It Could Happen Here Weekly 209

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

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

Speaker 3 (00:28):
Welcome to it can Happened here a podcasts about things
falling apart and how to put them back together again.
I am your host, Nia Wong. So a week ago
we did some episodes about the election of Zora and
Mom Donnie and a lot of the very funny reactions
to it, and you know, on Executive Disorder, we've talked

(00:50):
about what this sort of means for politics. But now
I want to do a slightly different kind of episode,
which is looking at the challenge just that Montdomney is
going to face, attempting to implement his agenda, attempting to
stay mayor just taking him very seriously at his word
in his attempt to make the cost of living lower

(01:13):
and make people's lives better and there are unfortunately, very
significant challenges to this agenda, and those challenges are a
mix of structural problems and I don't know the president
of the United States, right. We're going to focus on
a few of them today, and before we really start this,

(01:37):
I think I want to start this to some extent
with the conclusion. And the conclusion of this episode is
not to say that these things are impossible, right, and
to not say they can't be done, but it's to
remind people that the way that actual politics works, electing
one person does not immediately make everything better.

Speaker 4 (01:58):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:58):
You can't stop or organizing because someone has been elected.
And in fact, if you actually want to see the
things that you you organize to you know, happen by
electing this person, do you have to organize even harder
once they are in power and mobilize even more to
allow the things that you fought for to actually happen.
Because there are significant opposition to anything you know, getting

(02:21):
better for anyone in this country. And that opposition is powerful,
well funded, well organized, and structural. And also, as we
saw with the election of Aunt Donnie in the first place,
it can be defeated. So we're going to start with
the bond market. Now, many of you may be asking, bio,

(02:42):
what what does the bond market have to do with
make buses free? And to do that we need to
talk about funding mechanisms. So most plans in the US
for sort of social democratic policy for how you implement
wellfare day policies, how you policies that make people's lives better,

(03:02):
tend to start from the federal governments and the national level, right,
and there are very obvious reasons for this. Unlike the
federal government, city governments don't issue their own currency, which
means the modern monetary theory, things that you would normally
use to fund welfare programs with at a national level
don't work. The federal governments, again, has control of its

(03:26):
own debt and money supply. City governments don't. That means
the city governments, if you want to find money to
do something, you have to find that from somewhere. And
as wonderful as it would be if you could simply
do that by just okay, we raise taxes, and the
taxes go to the policy that we want to implement,

(03:48):
that's not how the system actually works. The way the
system works if you want to pay for things at
a city level is the bond market. David Ibacker has
a very good piece about this the Baffler that I
deeply recommend people read. The main thing that's important here
for our purposes is that for funding significant portions of

(04:10):
anything that you want to do as mayor, you are
legally required to go through the bond markets. And this
means that the city is forced to beg for money
from Wall Street investment banks and then also pay those
same banks exorbitant fees and interest, and a significant amount
of money has to go to, as Backer points out,

(04:32):
a whole bunch of you know, lawyers and finance people
and consultants and all of these you know, sort of
mafia of finance schools who are standing in between the
normal mechanism of you have money and you pay for things.
And that's assuming again that you even have the money
in the first place, which you quite often don't because

(04:54):
cities are very very often cash strapped. As Backer points out,
using these bond mechan to pay for programs is legally required. Now,
Backer is mostly focused on the structural constraints created by
servicing debt, which can consume increasing portions of a city's budget.
Until you know there's nothing left. This is sort of

(05:16):
what's happened to Detroit to a large extent. And also
the bank's direct control over the payment mechanism even when
the city government brings in tax money. Right, So, even
if you raise taxes and you bring in money, because
you have to go through the bond market, it means
that a bunch of that money is going to be
funneled into servicing debt and paying interest on debt. But

(05:39):
there's also a secondary problem here, which is that in
very extreme cases, and I'm not saying we are immediately
facing this, but I want to put this on the
table as something that if you are attempting to run
a social democratic program in a city, you do need
to be significantly worried about the bank's direct control over

(05:59):
payment Meaganisms means that the banks, you know, the people
who buy the bonds that you need to use to
get to fund these things. So let's actually take a
step back here and explain what a bond is.

Speaker 5 (06:09):
Right.

Speaker 3 (06:10):
A bond is basically you selling a piece of paper
that is debt. So you go into the market and
you sell sell a bank of bond and they give
you a bunch of money, Right, now, and at the
exploration of the bond, you pay that money back plus interest.
This is how you have to fund things, because that
is what's legally required, and also because cities need a
way to get extremely large amounts of money. But this

(06:31):
also means that cities that you know, banks and investors
can simply not buy your bonds if they don't like
what you're trying to do, and at that point very
little can be done to oppose them. The most dramatic
version of this problem came to the New York City
bond crisis in nineteen seventy five, where New York City
had to sell a bunch of bonds. It was significantly

(06:53):
in debt, and there's a very famous scene in I
think It's I think it's a hyperdormalisation. You know, there's
film of like the city government officials who were sitting
in this room waiting for the banks, like people, for
the banks to show up to buy the bonds, and
no one shows up, so suddenly they don't have any money.
And then President Ford at the time tells the city

(07:16):
to eat shit and die and refuses to buy any
of New York City's bonds, refuse to give them any money,
and this leaves the city bankrupt. Right, it gets to
a point where they have fired the teachers, there's no
one to collect garbage because they literally don't have money
to pay anyone because no one will buy their bonds.
And eventually this crisis is sort of mitigated. But the

(07:36):
problem is that, you know, the task force that was
set up to mitigate this right to like, you know,
get there to be people buying New York City bonds. Again,
those people were able to come in and New York
City had a functional welfare state, right, had a sort
of many social democratic welfare state. And in order to
reopen the governments and have schools and garbage collection again,

(07:56):
in order to get that money, the city was required
to dismantle it. And you know, the financial situation of
New York is obviously significantly better than it was then, right,
And the odds of having this kind of just full
on macro scale crisis is not as high as it
was then. But because of the fact that this is

(08:18):
the legally mandated way that you have to do these payments,
and because unlike the federal government, there are constraints on
spending that in some ways function like needing for an
exchange currency. You know, you can't just issue this money.
You have to get it from somewhere, and because of
someone's usually the banks, it means that you have to

(08:41):
constantly negotiate with the banks and with capital in order
to keep the city's lights on. And this is a
constant threat that they have sort of, you know, hanging
over the head of anyone who wants to be governor.
And as Backer points out, you can even just tax
your way out of the problem because payment structures for
government projects work out of the bond system, so that

(09:02):
money just goes to debt payments. And you know, one
of the other things that Backer points out. And obviously
the situation in Chicago is different than the situation in
New York. But the Chicago teachers Union did elect a
mayor who was, you know, their guy, right, The cholot
teachers Union spent a significant amount of money and resources
and effort getting their guy elected, and once he came

(09:23):
into office, he basically ended up doing the same thing
in their negotiations with the teachers union that the previous
administrations had done. And the reason that happened, you know,
and the reason that you started to see cuts to
school services that we're not supposed to happen, but did anyways,
was because the bond market stepped in and said this
is what's necessary in order to do this, and they

(09:46):
have that kind of power. Now, obviously Chicago was in
a worse financial situation than New York is. Mom Doominie
is significantly further left than Brandon Johnson is. But these
are real constraints, and the such a democratic solution to
this has always been to get money from the federal governments.
But the federal government won't give money out to the

(10:07):
things that is legally required to give money out to
you right now, because obviously it is run by one
Donald Trump, and obviously Trump in and of himself is
a significant problem to doing this right. There's always a
chance that Trump will see something like mean about Mom
Donnie on Fox News and decide to send the National

(10:27):
Guard to New York or something, and you know, he
will probably continue immigration raids. He can, you know, just
fuck with people's ability to get Medicaid payments, which is
a really significant issue. There will continue to be lots
of creative and terrible things that the federal government can
and will due to this administration that will have to

(10:49):
be fought and can be defeated, but will have to
be organized and fought against. But for our purposes right now,
the big issue here is that you can't get money
out of the federal government. So okay, where are you
getting money out of then? And the answer is the
state government. Now do you know what else gets money

(11:11):
out of state governments? Probably not these products and services.
I don't know who knows, who knows? We are back,

(11:32):
So okay, let's talk about the state government now again.
This even with the city the size of New York,
there still is always significant negotiations in order to do
you thinks in the city that require the aid of
the state level government. And part of the problem here
is that the New York State Democratic Party is significantly

(11:52):
responsible for the Republican's control of the House, particularly in
the twenty twenty two cycle. There's a whole long story
here about how a bunch of a bunch of the
Democrats wanted to form this sort of moderate caucus thing,
where the sort of independent caucus that would caucus with
the Republicans in order to give the Republicans the ability
to stop any sort of liberal or left wing thing

(12:13):
from happening. In the state governments and handle a whole
bunch of seas over to the Republicans because of it.
But just you know, setting all of that aside, the
place that you can get money from would be from
the governor's office. Unfortunately, that significate problem. So here's Hotel's
response to Mamdami's plan to make buses free. Quote, I

(12:34):
cannot set forth a plan right now that takes money
out of a system that relies on fares of the
buses in the subways. But can we find a path
to make it more affordable for people who need help? Yes,
of course we can. So Hotel does not want to
raise taxes. Any proposal that would involve raising taxes probably
has to run through New York City's City Council, and

(12:55):
thus through her. I'm going to quote this some spectrum
news about Mundammy's propos to expand universal childcare. Culchel said
she's also looking at expanding a universal childcare program statewide.
But the total price tag is fifteen billion dollars childcare
I already committed to, she said. I'm committed to this
as a mom governor, I get it, but also to

(13:15):
do it statewide's about fifteen billion dollars the entire amount
of my reserves. Cultural says she prefers to phase an
expansion first within certain aide groups and geographically underserved communities.
So okay, what is happening here in a macro sense
is that Cultural is trying to slow roll both of
these things. She is outright opposed to making buses free.

(13:36):
She wants to do weird means testing stuff to it
that will make it very difficult to do and extremely
annoying bureaucratic layer meant to deny people services that you
have to do instead of just having them be free.
The childcare thing she probably does want to do, but again,
because she is not a democratic socialist, because she is

(13:56):
a regular Democrat, she wants to do it slowly, banded
through a whole bunch of phases and taking a whole
bunch of time.

Speaker 6 (14:04):
And this is a.

