as you
think it would from the Ice movie.

Speaker 4 (02:05:48):
It rules, It's so fun amazing.

Speaker 5 (02:05:52):
Yeah, and and and but this gets into also what
kinds of people you want to do right, because obviously
you know, there's two vectors of this. There's on the
one hand, you have the aspect of okay, who do
you know? Right, And a lot of organizing is just about,
here is a problem, and I know someone who has
some sort of skill or resource that can that can

(02:06:14):
help deal with it, and you put people in touch
with each other, and that's organizing. That's so much organizing
is literally just hey, like I have like a broken
part of my car. I know someone who's like a
car mechanic, right, and you put them in touch, and
you have successfully organized people, and you have built relationships,
and you have made all of the sort of social

(02:06:34):
web that creates organizing.

Speaker 4 (02:06:35):
You've made it stronger. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (02:06:37):
It also just feels good because you know, and that's
an auxiliary benefit to all of this is that it's
a great it's a great way to sort of break
break the isolation we're all under.

Speaker 4 (02:06:46):
Yeah, I think the best solution for despair is.

Speaker 1 (02:06:51):
I'm thinking of a quotation here something that the busy
bee have no time for despair. But the thing that
makes me feel better about the world is that I
have seen that people can fix massive problems with very
few resources by just showing up. And like I think,
organizing is what gives me, what allows me to enter

(02:07:12):
this period of time that we're entering into with a
with a great deal more hope than I otherwise would
have done.

Speaker 4 (02:07:17):
Yeah, and do you know what else will help you
enter your situation with Is it the products and services
that support this podcast.

Speaker 5 (02:07:25):
I don't know if I'm allowed to say this, but
we are not in control of the length of the ads.

Speaker 4 (02:07:31):
They just do it. We're sorry, here's a really long
period of ads. I'm so sorry.

Speaker 5 (02:07:48):
We are back. So I want to I want to
return to my highest career if I don't know if
if you're a D and D person, the other way
you can think about this is you're putting together like
a Dungeons and Dragons party or like an RPG party.
And the way you need to think about this is, Okay,
so you've picked a thing that you want to do, right.
You see, you've seen something in the world that is
bad and you figure it you go, Okay, I can

(02:08:10):
do this thing to solve it. And maybe and maybe
that's you know, it's literally something as simple as feeding people.
Maybe that's you know, I want to start. I want
to start doing tenants organizing. I want to start because
my rent is too high, right, people are getting evicted.
I want to start doing like immigration defense.

Speaker 1 (02:08:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (02:08:25):
And from there you make a list and that list
is you know what you're interested in doing, and you
try to match what things need to be done with
people you know who have those skills. Yeah, and this
is you know, this, this is is where you release
and get into the higst things, right, because everyone has
their sort of like highst role. Now, obviously part of

(02:08:47):
this that you want is you want to create sort
of balanced teams, right. You want people who have overlapping
strengths so you don't just have only one person who
can do a thing. And part of the way the
successful organization works over time, and I mean just how
successful organizing works is that eventually you are trying to
organize yourself out of a job. Which is to say,

(02:09:07):
you want your organization to function such that if you're
not able to do it, you know, or just you're
gone or you cycle onto a next thing, or you know,
any any number of things that can happen. You want
the organization to still be able to keep working without you,
and you want you want you're trying to get people
to be able to replace you as the person who's
like organizing the thing, right, Yeah, And at this point
we can start talking about the kinds of skills that

(02:09:30):
people need for organizing, and a lot of people and
this is unbelievably common when I talk to people, and
like especially women and especially like a lot of non
binary people and trans people particularly have this is that
people don't believe that they have any skills and then
you talk to them for five seconds and they're like, well,
I'm good at carrying heavy objects, right, I'm good with kids,

(02:09:52):
which is a huge one. We'll get to you in
a second, right, Or like, I don't know, I have
a car. That's a huge skill. There are so many
different skills that are so useful for so many things.
I'm just gonna go over lots of things that are
actually really useful to get to get people a sense
of like the kinds of things that there are. There
are massive roles for so one of the most important

(02:10:13):
ones and this is something you can you deliberately look for.
You know, this is this is one of the things
you do at the beginning of any union organizing campaign.
Someone who's good at talking to other people and making friends.
That is a staggeringly useful person because again, most most
organizing is just talking to people and building relationships. And
you know, one of the things you do when you're
when you're doing your sort of they call it power mapping.