Speaker 3 (14:06):
Pretty significant problem because you know, at every step of this,
not only are you going to have to be negotiating
with the banking system, you're going to have to be
negotiating with the statewide Democratic Party. And the statewide Democratic
Party is fairly conservative. Hotel is not as conservative, and
she can be sort of dragged kicking and screaming into

(14:28):
good policies like what happened with congestion pricing. And if
something works and is really popular after you do it,
she will sign on to it. But it's a significant
hurdle that you.

Speaker 7 (14:39):
Have to deal with.

Speaker 6 (14:41):
I want to move from this into a kind of
related problem that's a more structural constraint on Ondami's time
in office, which is that he is now in charge
of running a capitalist economy. When you take a position
in a capitalist government, it is now your job to
make the economy run, and that means maintaining economic growth.

(15:05):
But okay, what does economic growth actually mean in a
capitalist economy. It means that corporations make more money than
they did the year before. And this is a structural
problem for all of us because we all have interests
that are diametrically opposed to corporations making more money every
year because their profit comes directly from our exploitation. Right,

(15:25):
we have fundamentally opposed interests from the corporations and the
capitalists and the billionaires. But in order for there to
be capitalist economic growth, those people have to keep making
more money every year.

Speaker 3 (15:35):
And obviously, you can make arguments about how redistribution enhances
economic growth by creating a larger consumer base, and that's
obviously true. We're in an extremely deformed economy right now.
Where as I keep saying on this show, fifty percent
of all consumer spending is happening from five percent of
the population, which is just a completely unsustainable way to

(15:57):
run an economy and is also absolutely miserab for every
single other person who's in that bottom ninety five percent.
And you know, there are things that you can do
to some extent, right but at some point you are
going to have to choose between workers and capital. And
if you're the mayor of New York City, your job

(16:20):
is to make capital more money. And this is a
structural constraint that every social democratic government has faced. And
it's worth noting that we are not in a world
that is surrounded by social democratic governments. And part of
the reason why, again is that they need the economy
to keep growing and that they're reliant on finance institutions

(16:42):
to make money. And the most grim versions of this
tend to happen at a sort of national scale. But
if you look at morally in Jamaica in the seventies,
where you have a democratic socialist who gets elected and
is running Jamaica and then has to implement austerity because
the country runs out of money and the IMF comes in. Right,

(17:02):
these things can get really bleak now they don't have to,
right Like, sufficiently well organized populations can force the hand
of capital to do things that they don't want to do.
Significantly well organized populations can you start trying to fundamentally
redistribute economic power. But it's difficult, and the difficulty is

(17:26):
magnified by the third really massive constraint, and that constraint
is the police. One of the other big structural problems
that comes with the running a state is that it
relies on armed men to enforce the laws, and those men,
especially in the United States, are at best one step
removed from straight up neo Nazis. A lot of them
straight up are neo Nazis. The cops are the most

(17:50):
consistently right wing group in the entire country. They are
a bunch of racist shitheads who exist to perpetuate right
supremacy and protect capital, and they're also again fundamental organizational
unit of the state. Right without the violence of the police,
laws are just suggestions, and if you're going to run

(18:11):
a capitalist government, if you're going to run one in
the US, you have to deal with the fact that
your power depends on the loyalty of a bunch of Nazis,
and these people will riot if you attempt to do
oversight of them. They very famously did this in nineteen
ninety two. They had this whole giant riot, right, They

(18:32):
had the thing that was supposed to be a protest
rally where they all went on strike, and then the
cops who were supposed to be policing the protest obviously
didn't do anything because again there are also cops. And
in nineteen ninety two, I did this for a really
really really minor oversight tempted oversight, right, And obviously they
actually didn't win that direct fight, but they were able

(18:55):
to cause enough of a political ship storm that they
were able to force the last sort of like vaguely
social democratic mayor out of power and install like Rudy Giuliani,
who is a weird face, melty dipshit right, who's an
incredible tough on crime right winger. And obviously Mamdani has
been trying to kind of trying to do his best

(19:15):
to negotiate with the police and not to overtly threaten them,
but that kind of doesn't matter because they just hate him,
like they think that a Muslim socialist is just inherently
an illegitimate person, and they think that anyone who is
even vaguely liberal is someone who is their enemy and
who is their target. And we have seen them take

(19:36):
actions to just directly threaten mayors fairly recently. Right in
twenty twenty, they kidnapped Bill de Blasio's daughter at a
protest and then sort of like paraded her mugshot around
and posted it everywhere and did this whole big show
of how they were holding her. To say it was
a thinly veiled threat is a dramatic understatement of how incredibly,

(20:01):
incredibly blatant this threat was. Right, they kidnapped the mayor's daughter, Drea,
in a protest movement, and that was Bill de Blasio,
who was not some kind of like wild anti police
radical right, and especially now as sort of fascism is
on the march, and with the backing of the US

(20:22):
federal government, right, the police form a very significant threat
to Mandami's ability to do anything. Both on a sort
of political level, they are going to be constantly you know,
putting out giant press releases about how Mamdami's like turn
the city into unliverable hellhole and how they can't do
their jobs, ceda, et cetera. And also just in terms

(20:44):
of just directly threatening him and trying to influence his policy,
they're going to be a real problem, and his ability
to prevent them from, for example, smashing in the skulls
of pro Palesime protesters, even if he wants to, was
going to be very limited because the police have become
a kind of semi autonomous fascist force in this country.

(21:06):
They have always been a ticking time bomb on statius democracy,
and that clock is closing in on zero in this
in this sort of moment of assented fascism. Now again,
I want to close this by saying, these are not
all the challenges that he's going to face, but Comma,

(21:26):
none of this also means that that the things that
he wants to do to make people's lives better are impossible.
Every single one of these problems are problems that you
can defeat by organizing. Right, you can put enough pressure
on capital to prevent them from doing a kind of
like capital striker or a bond struck Right, to force them
they continue to fund things. Right, with enough public pressure,

(21:48):
you can make a whole lot of things happen. You
can make the police, you know, at the very least
be acting on a kind of defensive front to where
they're not, you know, rioting and try to run city politics,
but are kind of forced by mass popular and mobilization
and pressure to at the very least not be openly

(22:10):
attacking the mayor. You can put massive political pressure on
Kathy Cultel to you know, do things that are good,
which which is how we got how New York got
congestion pricing in the first place. Right like that, that
was a result of a masses like organizational campaign that
went extremely well, and hushov like tried to sabotage it
because she thought it would be unpopular, and eventually it

(22:30):
got implemented and it's really popular now and now she's
really in favor of it. So these people can be
pushed around, right, They are not invincible, Their victory is
not inevitable. They can be defeated and they can be
forced to accept that, Oh wait, hold on, the extremely
sensible policies that we want that make our lives better
are good, and that requires mobilization. But you know that's

(22:54):
not impossible. We know how to organize. We've been doing
it for ages, and it was you know, what had
happen to make all of this possible in the first place.
And so instead of demobilizing now and going, oh, our
jobs are done. No no, no, no, no, our job our jobs
have just begun. But you know, the better organized we
are and the more we're able to push this and
the more we're able to push all of these people,
the better our lives will get. And this election to

(23:19):
begin with, is a reminder that another world is possible
and it can be.

Speaker 6 (23:23):
Better than this one.

Speaker 7 (23:24):
We just have to build it together.

Speaker 6 (23:42):
This is it could happen here. I'm Garrison Davis, joined
by Robert Evans. Last week, I released an episode on
the ascent of white nationalist live streamer Nick Fuentes and
his Graper fans among particularly young gen Z Republicans. The
episode also tracked the conservative infighting at Heritage Foundation and

(24:04):
Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire in the aftermath of Tucker Carlson's
friendly sit down interview with Nick Fuenttes. In the episode,
I mentioned that I had an extra segment covering the
final section of the interview. Now, most coverage of this interview,
including my episode last week, focused on like the first

(24:25):
two thirds, which ranged from like Nick Fuentes's political background,
early beef with Ben Shapiro and his like Nazisque anti
Semitic theories of a quote unquote organized world jewelry corrupting America,
which he now lightly couches in anti Israel framing to
profit off of the genocide in Palestine. But the last

(24:47):
third of the interview changes course to discuss the mechanisms
of quote unquote reality distortion which are ruining young men, drugs, alcohol,
the Internet, and most importantly, pornography. After receiving a universal
response demanding the release of the porn cut, I have

(25:08):
sat down with Robert here to finally finally air what
no other news platform is brave enough, brave enough to cover?

Speaker 2 (25:15):
Yeah, well, no, what new other news platform can legally
cover because they have a duty to their employees to
not make them research this stuff.

Speaker 6 (25:24):
Yeah, or like an actual healthy HR department.

Speaker 2 (25:26):
Yeah, we have not. We have not finished our classes
on what we're not allowed to make people do. So
said now, to be fair, Garrison couldn't be stopped from
researching this. There was no there was no way of
stopping you from doing this.

Speaker 6 (25:41):
I have a sick drive.

Speaker 2 (25:43):
You would have started working for someone else, so we
didn't let you do this.

Speaker 6 (25:47):
No, if Sophie, if Sophie told me I wasn't allowed
to cover this, I would have quit immediately.

Speaker 2 (25:51):
Yeah, you'd started working for Wired or someone.

Speaker 6 (25:57):
So now I am very pleased to present to you
probably thirty thirty minutes of Nick Fuentt as explaining to
a performatively confused Tucker Carlson the concept of pornography. And
I guess if we're gonna view you know, Fuenttes and
the Gropers as like a serious, legitimate threat that's able
to sway national political discourse, I think it's also important

(26:20):
to cover his weird sexual politics, just as explaining the
weird sexual practices of like, you know, the Proud Boys
is important for understanding their whole deal as like a
neo fascist streak gang. The kind of closeted gay in
cel women issues of the Gropers is actually really important,
especially for Nick, and let's discuss that. But thankfully we

(26:45):
get to start off with the majority majority of this section,
which is which is on pornography let's start one of
the first clips.

Speaker 8 (26:54):
What is porn exactly? Like, describe how available is porn?
What is it?

Speaker 9 (27:04):
My God?

Speaker 2 (27:08):
Because he does ask that like a man who's legitimately
never heard of pornography, he does.

Speaker 6 (27:13):
He later says like, obviously he is familiar with the
rough concept of port uh huh, but maybe not, but
maybe not this sort of Internet pored obsession, to which
Nick refers, let's let's skip ahead about a minute where
Nick kind of closes on his explanation of Internet porn specifically.

Speaker 4 (27:35):
So, something that has almost never talked about is that
this is a generation that's totally sexually dysfunctional. I think
because of pornography, and some people are able to cope
with it. Some people don't have a problem, but I
think a lot of people, and maybe even a small minority,
have a serious problem with that.

Speaker 7 (27:54):
And the problem people sexually dysfunctional.

Speaker 4 (27:57):
I think that it's impossible for a real woman to
compete with the availability and the novelty of pornography.

Speaker 6 (28:07):
So that is Nick's kind of ending argument at the
tail end of his definition of porn and how porn
is affecting specifically American men. A little bit of his
in cel status is obviously seeping through there. More of
it will become increasingly evident throughout throughout this interview. But
this idea of sexual dysfunction, how porn is ruining men's

(28:29):
ability to get into relationships, is ruining the ability to
get into marriages, lasting marriages. And he frames this kind
of slightly as the fault of men, but also really
as the fault of women. Women aren't able to compete
with how much porn there is, the different categories of porn.
How can one woman please a man when a man

(28:52):
can go on to the Internet and look up, you know,
fifty different niche fetishes that not one woman could. Yeah,
and that's that's part of his argument at this point.

Speaker 2 (29:05):
Yeah, and that's always like been the Okay, so you've
just you've never had a relationship.

Speaker 6 (29:10):
Which Nick is open about at least Nick claims that, right. Yeah,
It's unclear how true a lot of Nick's claims are
about his like in cell vall cell in voluntary celibate
yea type deal, but no Nick Nick does claim that,
and the sort of pushback Nick will receive later on
in the interview on some of these aspects is actually

(29:32):
way stronger than any of the world jewelry, anti Semitic
stuff from earlier in the interview, which Carlson was vague
actually kind of like trying to shape Nick quent as
his rhetoric to make him like appeal to a bigger audience,
but did not really push back on to the same
extent he does on a Nick's like relationship with women.
But the sexual dysfunction aspect, I think is the is

(29:56):
the ending argument for Nick here in terms of what
actually makes porn bad. He extrapolates on this point in
this next section which I'll play Now.

Speaker 4 (30:07):
Porn is you could have one hundred different women in
one sitting doing anything that whatever niche or idiosyncratic thing
a person might be into, it's there. And so I
think that novelty, combined with that availability, it makes it
so that you know, when you think about courting a woman,

(30:30):
juice isn't worth the squeeze. And so there's like also
a problem of like a rectile dysfunction, people that can't
enjoy regular sex because it does not compare to the
intensity the novelty and the availability of porn. It's hyper stimulation,
and so I think that's sabotaging a lot of normal
sexual relationships.

Speaker 8 (30:51):
It seems like it's making a lot of people gay too. Yeah,
and trance. You think that's true one hundred percent?

Speaker 7 (30:57):
What is that?

Speaker 2 (30:59):
Oh my god?

Speaker 6 (31:00):
What is that? I don't even know where to start there.

Speaker 2 (31:05):
I mean, like it's it's what these people have always believed,
right that, Like, that's the There's got to be an explanation.

Speaker 6 (31:12):
Some kind of cause why people like.

Speaker 2 (31:14):
Things that that they're not allowed to admit to liking
in public. And it's got to be the fault of pornography, right,
or libraries whatever.

Speaker 6 (31:24):
Every time Tucker interjects the beauty of his of his
little like befunneled interjections, what is that? Is that real?
Is that true?

Speaker 2 (31:35):
Huh?

Speaker 6 (31:36):
It's it's fantastic, But yeah, no, I mean Nick kind
of blames the rise in homosexuality and transsexuality on this
like novelty of pornography and this sexual desensitization like once
regular poor and it doesn't do it for people. They
get pushed to more and more extreme categories, of which

(31:58):
transport is somehow particularly effective at like influencing and uh,
you know, manipulating human behavior. Right, This is like the
sissy hypno theory that porn can like make somebody trans Yeah,
very goofy stuff, specifically for Nick, considering his curious catboy
background and his alleged leak viewership of trans porn, which

(32:21):
we might we might discuss later. I want to play it,
play another clip kind of on this note, a shorter one.

Speaker 4 (32:27):
I think that if you are somebody that uses pornography
multiple times per day, which many people do.

Speaker 8 (32:33):
Actually, oh, absolutely, what's a lot of jerking off. That's
a huge problem. Yeah, that's a lot of cherking off.

Speaker 6 (32:42):
Former Fox News anchor Tucker car Off. Yeah, that's a
lot of jerk it off. I so badly. I just
wanted to cut some of these clips out of like
out of contact, just put them in my other episode.

Speaker 2 (32:55):
Tucker only comes once a year, and he can only
come by wrapping his dick in side of two frozen
Swanson's meals. He's got to kind of use like you
know how it's got like there's little divots on the
back end. He's got to use that to cushion his penis.
It's the only way he can come.

Speaker 6 (33:10):
It's a fairly edipal thing with his you know, family business.
This this sort of like psychosexual drive. Wow, the Swans
and of it all. Of course, that makes sense for Yeah,
that makes sense for Tucker h But no, and Dick
says that porn like operates kind of like drug tolerance levels,
which like, over time, after repetitive use, in order to

(33:33):
get high, the user must seek out stronger drugs or
dangerously intense doses, of which he views transport. Is this
like dangerous dose? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (33:44):
Yeah, because I do love like the the through line
with these people that like both this is like a
sickening degeneracy and also is so appealing that people absolutely
cannot help themselves to it, like it affects them like heroin.
It's it's it's so inherently attractive.

Speaker 6 (34:01):
I mean some of that might be their actual proclivities
kind of yes, I think, kind of peeking out from
under the surface there. Yeah, all of these guys love
watching Transport, all of these like anti trans people, whether
it's Alex Jones or like Nick Fuentes, Like obviously they
have they have an interest in that, and that's what
kind of drives them of their obsession.

Speaker 2 (34:20):
Yeah, which is it's just weird, Like I don't know
anyone who talks about any pornography that way, Like you know,
every everyone's got whatever it is they're into, like something
that they'll be particularly interested in, but no one describes
as like it's just this kind of thing. No one
can resist it obviously, this.

Speaker 6 (34:37):
Sort of like powerful obsessive nature in which these types
of right wing freaks like refer to it as they.

Speaker 2 (34:45):
Like actual perverts will say stuff like no, no, no,
I've been shoving things inside my p hole for the
last twenty seven years, and now I can get up
to something the width of a mag light and I
know that's crazy, Like, I know no one else does that.
That's just a me fing. Oh, someone needs to explain
sounding to Tucker Carlson is what I'm what I'm saying,
like I if I if he interviews me, I'm gonna

(35:07):
walk him through sounding. I'm gonna use together a PowerPoint
with photos.

Speaker 6 (35:11):
He's obviously he's obviously uh open and open to this
line of discussion. Are we allowed to have ads on
this episode?

Speaker 2 (35:21):
Yeah, probably not, but let's throw to him anyway.

Speaker 6 (35:35):
All right, we are we are back. Nick Fuentes is
gonna continue continue to describe pornography towards a slightly confused
Tucker Carlson. Now now Nick is able to really speak
from a sense of authority as someone who claims to
have never had sex, He's able to really speak with
authority on this topic, which I will, I will, I'll

(35:55):
play this next clip.

Speaker 4 (35:57):
And there's something too about what a when you look
at it? When you because people don't realize that it
is a fundamentally different experience. People don't realize being involved
in intercourse versus watching other people have intercourse.

Speaker 7 (36:13):
And I think that actually does something to you. Tell me,
what do you mean?

Speaker 6 (36:18):
Sorry, I'm just stop there for a sec. People don't
realize this amazing observation from alleged virsion in cell Nick Fuentes.
He's trying to make this point about like body depersonalization
or like disassociation when watching ports like this, like out
of body experience because you start associating yourself with people

(36:40):
on screen. That's eventually what he starts talking about, right,
And but he couches this in saying that, like, people
don't realize that this is what this is, you know,
different from actual sex, which is really funny because Nick
is proudly proclaims that he's never had sex before, so
he is in no position to argue this point.

Speaker 2 (36:55):
No, Yeah, that's the other thing. How would you know
that it's inherently better than sex.

Speaker 6 (37:00):
Like because he's never had I think that he has
to assume that because that's the only information he has.
But I love I love his his framing of this
is like new novel information that no one else has
access to, that no one realizes that watching port is
different from having sex. Yeah, Tucker's response is just phenomenal
at the end of this, because Tucker's like trying trying

(37:21):
to coax more and more shit out of him. It's
really the only time where he's kind of being a
sly interviewer is at this ending porn section. It's not
the it's not the are you a Fed? Section, it's
not the Daily Wires stuff, it's not the anti Semitism stuff.
It's it's specifically the porn section. But to explain this

(37:42):
like out of body theory that Nick that Nick has here,
unfortunately Nick gets into trying to explain the Blanchardian theory
of trend sexuality towards towards Tucker Carlson, of which I
will only play a certain segment of because we don't
need to hear that whole thing. But there is a

(38:03):
section of this next clip that which we'll get into
that as well as take you on kind of a
beautiful journey showcasing Tucker's objection to pornography.

Speaker 4 (38:12):
I think that you know, for example, I think Steve
Sailor has written about this that there's multiple kinds of transsexuals,
and he says a one kind of transsexual is somebody
that likes the idea of seeing themselves as a woman's
auto ginophilia. Yes, And I think that you know, one
of the theories for that is you you watch a
man having sex with a woman that isn't you so much,

(38:33):
you kind of achieve an identity with the woman in
like a worstick way. You almost identify with the woman.
And so there's weird things that happen when you're watching
that and having such strong emotional and sexual experiences.

Speaker 6 (38:49):
Interesting.

Speaker 8 (38:49):
Nick, that's interesting, Nick, I've always been I've sensed for
a long time having had a lot of young male
employees mentioned porn as a problem. I mean, the big
porn companies give visibility to foreign intel services on the back,
so that means people know what you're looking at. There's
likely video and audio of you watching.

Speaker 6 (39:11):
Okay, all right, there's so much I love that Tucker's made.
Objection to photography isn't the stuff that Nick's talking about
at all, but the idea that it poses a security
risk because of foreign intel services.

Speaker 2 (39:23):
Yeah, that they're they're recording everyone masturbating.