(02:10:33):
But when when you when you're figuring out how you're
going to organize a workplace, is you find the person
who everyone likes and talks to and respects, and you
talk to that person. Yeah, because that person can you know,
can sort of like organize people down the chain because
they have they have their relationships already, and also they're
good they'll be good at, you know, talking to new
people and and spreading your organization that way, and so, like,

(02:10:55):
you know, if you're just someone who's social or and
this is also very useful if you have a friend
who is very social, because I know a lot of
us are oporary social, but you probably have a friend
that you're thinking of right now who is very good
at conversations. That is charming and is good at making friendships.
That person unbelievably useful, incredibly useful and compelling skill. Yeah,

(02:11:15):
there are also things like research people who are good
at and I think people are much better at research
than they think to take like a tat a's organizing example. Right,
one of the common things you have to do is
find out stuff about a landlords, right, Yeah, and there's
the higher difficulty version of that, which isn't that hard. Also,
I want to mention this, but like going to a
courthouse and finding records about who owns property companies.

Speaker 4 (02:11:38):
That high it's not that hard.

Speaker 5 (02:11:39):
It's like you could just do it, right, It's not
as hard as you think it is from someone saying it.
But there's also even just easier things than that, right,
that all of you probably already know how to do,
which is just looking at someone's social media profiles and
finding out information about them. Yeah, and this is very useful, yeah,
for like union campaigns, bosses.

Speaker 1 (02:11:57):
If you've ever been a person who uses dating apps,
especially if you're a woman, yeah, yeah, then you know
how to ocin. Actually maybe you don't credit yourself with
that skill, but one hundred percent that like you've developed
that skill to keep yourself safe.

Speaker 4 (02:12:12):
And you can use it for good. Do you want
to explain what ocent is? And yes, how that how
that process works?

Speaker 2 (02:12:18):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (02:12:18):
Sure, So open source intelligence is it's an acream doesn't
really need to exist. It's gathering information off open sources,
things sort of openly accessible, right, as opposed to like humint,
which is like being a spy, or singint, which is
capturing signals. Open source information is you're creeping someone's Instagram,
creeping their Facebook, looking at the weird fucking shit that

(02:12:39):
they put on good Reads. Right, all the data that
is out there, largely on the internet, about us. A
lot of people put a lot of information on the Internet.
And it's very easy. And I would imagine that if
you're under fifty and maybe if you're over fifty two,
like you just know how to do this because it's
what you do anyway you want to find out about someone.
And especially if you are a person who goes on

(02:13:02):
dates with people who you haven't met before and haven't
been introduced to by a mutual friend but you meet
on the internet, you probably already do this to keep
yourself safe.

Speaker 5 (02:13:10):
Yeah, and this is something that's very useful for I mean,
there's so many use cases for this, right. There's you know,
there's the very obvious ones where you're dealing with the
local Nazi and you're trying to organize around like running
them out. People say from them and you can find
information about them. But I mean, it's useful for cops
who are beating people. Is useful for politicians particularly, It
can be very useful for it's useful for landlords. This

(02:13:32):
happens all the time. It can be very very useful
for bosses and union campaigns. Unions have like teams of
researchers usually to like do this kind of stuff. But
the thing is also and this is something I don't
think people understand. Those guys, like the people they're hiring
to be researchers are just you, but they got a
job being a researcher for a union. Like they have
the same skills as you. They know how to like

(02:13:53):
Google stuff, and they know how to look through people's
like dating profiles and like look through their their facebooks
and Instagrams, and like a big one, a big one
that that the rich people especially do not think about
is like cash app and venmo oh venop because yeah, yeah,
because because people's peoples trying. People just leave public transactions

(02:14:15):
out there like that. That's how they got what's his name,
the congressional Gates. Can I legally call him the congressional pedophile?
I guess they call him the accused pedophile.

Speaker 1 (02:14:24):
Yeah, yeah, the man credibly accused of sleeping with an
underage woman lots of times, you know.

Speaker 5 (02:14:29):
And one of the ways they found that was that
and also like paying paying for that right, yes, which
is which is rape by the way, I want to
be very clear about that, like, yeah, having sex with
someone who is underage is rape.

Speaker 4 (02:14:40):
It is always rape, you know.

Speaker 5 (02:14:41):
And the way people found that was that they just
looked through like his cash app history and they found
all of these money transfers to people. You know, this
is all very very simple stuff. That's that's very very
useful organizing wise that you already know how to do.

Speaker 4 (02:14:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:14:57):
Pinterest is another absolute back Yeah. People, Yeah, so much
interesting people on a pinning that they be pinning. You know,
if you're hearing some of these things and you think
that you can figure out how to do this. That's
also a huge skill finding people who are willing to
learn things and willing to learn new skills is a
huge benefit to organizers because you know this, this gives you, like,

(02:15:21):
this gives you a flexible person, right, it gives it
gives you someone you can like flex into into any
of a bunch of roles that you need. And also
can you know, pick up skills to learn things. Having
a car and being able to drive.