Speaker 6 (39:27):
To blackmail every single person on the planet. And he
couches us and saying that he's quote not a huge
expert on the topic. Yeah, which is really good. But
to go back a little bit, the level of projection
Nick is doing here with this identifying as a woman
in the in the poor thing is simply phenomenal. I mean,

(39:51):
especially considering the whole you know, catboys scandal, which I
covered on the show like years ago as when I
was like a baby, as well as Nick's like alleged
trans porn league, which I guess I'll explain to here briefly.
This was in twenty twenty two. Nick allegedly was operating
a socc puppet Twitter account when he was banned on Twitter.

(40:12):
This this account shared a clip scrolling through Nick Fuentes
like analytics, like video analytics, like search of analytics, showing
his popularity and when scrolling through these various tabs, A
little section of a tab that that didn't did not
get into full view, but you get you saw the
bottom of it, which looked a lot like a very
specific trans femboy porn video on porn hub. People found

(40:36):
the video, and after they found the video, you know this,
This this post with these analytics was like taken down
and this account was believed to be operated by Nick Fuentez.
Now Nick claims that he obviously was not behind this account,
that this was some like a groper fan who was
trying to set him up for scandal by operating an
account that appeared to be Nick's account on Twitter but

(40:56):
actually wasn't. I Robert, I will show you a little
bit of this analytics video. We don't need to see
the whole thing, but it's like this, okay, so various
various tabs. Look look at all these tabs. This various Like.

Speaker 2 (41:15):
When does Jake Lloyd explore.

Speaker 6 (41:18):
What comparing his popularity towards other other like commentators.

Speaker 2 (41:22):
He was comparing his popularity to fucking Jake Lloyd from
the Face and Menace from the Phantom Menace, So you
should be beating him, Nick.

Speaker 6 (41:31):
But like web traffic analytics Joe Ken to Google trends
and then let's see if I can find it right
right here at the top. Yeah, right here at the top,
was scrolling through the tabs on the iPhone Safari is
a little a little peorn tab right Yeah. So this

(41:51):
this turned into a little, a little mini thing with
people thinking that they secretly stumbled across the Nick's porn
porn watching habits, of which it would be no surprise, yeah,
that he'd be watching transfendboy porn, especially again considering that
he operated a catboy discord channel on his server. But
he has staunchly denied this, as you know, as a
based Catholic in cell obviously. So, both Tucker and Nick

(42:17):
believe that porn is a big factor affecting the decline
of actual sex and marriage among gen z, and it's
not just a male problem. Nick argues that it has
become a quote unquote so destigmatized for women to participate
in porn as well, of which she's mostly referring to
only fans. Here's a clip of them discussing only fans.

Speaker 4 (42:42):
And it is completely casual, you know, because you could
say that maybe ten years ago, even at the heyday
of Internet porn. To be in porn, you got to
be a porn star. Like that's your life and that's
your career, and that's who you are. And it's very shameful.
With only fans, It's like it's like having a TikTok.
It's like, here's my link tree, here's my Instagram account,

(43:05):
here's my Facebook account, here's my YouTube, and here's my
only fans.

Speaker 7 (43:10):
Why would any of this be legal?

Speaker 4 (43:13):
I think that, Well, there's, like you indicated, maybe there's
an intelligence benefit to that. Yeah, maybe there's a political
benefit to that. I think that why wouldn't you arrest
the people who run something like that? They should be
if you had a Christian government, or how about the
government and cares about its people? I mean, is Iran
a bigger threat or his only fans? Iron's not turning

(43:34):
my daughters to prostitution that I'm aware of?

Speaker 6 (43:37):
Right, Oh my god? Is Iron a bigger threat? Or
is only fans?

Speaker 2 (43:43):
Yes? Yes, that's the real geopolitical question.

Speaker 6 (43:47):
The wisest minds. No, what a what a beautiful mind
that is? Yeah, yeah, like even be able to think
of the sentence. Is a run a bigger threat than
only fans?

Speaker 2 (43:56):
Yeah?

Speaker 6 (43:57):
Like I could never even get myself to a point
where I conjured that thought in my own head.

Speaker 2 (44:04):
We have to ban pornography because it's the iran of masturbation.

Speaker 6 (44:10):
It's frankly beautiful in order to get their minds so
so degraded to even have this thought. It's so alien.
Man Later, Tucker pushes kind of on this point about
the need to arrest people who run only fans, while
Nick kind of quietly remarks that it's really the women
or the quote unquote body assets who should be arrested.

(44:32):
But Tucker is pretty firm on no, it's really like
the facilitators, people hosting the website or are enabling this.
But you know, Nick and Nick would be totally fine
if women on the platform also get arrested. Man Ah. Again,
the insistence that the a primary objection or like a
causal a causal aspect of why is this allowed it's

(44:54):
for like intelligence gathering services, is simply beautiful. Do you
know what else is beautiful?

Speaker 2 (45:02):
Robert? The sponsors of this podcast.

Speaker 6 (45:05):
They are for putting up with this.

Speaker 9 (45:07):
Yeah, all right, we're back.

Speaker 6 (45:19):
Before this final segment, we will we will transcend the
discussion of porn and just talk more about some of
Nick's opinions on on like women, oh good, and other
factors beyond porn for why you know, marriage isn't happening?
Why why aren't people getting married as much anymore? You know,

(45:40):
of which both Tucker and Nick think porn is a factor.
But there's other factors contributing to this crisis, which Nick
and Tucker will will elucidate. Let's uh, let's hear him out.

Speaker 8 (45:54):
So what are the other factors that prevent I'm sorry
I called you gay, by the way, but I'm always sure.
I think I'm just too old or something. I'm like, what,
why is anyone married? You tell me why isn't Why
an't people married? Well, I mean, honestly, it's the women,
all right.

Speaker 6 (46:10):
Oh okay, we solve that problem. Uh yeah, that's it.
I think that does it for us, that it could
happen here. They got to the bottom of that pretty quickly. Sorry,
I called you gay, by the way. So no. Now
it's time for the wise in selsationic fuintest to bestow
his wisdom pertaining to relationships and marriage, and in his eyes,

(46:30):
the main problem seems to be that not just women,
but specifically that women are too liberal. Yeah, really breaking
new ground there.

Speaker 2 (46:40):
Yeah, sure, that's that's it. That's the problem because then
they don't like all of the Nick flintest fans.

Speaker 4 (46:47):
The men are extremely conservative increasingly the women are extremely liberal.

Speaker 7 (46:51):
What are they liberal on? What issues?

Speaker 1 (46:53):
Like?

Speaker 7 (46:53):
What does that mean liberal?

Speaker 10 (46:54):
Oh?

Speaker 7 (46:55):
On on out?

Speaker 4 (46:56):
They're very feminist, like actually extremely femine.

Speaker 7 (47:00):
I don't believe that, do they? I think they do
really absolutely.

Speaker 8 (47:04):
I don't believe that gender roles are a construct, that
none of this is inborn, Like you'd have to be
an idiot to think that.

Speaker 7 (47:11):
They like the idea of it.

Speaker 6 (47:13):
Tucker's delivery. I want to study it more.

Speaker 2 (47:17):
I feel like they sketched some of this out before
they did this, because I feel like they're both leading
each other to get out statements that they want to say.

Speaker 6 (47:24):
No, yeah, it's so crafted here, like they're back and forth.
Exchange is so is so crafted. Every every inflection they have,
they're like giving each other these key points to the
extrap laid on.

Speaker 2 (47:38):
Yeah, there's the stuff that's willful, like the claims that well,
young men are conservative, which is based on like a
shift towards Trump that's partly reversed over the last year
or so, but that was not the vast majority of
gen Z people, right, Like it's it's yeah, young people
are willing to like try out different things and swing

(47:59):
back and forth. But like, it's not, it's not the
way he's framing it, right, because that's that's the most
convenient narrative for the right, that like all of the
young men are pulling towards the right, and so the
problem is that women are more progressive, right, Yeah.

Speaker 6 (48:13):
Therefore it has to be liberal women. Yeah, right, No,
it's it's a very it's a very convenient excuse to
explain actually a complex set of economic problems which are
preventing people from feeling comfortable enough to actually start a
family and you know, safe enough economically speaking. Nick goes
on to complain about, you know, women lying about wanting equality,

(48:34):
wanting to work, when really all they want is a
quote unquote tough chad quote. The whole political system is
based around women never being accountable for any of their
choices unquote. This is namely abortion and no false divorce,
which Nick spends a while talking about how that is
but a significant contributing factor towards ruining this country. How

(48:56):
women can enter marriages and leave for whatever reason they want,
taking half of them money, taking half the stuff, etc. Etc.
There's another factor that Nick claims is contributing to this problem.
They have a.

Speaker 4 (49:09):
Very high estimation of themselves. I think people call it
hope flation. Their yes, their sense of their own looks
and sexual value is very inflated.

Speaker 6 (49:21):
I just had to put the hope flation clip in there.

Speaker 2 (49:24):
The hope flation, Yes, Tucker Carlson saying, hope flation. It's
truly a moment for us.

Speaker 9 (49:28):
All.

Speaker 6 (49:29):
Yeah. Again, I really want to just displice some of
these soundbits into my other episode at random points. Now, again,
Tucker actually pushes back in some of like the in
between sections here, and I'll play some of that pushback later,
but you know, way more than the rest of the interview.
So specifically, here Tucker is actually pushing back on Nick's

(49:50):
kind of resigned blame directed towards women and the quote
unquote legal incentive structures that he says are contributing to this.
And Tucker responds by saying, even if some of these
complaints are true, as believers in the natural patriarchy, isn't
it men's role to take responsibility lead by example and
to fix this behavior in women through marriage.

Speaker 4 (50:13):
But I would say that because I hear this all
the time. People say, well, the men need to step
up and be better and lead the women Easier said
than done.

Speaker 7 (50:21):
You know, I agree with that.

Speaker 4 (50:23):
They're at war with the system, and not even just
the system, but also society.

Speaker 6 (50:27):
So this is this is the full like joker pilled
and sale stuff, is that in order to have an
actual relationship with women, men have to enter into combat
against quote unquote society. Right like this, it is larger.
It's larger thing that's influencing women and is making them,
you know, depraved and liberal. And Nick argues that even

(50:48):
if you find like a nice, trad Christian girl, they're
gonna be on TikTok, they're gonna be on Instagram, and
they're gonna be quote unquote talking to other women and
through osmosis, they're gonna get influenced by this liberal culture
and say, ten, fifteen, twenty years down the line, people
will change and they may not be so Christian and
trad twenty years into your marriage because of society.

Speaker 2 (51:12):
Huh yeah, I mean, I guess that's the argument I
expected from him.

Speaker 6 (51:17):
He'll extracolate some of his reasoning here.

Speaker 4 (51:19):
And I think that women as kind of the ultimate conformists,
the ultimate enforcers of like social norms. I think eventually
the pressure from society kind of gets to them, and
a lot of them will go into.

Speaker 8 (51:30):
It depends what kind of husbands they have. I mean,
if there's real leadership at home. I don't know a
single happily married woman who's liberal, not one. I know
a lot of married women.

Speaker 6 (51:41):
Here's some of the pushback that Tucker is doing now.
But yeah, man, this idea of you know, that women
as the ultimate conformists is the enforcers of social norms, right,
This is like kind of like the long House type stuff.
And Tucker's rebuke of that is that in an actual
you know, marriage with a conservative man, a strong and
so it of man, all that behavior will get changed

(52:02):
because people will fall into like their natural biological patriarchal roles.
But Nick still doesn't buy it. Like he is he is,
he is an insul at heart. Here's no way that
that Tucker's kind of push back gonna it's gonna turn
him on this. Like Nick just hates women entirely. This
whole motivation is that due to some sort of like

(52:23):
fascist homo erotic like aspect maybe, but it's it's probably
even more complicated than that. I mean, part of the
fascist fenboy thing is people who actually aren't even gay
but just hate women so much that they end up
being gay because that's like the only mode of connection
they can even or like physical connection. They can even
like muster themselves to to like do, which I explained

(52:45):
in that episode from you know a few years ago
when I was a baby. But yeah, this is definitely
some stuff at play here, and I mean Nick will
always just find new things to complain about in regards
to this sort of stuff, like the quote unquote epidemic
of simps.

Speaker 8 (52:58):
So like maybe the job is to make you girl
happy in like all this nonsense ends.

Speaker 7 (53:05):
Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 4 (53:05):
I think that that could be a bottomless pit too,
because my critique I have of the men is, and
you're right about this, they enable this behavior.

Speaker 7 (53:14):
Well, that's for sure, it's epidemic of simps.

Speaker 4 (53:17):
Who and especially with Christians, I've noticed this epic of.

Speaker 2 (53:22):
Six Yeah, that's that's something else.

Speaker 6 (53:25):
Marriage has this bottomless pit.

Speaker 2 (53:28):
I also love the idea that Tucker's like, well, why
are men just making women happy. And you know the
answer there for Tucker is that people like you are
not capable of making other people happy. But Nick can't
even consider that because the idea of women being happy
is deeply offensive to him.

Speaker 9 (53:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (53:45):
No, I mean Nick says that simp culture, or more specifically,
a backlash to simp culture, is why people like Andrew
Tate have gotten so popular despite being a quote unquote
Muslim polchemist, because Tate is quote putting a women in
their place, as opposed to Christian men who are tone
policing each other and are worshiping women and worshiping their wives,

(54:08):
which Tucker pushes back on a bit by saying that
the New Testament commands men to love their wives and
that wives respect their husbands. We got only two more
at clips left, but I think they are very revealing,
all right, as much else needs to be revealed here.

Speaker 8 (54:24):
I do think I've just noticed this that men who
stay unmarried for too long become like kind of fragile.
There's something about the give and take. There's something about
living with In fact, I think it's the key to life.
Someone you don't fully understand that broadens you, that keeps
you always thinking that makes you wiser, more patient, more thoughtful,

(54:50):
more self aware, and more flexible.

Speaker 7 (54:54):
And those are all good qualities.

Speaker 8 (54:56):
And the absence of that, like in with sexuality, or
like men who are single too long, they get very rigid.

Speaker 7 (55:03):
Have you ever noticed this?

Speaker 6 (55:04):
Have you ever noticed this?

Speaker 8 (55:05):
I like things the way I like them, and they
just get like no, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you don't
want that.

Speaker 2 (55:12):
Really, because that's who you are. Nick.

Speaker 4 (55:14):
I would say that when when you say you don't
fully understand women. To me, I feel like women are
very simple in terms of lived with one. No, I
haven't lived with them, but I meant.

Speaker 6 (55:28):
Oh, man, women are really simple. Have you ever lived
with one? No?

Speaker 2 (55:33):
It's really funny up until the assuming all gay people
are the same bit. Tucker's making a good point, which
is that like part of what's healthy about relationships is
like living with someone who's not like you, right, just
like that makes us better people.

Speaker 6 (55:47):
And he's very clearly trying to like like push Nick's
buttons here, Yeah, because he knows, he knows, he knows,
because Nick's getting called out because yeah, he's this angry,
unmarried guy. He's this like ye little unhinged freak.

Speaker 2 (56:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (56:03):
Oh and Yeah, he's like getting he's absolutely getting called
out here. And it's funny that this is the thing
out of the of the entire interview that that that
Tucker really tries to harp on. It's it's this married thing,
Like he really wants Nick to get married. That's kind
of the main thing he's really pushing for by the
end of this interview.

Speaker 2 (56:20):
Yeah, bro, that's gonna happen.

Speaker 6 (56:23):
Have you ever lived with one? Well no, no, of
course not. It's wild. I mean, well, later Nick tries
to argue that, you know, it's it's really the men
who are complicated because men have a quote deep connection
to math and space unquote.

Speaker 2 (56:39):
Sure, yeah, man, I love my deep connection to math
and space.

Speaker 6 (56:44):
Yeah, Robert's so good at math and space.

Speaker 2 (56:46):
Yeah, it's really my strong suits math and space.

Speaker 6 (56:50):
Anyone that knows you, I would.

Speaker 2 (56:52):
Say, every man I know is good at math and space.

Speaker 6 (56:56):
Versus you know, women just operate on primal base inurse. Yes,
Nicks quote, men are masters of the universe. Women are
the universe, which I think is a quote from someone else.

Speaker 2 (57:10):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, god, yeah, you're a real master of
the universe. Nick.

Speaker 6 (57:15):
This will be the final clip where Tucker will offer
a little bit more pushback towards Nick on some of
his views about women in marriage. You've got a pretty
clear look into into Nick's interiority here as well.

Speaker 8 (57:27):
So but anyway, but whatever, the point of men want
to talk past each other constantly, they don't always know
what the other one is saying, and that frustration actually
gives way to like great beauty over time. I would say,
I don't know.

Speaker 4 (57:43):
I personally find women very frustrated when they are not expressing, and.

Speaker 7 (57:49):
I just view that as any of it.

Speaker 6 (57:52):
I see.

Speaker 4 (57:53):
The way I look at is like when you look
at your favorite TV shows, right, Sopranos Breaking Bad, It's
like the wife is the villain because it's like the
main character, if the wife could just get out of
the way, would be running the shell. And that's kind
of how I feel. Like iron Rand I agree with
her about this. She said that the wife's role is

(58:14):
like hero worship. The guy is the hero. The guy
is supposed to be the entrepreneur, the conqueror or whatever,
and the woman is really supposed to support the man's
goals and be in his world.

Speaker 8 (58:25):
And I van that's the well, last thing successful men
need is more power worship more, a hero worship more.

Speaker 7 (58:31):
You're so great?

Speaker 8 (58:32):
Well, you get that at work, you don't want that
at home. You become an unbearable absolute pray to destroys
every successful man, which is hubrisk, Like you mistake yourself
for God. You need someone who's not interested in what
you do at all, only interested in you. And that's
how you become balanced and wise. That's how you know
your own limits.

Speaker 2 (58:52):
That's shockingly good advice from Tucker Carlson.

Speaker 6 (58:55):
Like this, This is so beautiful. This is so beautiful
to me. When Tucker Carlson is the voice of reason,
it's it's really really scary weak. Yeah, but no, so
clearly is next like a closet and gay in cell
showing here? Well, like, well, Tucker pains pains to explain

(59:16):
to Nick why people actually get into relationships. Yeah, and
Nick just can't do it. He starts talking about the
Sopranos and fucking breaking bad. That's like the only framework
in which you could understand this because he's never had
a real relationship. The wife is the villain, I agree

(59:36):
with ein Rand. Yeah, famously well adjusted in the relationship department.
Iin Rand, the wife's role is hero for chef, and
Tucker's like, oh my god, no, that that's horrible.

Speaker 2 (59:48):
Oh no, that's that's what ruins people, that destroys people.

Speaker 6 (59:51):
It's fascinating. No, yeah, this is a this is a
truly fascinating exchange. And it's really telling that this is
the thing that Tucker pushes back on not anti semitism,
but she like kind of tepidly offered Nick advice on
how to change his rhetoric to be more appealing, but
did not push back on the substance of it, because
Tucker is actually just as anti Semitic as Nick is. Yeah,
but no, this is this is the thing that he

(01:00:13):
that he decided to do. And yeah, like my initial
feeling after watching this whole two hour and eighteen minute
stream is like this whole stream or this whole episode
felt like Tucker was kind of trying to be some
sort of mentor figured to Neck or saw that Nick
might be the future in some way, like might be
whether whether it's the future of the party or future
of like you know, this sort of like commentating class

(01:00:35):
or style, and it kind of wanted to offer a
little bit of a guiding light towards someone who I
think Tucker does see, as you know, having some obvious
issues and saying some nasty things and wanting to kind
of write that course in a way or provide Nick
a bit of a fresh start to restate some of
his views on the biggest right wing platform online, which
is which is Tucker's show. Right now, I guess that's

(01:00:57):
kind of that's kind of all I have on this
women in poor section. I guess the last thing before
we close, there is this question right with people in
the GOP who are scared about Nick's Nick's influence at
least in the commentating classroom among like interns, but specifically
scared of it one because of the you know, anti
Israel stuff, but also if that's going to hurt them electorally. Right,

(01:01:20):
A lot of people couch this and saying, well, you know,
these views aren't popular with the electorate. Republicans are never
going to win elections if this Graper thing takes over,
and that leaves us, you know, people who are against
against you know, the rise of fascism and authoritarianism in
kind of a weird spot because I don't think we
can really do anything to encourage like the graperification of

(01:01:43):
the GOP like an accelerationist fashion. But we can kind
of let it happen. We can choose to just let
it happen, or we can choose to kind of stop
it in like the twenty seventeen Antifa, you know, framework
of like trying to prevent this stuffrom spreading because it
will always lead to bad things. And yeah, after doing
all this research last week and really continuing into this

(01:02:06):
week too, I mean Trump just gave a statement in
support of Talker and saying that he should get the
word out about Nick Fuentes, I've continued to be looking
at this stuff and can we even stop it though?
At this point? Right, like how much of the Antifa
project like even succeeded considering where we are now politically right,
But no, there certainly is this like internal debate in

(01:02:27):
terms of letting this stuff happen versus trying to actively
oppose this like Graper takeover of the GOP.