Speaker 5 (02:15:32):
And I know a lot of you don't do this,
but if you do do this, this is you immediately,
even if you literally cannot contribute anything else to a project.
Being able to just drive a bunch of water to
a place, oh yeah, huge, staggeringly useful.

Speaker 1 (02:15:45):
The amount of things that people can't access because they
can't get there, it's vast, especially when I when I
talk to migrants right have recently arrived in the US.
They don't have a US cell phone, they can't uber yea.
Oftentimes nowadays you can't even pay for mass transit with cash.
You have to have a special card and then you
have to get to the place to get the card. Right,
The problems you can solve by being able to drive

(02:16:08):
someone five miles are enormous, especially in the US, where
everything is designed around everyone owning a motor car at
all times yep.

Speaker 5 (02:16:17):
Yeah, And like transport based skills are also very useful.
I mean, if you hike a lot, that's a very
very useful skill. There's a lot of sort of mutual
aid projects. There's a lot of you know, I mean
even things like like setting up summer camps is the
thing that like leftist groups do right, and being able
to hike very good for that.

Speaker 4 (02:16:34):
It's good for things like wilderness rescue.

Speaker 5 (02:16:36):
There's a lot of you know the James like the
work you do that has to do with like going
in helping migrants, Like being able to hike is staggeringly
useful skill.

Speaker 1 (02:16:45):
Yeah, yeah, it's very like, it's useful, it's important. It's
okay if that's not something you can physically do or
you know that that works for the way you like
to live your life. Like another thing I was thinking
of which can be massively important and people don't realize
is if you know how to take off a tail
light and replace the bulb in it. Yes, Like we're
entering a time when people with darker, people with TPS,

(02:17:08):
people who are undocumented, people are on temporary migration statuses
are going to be definitely afraid of any interaction with
law enforcement. If you can change the bulb on someone's
tail light or their turn signal indicators of us in
the UK, then you can meaningfully protect that person in
a really important way.

Speaker 4 (02:17:27):
And it can literally take ten minutes.

Speaker 5 (02:17:29):
And this is something that you can scale up depending
on how much skill you have. Right, there's even just
very basic auto maintenance stuff is very useful for stuff
like this.

Speaker 4 (02:17:39):
But you know, like if you're a.

Speaker 5 (02:17:40):
Carpenter, right, if you're an electrician, you do some kind
of trade work, right, you do plumbing, right, that is
the thing that is massively useful to a lot of people.
There's a lot of other kind of just skills that
you have from your job that can be very useful.
I mean having someone to manage a spreadsheet oh yeah,
yeah is aggeringly useful. And another one that I think

(02:18:02):
people don't understand that they really have, but like being
able to set up a meeting and like having a
thing that lets you be like, okay, here's when everyone
is free. Like you probably have to do this for
your job or just for you know, trying to get
your friends to go even just like be on a

(02:18:22):
call together or like go have food or like just
do anything. That is what literally, genuinely one of the
most important skills you can possibly have as an organizer
is the ability to just sort of like go talk
to people and be like, hey, can you show up
to this thing here? Yeah, and that is that is
so much of just what organizing is. Can you be

(02:18:43):
here at this time? And then trying to figure out
a time.

Speaker 2 (02:18:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (02:18:46):
So we're going to close out this sort of skill
section with some I think just sort of like domestic
these skills that I don't think people realize are super useful.
If you have a button maker, you are instantly the
single most useful person in any organization of that. Or
you could obtain a button maker. They're very easy to use.
But if you have one or you know the person

(02:19:07):
who has the button maker, and suddenly you can just
crank out buttons for every single event they rule. Everyone
loves them. It helps, It helps me enormously. It's awesome.

Speaker 1 (02:19:16):
That's a badge for those in the Commonwealth. Also, if
you have a sewing machine, yeah, I was about to
mention that, Yeah, yeah, you're a hero.

Speaker 4 (02:19:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:19:25):
One of my friends recently made me a little patch
and it's really cool and I like it and putting
all my stuff. But if you can sew, like, that's
a skill that I do not have. And it's so
great when people can fix stuff for someone or you know,
make stuff fit someone. You know, if you're a person
who finds it hard to get clothes that you like

(02:19:46):
to wear that make you feel good, and someone one
of my friends could do that. And one of my
friends was making clothes for another friend for like a
renaissance fair, and it was a nice thing I've seen
someone do for someone else in a very long time.
It really made her like, yeah, feel like nice and

(02:20:08):
cared for. And like you might think that like this
is just a weird little thing that you like to
do with your sewing machine, but you can meaningfully really
make someone feel cared for using that.