Speaker 2 (01:02:34):
Yeah, I mean, I don't think there's realistically anything that
we can do to influence how popular Nick Fuintes is
on the right. Like if you just start screaming about
how bad and dangerous he is, that's going to convince
a lot of people Oh, well, the left hates him.
That must mean you know he's our guy.

Speaker 5 (01:02:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:02:54):
Likewise, I don't know. I don't think it's our place.
I think it's our place to make sure people know
what Nick actually stands for. That if there's some sort
of like whitewashing of his character that they attempt to
do in order to make this more electorally viable, that
people are aware of, like how how unhinged this guy is?
I don't think. I don't think the kind of shit

(01:03:15):
Nick is saying here will will do well when exposed
to the body politic as a whole, because it's nuts.
But that said, like, I don't think you can. You're
going to scold your way out of this.

Speaker 6 (01:03:27):
No, no, And I guess part of the education is
making sure people have a more full understanding of Nick
Quinn has his views on women and his uh yeah,
and his little conversation on pornography. I think that actually
is important because all of these guys are weird, little
in selfreaks.

Speaker 2 (01:03:43):
Yes, and people don't like how weird they are when
they're confronted with it. No, right, Mostly what they're concerned
about is whether or not there are jobs, and shit
is more or less expensive. They don't want some weirdo
telling them that living with women will make them weaker.

Speaker 6 (01:04:00):
Even Tucker doesn't like that. Yeah, well I think that
does it for us today at it could happen here. Great.
I hope this episode is something.

Speaker 2 (01:04:11):
Yeah, I hope it's something too.

Speaker 6 (01:04:14):
Good Night, goodbye, welcome to take it happen here a
podcast telling you to rage against the dying of the light.

(01:04:37):
I am your host, Bia long and many episodes ago,
significantly more tearfully. I talked about how, you know, watching
the trans voices in media get fired and disappear felt
like watching the stars disappear in the sky. And today
I am here to say, do not go gently into
that good night fuck him, rage against the dying of
the lights and with me to age she gets the

(01:05:00):
diying of the light and talk about some absolute bullshit.

Speaker 3 (01:05:04):
Is Alma a Vie who is a former staffer at
bonapp Petite, and we will be getting into why that's
now technically former and the VP of the New Skuild
of New York.

Speaker 6 (01:05:13):
Alma, welcome to the show.

Speaker 11 (01:05:14):
Amy, lovely to be here.

Speaker 6 (01:05:16):
I wish it was under better circumstances. I feel like
everyone I talked to I go, I wish you under
better circumstances, but you know.

Speaker 11 (01:05:23):
Yeah, circumstances across the border kind of trash right now.

Speaker 6 (01:05:26):
Yeah, they're they're really bad. The circumstances they do be
they do, they do be shit.

Speaker 3 (01:05:30):
So these specifically bad circumstances are one. Conde Nast has
just obliterated teen Vogue, which had been one of the
few actually very good progressive outlets, also one of the
few outlets that would publish trans people regularly, and it's
just gone now. And Alma and three of her coullies
were fired for very productive union activity, being like, hey,

(01:05:52):
what the fuck?

Speaker 6 (01:05:53):
And we kind of de terms of that. I can
say this because it's not my ass of.

Speaker 3 (01:05:58):
The line, but yeah, do you want to talk a
bit about what happened?

Speaker 11 (01:06:02):
Yeah, totally. I mean to give the company it's caveat. Technically,
teen Vogue still exists. It has just been moved under
the broader organization of Vogue. They've now said that it's
coverage areas will include professional development as well as well.
There are a couple of other things that they highlighted,

(01:06:23):
but certainly the things that they did not highlight include, say,
you know, scathing coverage of the Trump administration, or coverage
of trans youth and trans healthcare bands for teenagers, coverage
of like young celebrities of color, and so on. But yeah, anyway,
I guess to just go back to the start of
the timeline. Last Monday, we at the News Guild and
you know, at the Conde Nast Union, which is the

(01:06:43):
union that represents basically every worker or every journalist and
video maker at Conde Nast except for those in the
New Yorker. They are in like a separate bargaining unit
that we see as like you know, linked sibling units
at the linked sibling unions. We do most of our
organize together and our contracts are nearly identical. But anyway,

(01:07:04):
we were yeah, I know, right, union siblings. It's adorable. Yeah,
we try to stay close. But anyway, we got word
last Monday that about two thirds of the staff of
teen Vogue were being laid off, including a friend of
mine and I think former guests on your show, actually
Lex mcmahamon, who was the politics editor at teen Vogue,
as well as a few.

Speaker 6 (01:07:24):
Of their culture editors.

Speaker 11 (01:07:26):
Basically like if they were covering I mean, being a
little glib here but like if they were covering say
like trans writes, trans youth, like progressive culture in nearly
any way shape or form. YEP, they were either laid
off or the remaining workers were folded into the larger
organization of Vogue, and I think they're still figuring out
exactly where they fit into that organization and what like

(01:07:46):
youth coverage looks like going forward. So that happened last Monday,
which was obviously a massive loss. I sat in on
a lot of the like the winegarden meetings going over
the exit packages for those employees, a lot of like
really sad and cheerful meetings that day.

Speaker 3 (01:08:00):
We should point out this is being recorded on Monday,
the tenth. Last Monday's is Monday, November third. Not sure
when this is gonna come out yet, just to make
it come link clear here. Yes, absolutely, November third. Yeah,
that was Monday, November third. Yeah, thank you for the correction.
And then two days later at the company we got
a notification that there was another round of layoffs, this
one hitting I believe folks on the video teams and

(01:08:22):
then people on the like copy in fact checking section
of the company as well.

Speaker 11 (01:08:27):
This was super disruptive. Usually, you know, at a company
like Conde Nast, well, the union doesn't have like explicit
protections for this, and in fact, like the company has
the right to perform layoffs if they need to for
business reasons. Usually when a round of layoffs goes through,
there's like a period of peace that comes after that.
You know, like there will be you know, a reduction

(01:08:49):
enforce will figure out, Okay, how are we going to
keep doing our jobs now that we have fewer staffers,
And then if the company needs to reduce the staff again,
that will happen like a few months, maybe a year
in the future. Two rounds of layoffs in the same
week had people really really scared and really stressed out,
because I mean, for one, there's like just the sense
of like, oh God, a lot of my coworkers are gone,

(01:09:10):
how am I going to be able to keep doing
my job? We lost at my magazine, bon Apetite. We
lost our social media director, the person who was basically
running our social accounts. We'd gotten notification from the company
that editors were going to be doing their own posting
from then on, which is just not how things have
ever worked before, not really a thing that they're like

(01:09:31):
You know, my colleagues are brilliant, and many of them
are brilliant like users of social media, but like not
really a part of our jobs historically. So we're all
pretty confused how we were supposed to, you know, actually
keep running our magazine. Most of our magazines are already
running on pretty reduced staffs in the first place. Yeah,
so anyway between that and the kind of obvious political

(01:09:52):
connection that one could draw, or at least like that,
a lot of our members were afraid of, you know,
ten Vogue being this like pretty famously radical or at
the very it's like pretty famously progressive publication doing some
like really really hard hitting journalism. There's a really clear
line you can draw between like all of the Colbert
and Jimmy Kibble, but also like the CBS stuff with
Barry Weiss, like this kind of broader right wing shift

(01:10:13):
in media. You can draw, i think a direct line
between all of that and like the shuttering or near
shuttering of teen Vogue. So we did a thing that
we basically always do when we're facing an issue like this,
whether it's a big reduction in force or just some
decision from the upper levels of the management that have
all of the workers being like, wait, what, what the

(01:10:33):
fuck did you just do? We had a rally in
the cafeteria to go over some of the questions that
we all have for management. We created a list of
questions that we wanted to ask and then, and I
cannot stress how like routine this is for us as
a union. We went from the cafeteria, which is on
the thirty fifth floor of the World Trade Center, down
to the executive floor, which is directly below it on

(01:10:54):
the thirty fourth floor of the World Trade Center, and
we walked over to the executive offices and said, we
have some questions for Stan Duncan, who is the head
of the people team at CONDE, and asked basically one
of the people in charge of either making these decisions
of you know, staffing in reduction, and then of enforcing
those decisions as well. We went down to speak with
Stan Duncan, asked him some of our questions to other

(01:11:17):
HR employees came out in medicine the hallway. We said
we'd like to speak to Stan. We were happy to
ask them our questions, but they said they wouldn't be
particularly good at answering them or they might not have
good answers for us. But Stan, they said, was in
a meeting at the time. It just so happened that
either Stan's meeting ended right then, or maybe he heard
people talking in the hallway and decided to come check
it out, or maybe there wasn't a meeting, but for

(01:11:38):
whatever reason, Stan happened to come out into the hallway
at that time, and so we started trying to ask
him our questions. Some of those questions included, like, was
the closing of teen Vogue inherently political? But also how
are we going to be able to do our jobs
going forward? How are we supposed to keep running these
magazines if you're going to keep cutting our jobs? And
then also how are we supposed to keep doing our

(01:12:00):
jobs if we are constantly living in fear of losing them?

Speaker 5 (01:12:03):
You know.

Speaker 11 (01:12:05):
Stan does not answer any of these questions, of course, yeah, no, naturally,
he tells us we're not allowed to congregate in the hallway.
This is not true, of course, we what, well, yeah,
we I mean, One, this is our workplace. We I
think are allowed to have conversations in the hallway of
our workplace. Two, I mean, if he was saying that
we weren't allowed to say, take part in union activities

(01:12:28):
in the workplace. We have a right under Section seven
of the NLRA that says we can do that. We
also have like contract provisions that say the company will
not infringe upon our right to organize and demonstrate in
the workplace. So that just wasn't true. And in fact,
the union, before everything else happened, already filed a grievance
about denying our Section seven rights to organize in the workplace.

Speaker 2 (01:12:47):
God.

Speaker 11 (01:12:48):
Yeah, So anyway, Stan tries to get us to go
back to our desks. He walks across the floor, tells
us to follow him. We follow him and keep asking questions.
He says that we have to go back I can
do our jobs. We say, we will happily do our
jobs if you could just answer our questions. He tells
us that we have to go back to our workplaces.
We remind him this is our workplace, and anyway, we

(01:13:10):
end up asking him those questions. We follow him back
and forth along the hallway. He goes back into his office,
closes the door. We all go back to our desks
for the rest of the day. I finish up my
work and I go home and then I get notification
from the News Guild at seven that the company has
notified them that they are terminating me and three of
my colleagues. Jesus Christ, no severance, no ongoing insurance coverage.

(01:13:35):
My insurance expires at the end of the month. No notice,
no investigation, effective immediately. So as of last Wednesday, I
am no longer an employee of Conde and Asked. I'd
been working there for five years. I helped start the
Conde and Ask union. In the time since I joined there,
I was one of the most tenured members of my magazine. Actually,
people don't generally stick around there for a long time,

(01:13:57):
but at twenty seven years old, I was a long hauler.
And yeah, in the time since then, our union has
filed a second degreevance. There was the first one over
telling us we couldn't congregate. There's now a second one
over the retaliatory firings of me and my three colleagues.
The company has since put five other people I believe

(01:14:20):
on an unpaid leave in an attempt to discipline more
people who took part in the demonstration. It's kind of
hard to see rhyme or reason in the people that
they decided to discipline. So I was speaking quite a
bit during the demonstration, as was one of the other
people who was terminated. One person asked one question that

(01:14:40):
was a Jake Lahud at Wired. He asked a question
towards the beginning, which was, what is your definition of
congregate when they told us we can't congregate in the
whole way? Which I think is a perfectly valid question.
And then one person who was terminated actually as far
as I know, didn't speak at all during the demonstration.
He was, however, the vice president of the New Yorker Union,
the vice chair of the New York UNI, and you know,

(01:15:03):
an organizer that the company was like very well aware of.
And then as for the people who were placed on
disciplinary leaves, I mean, I believe some of them actually
spoke significantly more than some of the people who were
terminated during the demonstration, but were certainly, like historically at
the very least, less visible and less vocal union organizers.
So the trend that we're seeing is that the people
who spoke up were either people who had been historically

(01:15:24):
very active in the union, or in Jake's case, somebody
who was doing really really impressive coverage of the Trump
administration and like really really hard hitting journalism against like
Doge and like the general efforts of the right right
now to you know, I mean, listeners of this podcast
know everything that's going on there.

Speaker 9 (01:15:40):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (01:15:50):
I'm going to say this, and I'm going to adopt
preferred language of these professionals, which is to say that
and this is the preferred language of management. Is that
some people are called this both a return of resegregation
and an obvious anti union political perch because it is
a bunch of trans people and a bunch of them
white people who have been eliminated from teen vogue. You know,

(01:16:12):
this is something that you were talking about earlier, about
drawing the connection between this and CBS. I'm like, yeah,
what did Barry Weis do when she got into CBS?
She fired like every non white person who worked there, right,
because their avert political plan is resegregation. And you know,
in order to do resegregation, you fire all of the
people who are non white, you get rid of any
trans people, and you get women. Admittedly, at CBS, it's

(01:16:34):
not like they had like a giant like like you know.

Speaker 6 (01:16:39):
It wasn't like like I had of trans politics in
the first place. I mean, they had some like you are.
There's people there who are like cool.

Speaker 3 (01:16:45):
But like it wasn't like, you know, it wasn't like
teen Vogue, which genuinely had way more trans coverage than
like any other outlet.

Speaker 11 (01:16:52):
No, totally, Like I.

Speaker 6 (01:16:54):
Can I emphasize enough, like the extent to which this
is the most normal union activity in the entire world,
into which this is the most protected category in the
entire world, and you know.

Speaker 3 (01:17:03):
Obviously a bunch of the bosses and a bunch of
like the corporations that are doing this shit like don't
think the NLRA should exist, and like is like a
legally valeled thing, but it's still enforced right now, and
so while mostly but like for this, yeah, still in force,
so there doesn't unbelievably hideous the illegal retaliatory firings that
are illegal in like so many different ways. It's baffling,

(01:17:25):
Like it's like you need like a second law degree
to fight every single law they just broke.

Speaker 11 (01:17:31):
Totally. I mean, the thing that I would point out
too is, like, like you said, this is an extremely
common type of union action, Like across the entire labor
everyone does. Everyone marches on the boss. We also specifically
like as a union we've marched on the boss like
tons of different times. Yeah, we've marched on Stan multiple
times in the past. There was one demonstration where we
all marched on stand during contract bargaining actually last year,

(01:17:54):
where we had significantly more people and I will say
being much more confrontational. I remember like a large crowd
booing him in front of like the entire executive floor,
and I would say, and I would say, like two
to three times as many people present watching in a
much more like loud and activated and energetic forum. But

(01:18:16):
we've had marches on other executives, We've had marches on
editors in chief in the past. And I mean one
of the reasons that like when I got the news
that I was being terminated, I like basically went into shock.
This felt extremely tame compared to past union actions that
we've done. Yeah, and also, no one has ever been
disciplined for par taking part in any action like this
in the past, like, let alone terminated. Like as far

(01:18:37):
as I know, no one's ever been called into a
meeting and said like, you shouldn't have done that, and
we're keeping an eye on you. So this is like
a massive escalation on the company side in terms of retaliation.
And I mean that's also what we've heard kind of
across the board at the News Guild. You know, I've
been in close conversations with our president and with other
like organizers at the Guild who have said, and this is,
you know, our local union that organizes a bunch of

(01:18:59):
different applications in New York City and kind of in
the surrounding area. This is one of the most egregious
examples of retaliation that just about anybody I've talked who
has seen in our union's history. And there's like pretty
I think valid concern that like if a company like
Conde Nast is able to get away with this, like
other companies within our union are going to like follow
suit and like take this as their queue, which is

(01:19:21):
both scary but also has been energizing for a lot
of people. We've seen, like a lot of folks really
excited to like show up and join our fight and
get involved in any way that they can.

Speaker 2 (01:19:30):
Hell yeah.

Speaker 11 (01:19:30):
The other thing that I would point out, based on
what you were saying, is so Kanye Nast has a
queer publication them dot Us, which I think is one
of the all time URLs for a queer publication you
possibly have very funny so between them and teen Vogue,
you had a lot of the company's like trans staffers.
They kind of function as like sister publications. They like

(01:19:52):
sit next to each other, they work closely together outside
of them. As far as I know, I was the
only trans woman implied on editorial Conde Nast, and I
am certainly the only trans woman in our union, including
at them. Actually, all of the transoman employees there, to
my understanding, are not part of the unit. They are
in management positions, which, yeah, your representation, but also means

(01:20:16):
that like I was obviously in this very lonely position,
but also this very like visible and like clearly very
vulnerable position where it's like incredibly easy to single somebody
like me out. I would also say, during our contract fight,
we had a lot of back and forth between like
me and company management about their coverage under the healthcare plan.
Namely they excluded facial feminization surgery, which meant that, like,

(01:20:40):
if you were an employee of Conde Nast and you
wanted facial feminization surgery, you were either out of luck
or had to find a way to raise about fifty
thousand dollars based on a lot of estimates that I've seen.

Speaker 3 (01:20:52):
If you're really lucky and good and you're going to
go to Thailand, you can maybe get it for thirty K.

Speaker 11 (01:20:55):
Yeah right, no exactly which.

Speaker 3 (01:20:57):
Ammitically the timeline stuff is cool, but totally, I mean,
it's like a.

Speaker 6 (01:21:03):
It's a lot of fucking money, like.

Speaker 11 (01:21:04):
Totally so much shit, even more if you want to
recover in your own home and your own bed.

Speaker 6 (01:21:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 11 (01:21:12):
Actually, and we weren't able to resolve that in the
contract I got f FS this year, and to do it,
I had to go on like a New York State
marketplace plan. Oh no, Jesus Christ, I had both plans
active at the same time. But I have to get
like secondary insurance that cost seven hundred dollars a month
in order to get out of best covered.

Speaker 7 (01:21:29):
God.

Speaker 11 (01:21:29):
Yeah, and that still ended up being significantly cheaper. Ye yep, yeah,
I mean and frankly, like Conde nasked never covered it. Yeah,
who did cover it was like lots of my union
colleagues who jumped in and like created to go fundme
for me and like helped car raise like all of
the money that I needed to get surgery, and very
very thankful for that. But anyway, point being like, the

(01:21:50):
company does not exactly have the best track record when
it comes to and like I feel very qualified to
say this as like the trans woman in the Conde
Nast union, the company does not exactly have the best
track record in terms of like how they have treated
us and me specifically around trans issues.

Speaker 7 (01:22:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:22:06):
So being like again kind.

Speaker 11 (01:22:07):
Of singled out in this way and then being hit
with like this significant a piece of retaliation, it just
feels really telling and also, I mean really disappointing. Frankly,
like I've I've been at Conde for or I keep
using the present tense. I'd been at Conde for five years,
and you know, I liked my job. I was really
good at my job. I hope that they will reverse

(01:22:29):
course and turn this around, but anyway, it's disappointing. It's
disappointing that like that that doesn't really seem to mean
anything when the rubber hits the road.

Speaker 7 (01:22:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:22:37):
I think there's two ways you can look at it.

Speaker 3 (01:22:38):
One is it's like, oh, yeah, of course, of course
the one trans woman in this bargaining. Yet it was
like the VP of the union because like, yeah, transforms
do be organizing.

Speaker 6 (01:22:48):
Do we do do this?

Speaker 11 (01:22:49):
And that the truth.