Speaker 5 (02:20:16):
Yeah, And that's a huge part of what organizing is right,
and and that that goes into one of the things
that is also an appreciable skill that's very useful, is
I mean just like being nice to people, being kind
to people, and having people around who are good at
like keeping groups together. Yeah, And that's its own distinct
kind of person is someone who can you know, keep

(02:20:38):
all of the people who are involved in a thing,
enjoying being around each other. That's that's that's a kind
of person who's very valuable, and it's something that you
can look for, you know. And if that's not you,
like you can there's something you can you know, find
in your friends. You can find in this sort of
the people around you.

Speaker 4 (02:20:53):
Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 5 (02:20:55):
There's also something that I think you can tell when
an organization is collapsing, because this is like the first
thing with the quality drops drawing and graphic design are
very very useful because a big part of what you
do organizing is like you make a flyer and you
put a flyer on a bunch of telephone poles to
tell people that there's a thing happening. Yea, and yeah,

(02:21:15):
you know, and this is also something you know later
on you might be making a social media presence, but
just having good artists and having good graphic design people
is enormously useful for this kind of stuff. Yeah, and
along this line, these things like making music, and there's
a bunch of different ways this can go. This can
be an immediate thing where you know, like you have
people on a picket line, right and everyone's singing songs

(02:21:37):
and this is great. We love this also, and this
is another thing that you can be thinking about in
terms of what skills you have and what things you
can create benefit shows. This has been a huge part
of a lot of how some of the Union stuff
up here has been getting funded is by just having
like punk benefit shows. And if that's the thing that
you can do, well, you know people in bands, you
know people who make music, you know people who just

(02:21:58):
make stuff who are willing to contribut to the cause,
that's great.

Speaker 1 (02:22:03):
I remember one of we had one night last September,
so cold. We were in the desert and I'm like
a thousand people, right, and we were at that point
we were really struggling to feed everyone, even you know,
because there was so few of us. But my friend
bought out like their guitar and some bongo drums they had,
and I think I had my harmonica in my truck,
and like we were sitting around with these. We had

(02:22:24):
some Seek guys, had some Weiga folks come from China,
and then some Kourdish people and they were all explaying
their different music and it was so nice like that,
taking people out of a shitty situation for a moment
with music. Again, like don't underestimate how important that it
don't feel like if you have that skill, it's not
a useful one.

Speaker 5 (02:22:43):
No, And this is something I've been starting to say
more and more. If you need a three brained way
to say this to someone who like is is like
a curmudgety marks just who hates fun.

Speaker 4 (02:22:55):
Morale is a terrain of struggle that this is.

Speaker 5 (02:22:58):
There's a reason why more is one of the most
important factors of military campaigns. You can't get people to
do things if they're too depressed to do it. Yeah,
And being able to raise people's morale, it's it's this
massive if you want again, want to go into technical language,
is a massive force multiplayer, right, It makes everyone you
have enormously more effective, the better they feel about themselves

(02:23:18):
and the better they feel about the situation they're in.
And things like music, things like art, I mean things
like pulling pranks.

Speaker 4 (02:23:27):
This thing.

Speaker 5 (02:23:27):
Yeah, if you were if you were in good practical jokester,
this is a staggeringly useful skill. Both like in terms
of you know, you need to be careful about whether
you're you're playing your pranks on like other people in
the ORG. But like you know, if you know how
to just like pull pranks. This is a really really
useful thing in like union campaigns, it tenants organizing. There

(02:23:48):
are a lot of people who you can prank and
it's very funny and it lowers their morale and it
raises your morale.

Speaker 1 (02:23:55):
Yeah, and I go back to your music as a
like a like morale. It's a terrand of struggle. Like
the other memory I have last year of playing guitars
is in Rajava, being inside at night because everyone was
getting drone struck all the time and it was dangerous
to be driving around, sitting around with some ZD friends
and like we spent all night playing the ood, which

(02:24:16):
is like a it's like a guitar with a gord
on the bottom and it to describe it like it's
a string instrument. It's a string instrument, is what it is.
And like that made everyone so happy. We had such
a nice evening. Everyone was able to like get through
it's a relatively difficult thing. Like, you know, it sucks
that people are being killed and just for driving around

(02:24:38):
are existing and they're bombing all this citly infrastructure and
the power keeps going out and all these things. Right, like,
but there's a reason that those people have kept ood
around after fifteen thirteen years of war, and it's because
it is important, and so don't overlook that.

Speaker 5 (02:24:54):
And you know, and resisting fear is another huge aspect
of this, right. A lot of the ways that people like,
a lot of the ways that you demobilize people. This is,
this is why regimes like this spend a lot of
effort trying to make people afraid. He is that it
makes it harder for you to act. And things that
you know, the things that make you less afraid, even
if they sort of seem silly, are very very important.

(02:25:18):
And you know, on sort of this note, one of
the things that you know, as you've assembled your group
of people, right, one of the things that that that's
important to be able to sort of have a grasp
on is that you can't just do organizing by having
it only be the capital, the serious thing, the captialty
organizing thing all the time. Your organization will not hold together.

(02:25:39):
There has to be actual like bonds formed between you
and the people you're organizing with and the people you're
trying to help.

Speaker 1 (02:25:47):
I don't want to call out any organization in particular,
there is an organization that perceives organizing to exist solely
in the realm of wearing a high based vest and
carrying a clipboard and getting people to write that email
addresses down and then telling them to attend things, and
like maybe there are several organizations like that. I don't know,
I've just I've perceived one locally. If you don't have

(02:26:07):
those bonds that, like those interpersonal relationships, like these things
won't hang together. Like yeah, so many of my happiest
organizing memories, like again going down James Memory Lane, I
guess I have a memory of like Christmas Eve last
year twenty twenty three, me and my friends have been out.

(02:26:27):
I know some of them listen because some of them
have come across from different states to help us at
Christmas Holidays, which is nice. And it was cold, and
we had been feeding people all day, and then we'd
heard some people in another location that we'd gone to find.
And then we got to the end of the day
and like, rather than just going home, I had a
bunch of we had some MRIs left the refugee emory
sort of vegan. Lots of us are vegan, so we

(02:26:49):
were like, we're not going to find any other vegan
food in the middle of nowhere out here, So we'll
set around eating the little vegan MREs and like just
talking and like sharing some some thoughts and things we
experience over the last months of doing this, And like,
it's those moments that make your organizing groups so much stronger.

Speaker 4 (02:27:08):
No one's telling.

Speaker 1 (02:27:09):
Anyone to do anything. You know, there's genuine bonds and
that the love and friendship we build up between each
other doing things that are very important. Don't overlook the
value of those because it's extremely valuable.

Speaker 4 (02:27:21):
And this is something that I think you can understand
in your own life pretty easily, where Okay, if a
random person on the street walks up to you and
tells you to go do something, are you going to
do it? It's like no, why No?

Speaker 5 (02:27:35):
Probably not, Like I don't know, Maybe it's something like
really sort of, hey, there's children in a burning building.
We're going to run in and grab them. But like,
the odds are no, you're going to ignore them. But
if your friend goes and tells you to do the
same thing, and you know you've been friends with them
for a long time and you really care about them,
the odds of you doing it are much much higher,

(02:27:56):
and that's all organizing is. It's finding ways to You
have a thing to do, and you go talk to
people and you ask if they want to help you
do it. Yeah, and the stronger your relationships are, the
more lucky that is to happen. And that's why it's
very important to do things like you know, just like
having potlucks, like bringing snacks and beatings. Oh yeah, and
like you know, even if you're doing a potluck, it's

(02:28:18):
good to you know, you do like one capital capital
T organizing thing, right, you get like a little bit
of work done, but mostly everyone's just sort of relaxing
and eating chili or whatever.

Speaker 4 (02:28:28):
Yeah, if you're a baker, you know, you can bay people.
It's a wonderful thing to God.

Speaker 1 (02:28:34):
Yes.

Speaker 4 (02:28:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (02:28:35):
And just knowing how to cook. I realized I forgot
to mention this one. Knowing how to cook is a
staggeringly useful skill. And it's useful in literally every literally
any kind of organizing you can possibly be. And it
is a thing. It is a skill that is useful
in like it's useful in war zones. It's useful like
literally no matter what organization you are in, if you
can cook for people, oh yeah, and you don't even

(02:28:57):
and you don't have to be like a good cook.
It's just like you can show up food that you
have made. You have instantly made this whole thing more successful.

Speaker 1 (02:29:05):
Yeah, definitely, Like I've had some wonderful meals in wazone
and I've deeply appreciated those people. More broadly though, those
ties like the way we organize without the state. The
reason I believe that that is the way we should
organize and the way we will continue to organize in
a way that we can make the state irrelevant is
because we understand each other as people and care about

(02:29:27):
each other as people, and then we approach our organizing holistically,
right with everyone in it knowing this person is good
at this, but they're struggling with this right now, and
I care about them, so I'm not going to make
them do that right now. That is how we can
build sustainable communities in a way that state cannot and
in a way that capitalism cannot. Right because fucking hurts

(02:29:48):
rent a car doesn't care or know about its employees
in a way that we who organize with people and
care and love one another do, and like that where
our organizations will always be stronger than those created by
capitalism of the state.

Speaker 5 (02:30:05):
Yeah, unfortunately, speaking of capitalism of the state, we're taking
our last ad break where you want.

Speaker 4 (02:30:10):
Yeah, hopefully it's a Trentdica.

Speaker 2 (02:30:22):
We are back.

Speaker 4 (02:30:23):
So I want to wrap things up by doing a
couple of doing a few things.

Speaker 5 (02:30:28):
I want to talk about some kind of basic organizing
things that you're going to have to do that are
not very difficult but are extremely important. And second, I
want to talk a bit about how we did the
first organizing project that I ever was involved in, which
was tenants organizing, because it's really not that hard, right,
you just go do the thing, it will happen, Yeah,

(02:30:50):
and suddenly it ceases to be this like, oh, this
domain of expert knowledge, and there's like, oh, this is
a really difficult thing. If you just I don't know,
you go give food to someone and suddenly you've done
that and it's happened. So there are things that are
important to like basic organizing stuff. Knowing how to book
rooms from like churches, from libraries, from whatever, meeting spaces,

(02:31:14):
and also knowing how to book rooms in places that
like accommodate disabilities is a huge thing because a lot
of people book meetings in places are a wheelchair accessible
and it's a fucking fiasco. And you can avoid that
very easily, but you have to put a little tiny
bit of work into it.

Speaker 4 (02:31:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:31:32):
Literally, I reached out to a friend to book a
room last night because I knew they would get at
that stuff.

Speaker 5 (02:31:38):
Yeah, you know, there's arranging people's schedules, getting people show
up for stuff, Things you can do to prepare if
what you're doing is basically all the things we've been describing, right,
getting together a bunch of people to do a thing
that is technically forming an organization. Yeah, Now, how formal
informat you want it to be, or just you know,
maybe it's just your organizing project or whatever. There's things
you usually want. You want some kind of email so

(02:31:58):
people can contact you in tandem with the email. Something
that's very helpful that I think younger people tend not
to think about is getting Google Voice. Yes, when Google
Voice lets you set up a voicemail account so people
can call you and leave phone messages. I mean everyone
should just do this because this is the way that
a lot of older people communicate.

Speaker 1 (02:32:16):
Right.

Speaker 5 (02:32:17):
They won't send you an email, but they will leave
you a voice message, and it's very very useful for this.
Childcare is something that's important. I did, I mean a
lot is probably too strong of a word, but like
I did childcare when I was organizing, and it wound
up being really helpful because there's a lot of people
with kids, and so you know, there's a couple of
ways that this could work. One is that you know,
you have everyone bring their kids. You have like a

(02:32:38):
little space, you bring them like coloring stuff, you bring
them toys, you bring them games, and you just sort
of watch everyone for a while. And as an organizing thing. Again,
if you're good with kids, that's very useful, staggeringly useful
organizing skill.

Speaker 1 (02:32:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:32:51):
Another way this stuff happens.

Speaker 5 (02:32:52):
Is you know, everyone pulls together ten bucks and you
hire a babysitter, Yeah, for a bunch of kids. And
that's a very useful organized thing.

Speaker 4 (02:33:01):
Yeah. I organize with people who have kids.

Speaker 1 (02:33:03):
I remember four years ago, fuck me twenty twenty a
long time ago, and also yesterday, but like we were
organizing to feed and house people and we were having
a big Thanksgiving dinner and like some of my friends
have very young children and they bought them. And I
think it's actually really cool to do that. A like
for those kids, it is normal that, like we look

(02:33:28):
after people in our community. This is what we do
and ever since I've been little, this is what we did.
And like it's also very nice for people. Like a
lot of my friends also brought their children down to
the border, especially last year when we had because there
were children there anyway, right, Yeah, some of my friends
who bring their children down and their kids would play
with the other kids, and like it doesn't matter that

(02:33:49):
some of the kids are Kurdish and some of the
kids are from China and some of them are from
Columbia or whatever. Like, they'll get along just fine. When
they're four or five years old, they don't care. They
just want to kick a ball or see a Teddy
Bear or something. Yeah, I think it's really good for
your children to you know, you're bringing them into a
world which is cruel and at times unequal, and like
your kids seeing that, like we can make a difference

(02:34:11):
and we can do this. I think it's one of
the best educations you can give your children.

Speaker 4 (02:34:16):
Yeah, and it's something that's good for everyone involved.

Speaker 1 (02:34:19):
Yeah, exactly, And it's also very I think one of
the things I see a lot wh people are organizing
thing with refugees of the end house is like they're
just people, Like you don't need to be afraid of them,
Like they don't want to hurt your children. And having
your children around shows that, like you have grasped they're
just people and that you feel safe and your children
are safe around them. And I think that that's valuable too.

(02:34:41):
You're giving both parties some dignity in that moment.

Speaker 5 (02:34:44):
Yeah, there are some other very basic things that I
think are very important. If you've never done this before,
I'm going to talk a little bit about how you
run a meeting. Yeah, and you would think that this
doesn't matter, and until you watch a group of one
hundred people who don't know how to do this attempt
to get anything done and they it just is a fiasco.
And this is even true sort of smaller groups. Yeah,

(02:35:05):
so I'm going to give you how to run a
meeting one oh one, Okay. A very common way to
organize meetings that people use all over the world and
it's very effective is you have two things. You have
an agenda and you have a stack. And those are
like the technical terms for them. The agenda I mean
is an agenda, right, you know what an agenda is.
You put the things that you need to do on it.
And another thing that's very helpful with these is you

(02:35:27):
know you're going to be operating at our time constraints
because people don't have forty five hours.

Speaker 4 (02:35:31):
To be in meetings, and my god, you don't want
to be in a meeting for that long. Yeah, you know.

Speaker 5 (02:35:36):
Knowing how long roughly you want to talk about these
things is very very useful and making sure that you're
of moving the conversation through the stuff on the agenda
because you have more stuff you need to talk about.
All of this again, like this all sounds very obvious,
and again you know how to do it, but until
you've been in a room where people have not realized
they need to do this, you don't understand how.

Speaker 4 (02:35:58):
I'm put on this stuff yet pain of it not happening.

Speaker 5 (02:36:01):
God, I have watched rooms full of like sciet these
are like professional scientists, right, So this is the entire
room of one hundred feet of people with physics PhDs
who don't know how to run a meeting, and it's
a shit show. And all of this stuff could have
been avoided with with some very very simple things.

Speaker 4 (02:36:15):
Yes.

Speaker 5 (02:36:16):
The other thing, and this is genuinely a piece of
social technology, right, it is the stack It is very simple, right.
You have one person who is the stack keeper, and
whatsone wants to talk. You have one person talking at
a time, and what someone wants to talk, they raise
their hand, they make some kind of signal to the
stack keeper, and that person writes their name down, and
so you now have a list of who gets to
talk in what order. And so you go down the

(02:36:38):
list and people get the say things. And again you
know how to do this. This is not like a
complicated thing. But again I have watched people who collectively
have like more PhDs than like I earn money in
a week, Like who know, I can not be.

Speaker 4 (02:36:55):
Able to pick this out, and you do. I believe
in you. I believe in you, dear listener.

Speaker 5 (02:37:00):
But you could do this. Yeah, there's a very common
Sometimes this is one person and sometimes this is two people.
A very common way to do it is to have
a stack taker and then have someone who's the facilitator.
And the facilitator's job is to call on the people
and to try to like move the conversation forwards and
get and make sure make sure everyone's involved. And also
another important part of this, and this is again something

(02:37:20):
you'll know from your stupid work meetings, is you have
to get people like me to shut up.

Speaker 4 (02:37:25):
Your meetings can't just be one person giving a speech.
You have to cut them the fuck off and you
have to get to the next person. Yeah, and doing
that courteously is a skill. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (02:37:36):
And finally on this note, there's a lot of if
you want to go into the like more technical stuff,
part of the things the facilitators use and part of
you know, the formal name for this is like the
progressive stack, but it's just a thing that's very useful
in organizing is you want to make sure everyone in
a room is engaged and talking and that it's not

(02:37:57):
just three people who talk all the time. Yeah, and
you know, and so the idea of the progressive stack,
right is you're trying to find the most marginalized people
in degrees, people who are least likely to speak, and
you're trying to get them in first. And sometimes this
is literally just like, hey, someone hasn't been talking in
a meeting this whole time, and you can like ask
them what they think about something or asked if they
have anything to say, and a lot of times they will,

(02:38:17):
but they just don't feel confident enough to say it.
And this is this is a very very important skill
for a facilitator or just even you could just do
this in a meeting too, right, Like you can be
the person who goes like, hey, do you have this
this person have anything to contribute? And that is an
enormous thing. Sometimes it can be you know, sometimes it
can be a little bit awkward, but it's a very
important thing because you're just losing out on people who

(02:38:39):
have really really valuable ideas and contributions and plans. And
if you just let the same three people give speeches,
you can't get to the stuff that's actually useful.

Speaker 1 (02:38:52):
Yeah, definitely, if you've been a teacher or in any
way what you know, you probably have had you have
this skill. You might not consider it a skill, but
even if you've been a TA in grad school something
like that, you probably know how to do this.

Speaker 5 (02:39:05):
Yeah. So I'm going to put all of this together briefly,
and I'm going to run through basically how we started
the first organizing project I ever day, which was a
tenants union in Chicago. Okay, so this is based on
my memory. It's been a long time since I did this,
but my basic memory of what we did was okay.
So one of my friends is an experienced organizer. I
was like a tiny baby, right this this was my

(02:39:27):
first offline organizing project ever.

Speaker 4 (02:39:29):
Right, I had no idea what was doing.

Speaker 5 (02:39:30):
I thought I was a guy, which, like, that's how
much of a fiasco, Like little tidy baby bo who
doesn't know anything?

Speaker 4 (02:39:37):
This was, you know.

Speaker 5 (02:39:38):
And so my friend talked to some people that he knew,
and he knew that I, you know, I was interested
in getting involved in tennis organizing, and we like went
to a cafe and we sat down and we ate
and we just talked about what we wanted to do,
what our plans were, what things we needed to do
to get this organization set up. We talked about ideological stuff.
And that's actually is something else important too, is part

(02:40:00):
of organizing is getting people to think intentionally about their
actions and think politically about their actions. Yeah, and that's
something that's very useful. You also have to make sure
that you're not forming a book club. Like book clubs
are fine, but you need to make sure you're organizing group.
If you try to do a thing, has it just
become a book club? But that that's you know that
that was something that was very useful to us. And

(02:40:21):
you know, we started making a plan. And our plan was, okay,
we made a bunch of flyers and then we went
out and I did this, and I walked around through
a bunch of streets and put them a light post
or whatever. And then we put them like we hung
them up in the buildings of tenants, you know, because
you can just like walk up the stairs right and
you need to put them on the walls. And you know,
we had this flyer, this firehead information. This flyer said, okay,
we're starting a tenant's union. If you have tenant, if

(02:40:42):
you have issues with your landlord, or you want to
talk about tenants stuff like, come here. At this time,
we had an email you can send us stuff. We
had a phone number that you could call ye you know,
and so okay, and so parallel to this, we like,
I forget if it was a church or if it
was some building, some set center or something. We booked
a room. We were kind of lucky in that we

(02:41:04):
had like local press people nice who we sort of
knew and This is another useful like if knowing a
journalist can be a very useful skill, because one way
to get a project off the ground, if you're trying
to get to a bunch of people, is by finding
a journalist who is willing to cover it, because you know,
we're we're finding founding like the first tenants union in
this place, right yeah, And you know, so we had
media coverage and we got kind of screwed when this

(02:41:24):
event eventually came together because there was like three feet
of snow that night. But people still came, like people
still came in the blizzard, Like a lot of people
showed up for this.

Speaker 4 (02:41:33):
But what are things that we do?

Speaker 5 (02:41:34):
We also, like, you know, we just we just started
talking to people, right, We started talking to tenants about
their problems. We just you know, we talked to our friends,
We talked to the people they knew. We ended up
talking to someone, you know, and this is the thing
that just happens as it spreads by word of mouth,
right people start contacting you. We ran into a really
long time tenants organizer in the city who had a
bunch of incredible stories about how our corrupt politicians got

(02:41:56):
their jobs by portraying the old Tenets organizers. Right. That's
the other thing is you know, another thing that happens
in projects is you'll you'll sometimes you'll just you just
pick up someone who's you know, has been doing this
since like the sixties. Yeah, and it rules because they
have a wealth of experience and they want to they
want to do stuff.

Speaker 4 (02:42:13):
We plotted out what we were.

Speaker 5 (02:42:14):
Going to do at our meeting, you know, we were
going to do some political education. We were gonna have
a bunch of time for people to talk about stuff,
and we were gonna, you know, get get people to
understand what we were doing how they can start organizing.
And then we did it, and I unfortunately don't remember
much of what we talked about because I was off
in another room taking care of a bunch of people's kids,
which was very nice, but I don't I don't remember

(02:42:34):
what we talked about. But like that, you know, but
like you all of those things, right, all of those
steps from the start of you get five of your
friends to go eat dinner and you talk about what
you want to do through someone makes a flyer in
like Microsoft or whatever you make it in like PowerPoint,
and that's publisher what's what's what's the one I'm blinking,
I haven't used it in so long, the one you

(02:42:56):
make greeting cards in a program and I've forgotten it
is you see this to make Christmas cars. But like,
you know, okay, so we made a flyer and we
walked around and put the flyers up and we made it.
We made an email, you know, we got a space together,
we figured out what we wanted to do, and then
we did it. Yeah, and you know, and there's a

(02:43:17):
bunch of organizing from there, right, But like we had
started a thing, and you can do every single one
of those steps. And if you can't personally do one
of those steps, you can think of a person who
you know, who you can bring in to help you
do these things. Because organizing you already fucking know how
to do it. Yeah, you just have to go out
there and do it.

Speaker 4 (02:43:35):
Yep, you can have faith. Yeah, and this has been
it could happen here, go organize.

Speaker 2 (02:43:45):
Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week
from now until the heat death of the universe.

Speaker 4 (02:43:51):
It could happen here is a production of cool Zone Media.

Speaker 3 (02:43:53):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
iHeart Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You
can now find sources for it could happen here, listed
directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.

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Behind the Bastards News

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