Speaker 3 (01:22:50):
But then the second thing you were talking about this like, yeah,
the magazines are already understaffed and they're just destroying them,
you know. And this is something that I can say,
which is like, this is something we saw from Jeff Bezos,
right when when Jeff Bezos sort of like took control
of the Washington Post and then gradually sort of purged
their staff, and like, you know, has this whole thing
now about how, oh h, we're supposed to be pro
free market and pro individual liberties, which does not include

(01:23:12):
trans writes. You know, if you look at what happened
to the Washington Post's subscriber account, it's like nothing, It's
like the paper is dying. It's effectively just like it's
not like an actual functional, like profit making thing anymore.
Like it's just it's just the sort of propaganda vanity
outlet of a billionaire. And that's you know, that's probably
what's going to happen to CBS, is that it's going

(01:23:33):
to just get sort of annihilize, stripped down, because these
people don't want a functioning media. They don't give a
shit if these things actually work, because what they're trying
to do right now is accumulate raw, accumulate just raw
power and attempt to do raw sort of narrative and
media control in order to stay in power. And it's
not working because everyone still hates them, even though they

(01:23:54):
bought all the newspapers. Everyone is like, these people suck
like but this is that we run into with unions
off all the time, which is like, yeah, there are
a lot of bosses who would rather their own company
be non functional, you know, their workers have any voice
in it. And especially now in this political moment in
which oh, hey, look the fascists are trying to seize
control of the media, that becomes increasingly more and more

(01:24:17):
an option of just fuck it, We'll just like get
handouts from like the tech fascists forever, and in exchange
of that, will publish whatever propaganda garbage they want to
spit out.

Speaker 11 (01:24:28):
Yeah, I mean, I would also say, like, I'm not
sure get about across the entire company. Although I believe
it was one of the better traffic stories that Conde
Nast all year, but one of the most certainly one
of the most like trafficked teen Vogue stories in this
past year, was like out of their politics section. It
was the Vivian Wilson Elon Musk's transdaughter cover story, really

(01:24:48):
really good, an amazing piece of journalism and also a
like super viral, and I'm sure made a ton of
money for the company. Yeah, and so one would think,
you know, looking at like the trends of the past,
that if that was going to inform anything, like the
company would actually say, like more politics coverage, like more
progressive coverage out of teen Vogue.

Speaker 3 (01:25:08):
Well, and like I remember, I don't have the exact
numbers on me because I'm a hack and of fraud.
But if it wasn't a hack and a fraud, I
would have the exact numbers from the coverage of like
the increase in both revenue generation and in like readership
that teen Vogue underwent once they started doing politic stuff
on at the first show administration, And now you're getting
rid of that for what are clearly business reasons and

(01:25:31):
are clearly, very very clearly not related to the fact
that there is a bunch of a bunch of political
pressure from a bunch of fascists to run the government.

Speaker 11 (01:25:38):
Now, Yeah, I mean, obviously we don't have like perfect
insight into like what's going on behind closed doors at
Conde NASS, But I can't say that.

Speaker 6 (01:25:46):
We had a diversity.

Speaker 11 (01:25:47):
Committee meeting with our joint union management diversity committee a
week before all of this went down, and they told
us that they were you know, paraphrasing here, but management
said that they are actively trying to avoid the attention
and the eyre of the Trump administration, which at the
time definitely raised some eyebrows and I think led to
the big response last week of like, m hm, oh,

(01:26:08):
I actively avoid the attention of the Trump administration. You
meant just like get rid of the parts of the
company that are like, yeah, hostile towards it, and I
mean kind of too like the good business of progressive coverage.
I've covered a lot of beats in my time of
bon Epetite, but there was a period where I was
covering like the Starbucks Workers United fight pretty closely, a
lot of articles about that in my back pocket. Those

(01:26:28):
generally did really well. Actually, one of the first times
I faced like big right wing backlash online was covering
the like Dylan mulvaney bud Light protests, which I used
as an opportunity to write about the the Corse Light
boycotts of like the West Coast queer worker movement and
like kind of the birth of the gay labor movement.
One of my best trafficked of all time stories I

(01:26:49):
wrote about the like why the watermelon symbol became like
such a big kind of like rally and cry and
like Palestine and organizing over the past few years. Again
massive traffic winner for the company. But every time, you know,
we get into these meetings with management or every time
we like hear about the direction that the company is
shifting or coverage is shifting, it always seems away from
those kind of hot button issues that like there's clearly

(01:27:11):
an appetite for stories about and instead towards well whatever
it's towards you know.

Speaker 3 (01:27:17):
Yeah, and you know, and you can look at this
like there's been a whole bunch of h There was
a story recently about doctor Oz like pivoting his whole
thing into doing like a right wing like media grift, and.

Speaker 6 (01:27:27):
Nobody's watching it. Like the the average episode of vicot
appen here absolutely annihilates like just like like orders of
magnitude better than like no, I think it was doctor Phil,
Yeah it was doctor Phil. Who does that look there
they're like the same guy, like wow, that's that's slightly
unfair to doctor oz. Well, yeah, doctor Philip did this
like did the right wing pivot, and like nobody's listening
to the show. It's like no one.

Speaker 3 (01:27:48):
This is like one of the most famous people in
the United States is getting annihilated by like Mia and
the trendy crew like.

Speaker 6 (01:27:53):
You could happen here, Like.

Speaker 3 (01:27:58):
Oh wow, you know, and yeah, like there is this
like massive demand for this stuff as like people increasing
me realize that, oh yeah, wait, hold on, we're getting
every single person like in the country is like almost
individually getting screwed over by the Trump administration. He's like
individually micro targeting every single part of his base and
pissing them off. Like there was a whole farmer soy

(01:28:20):
thing right, and like he's like, I guess tend this
negotiates to weybean sales now. But like you know, you
can look at.

Speaker 6 (01:28:25):
Like so he was fighting this whole war with his
entire farming base and then he immediately turned around from
there and went to fight the cattle ranchers. It's like
there's so much appetite for any critique of this because
it's so obviously just like malignant and narcissistically violent, and
all of these companies that are like you know, like
like this has always been the problem with the free
press is that like the US does not have a

(01:28:46):
free press. The US is a capitalist press, and so
you know, you can just buy them or apply enough
political pressure and they will fall in line.

Speaker 11 (01:28:54):
And that's like what they're doing here. So what you're
saying is we need a left wing Joe Rogam.

Speaker 6 (01:29:00):
I'm going to become the joker.

Speaker 2 (01:29:05):
Now, of course.

Speaker 11 (01:29:06):
I mean I'll also say, like I became an organizer
in the News Guild for a lot of reasons, right,
Like on UPTU was my first job out of college,
and I was really involved covering the dining workers organizing
at my undergrad school. So that was like definitely my
introduction there. But at the same time, like when I
got into the workplace, I kind of realized that media

(01:29:27):
unions are maybe one of the only things that will
keep the media at least as currently exists, alive until
we can come up with like some other model that
is like more sustainable, because I mean, like I look
at a company like Conde Nast and you have this
like very well compensated very like large cast of managers

(01:29:47):
and middle managers yep. And then you have this like
massive body of people actually producing the magazines, actually making
like doing the work of the journalism and the culture
reporting and the video making and so on and so on.
And you know, one of those groups is constantly subject
to layoffs. One of those groups is constantly being made
to say work over time and maybe being told not

(01:30:08):
to build for as much over time as they're being
made to work. And one of those groups is being
extremely well compensated and has seemingly incredible job security.

Speaker 6 (01:30:17):
Yeah, Like all all of the resources are being sucked
out by a combination of like these venture capitals dipshes
at the top, and then all of these fucking like
middle mirrors, management bureaucrats like who do nothing right.

Speaker 11 (01:30:27):
And the thing that slows that down is like workers
having a say in the media, you know, like the
people who actually can produce the work, like being able
to say and these are the circumstances under which the
work is going to be produced. I mean, I think
it's no surprise that, like if you look at a
publication like hell Gate or like Defector or like after
Math and four or four, and all of these like
worker co ops that are popping up kind of across
the media ecosystem, like their worker owns and they have

(01:30:50):
this very kind of flat like payment structure where everybody
is making around the same amount, like everybody has a
say in the way that the workplace functions, and like
these appear at least to me to be some of
the most like stable media like organizations that are out
there right now. And all that tells me is that
like workplace democracy, I mean in like the truest sense

(01:31:11):
of the word, you know, like workplace democracy as it
is earned by like worker organizations, union's work or co ops,
whatever they might be, is the thing that's going to
keep the media afloat. Like that is the model that
is like sustainable in the long run. So I think
that's one of the reasons that having like a strong
and active Conde Nasty union, though management probably wouldn't agree
at least explicitly, is like one of the things that

(01:31:33):
can keep Conde Nast alive for as long as possible.
Like you know, again they would probably loath to admit this,
but like an organization like the Conde Nasty Union can
only exist as long as an organization like Conde Nast exists,
their fates are kind of tied to one another.

Speaker 3 (01:31:47):
Well, okay, this is we're doing the incredibly esoteric via
via union theory.

Speaker 6 (01:31:53):
There's two versions of looking at this one.

Speaker 3 (01:31:55):
Okay, this is the person where Yeah, the Kande Nast
union is structurally dependent on the existence of Conde n
asked and this means that the power of the union
is based on its ability to bring.

Speaker 6 (01:32:04):
People back to work. However, comp there is a second
one you could theoretically have. You could theoretically have the
Conde Nass union without condiated ast.

Speaker 3 (01:32:14):
We have CNT in it, we've taken it over, we're
running it now. We are just now the union. And
you know, and the thing the thing I will say
about that, and this is always this has always been
the advantage of co ops is that, like you are
immediately from the ground up, you're going to have a
kind of efficiency advantage because there is not an entire
middle layer, like because obviously, like there are like producers

(01:32:36):
who do a bunch of work, like my boss Sophie.

Speaker 6 (01:32:38):
Like, if if we didn't have Sophie, none of this
would work, right. Yeah, there's also a bunch of other
people who have the same title who do nothing, and
that's not even sue. If they did nothing, it would
be better. They interfere with everything constantly and get paying.
They shortenary large amount of money to make everything work worse.

Speaker 3 (01:32:52):
And you don't have to have that entire like bureaucratic layer,
like the layer of middle management. And this has always
been a massive just efficiency advantage that you have when
workers running their own shit, is that you don't have
to have those people and the coordination that needs to
be done.

Speaker 6 (01:33:08):
Okay, you have people doing the coordination.

Speaker 3 (01:33:09):
You don't have fifteen layers of dipshits whose job it
is to run.

Speaker 6 (01:33:14):
Around making your job harder.

Speaker 3 (01:33:17):
This this has been me talking about the organizational advantages
of anarchy.

Speaker 6 (01:33:20):
It's great. I'm sorry, No.

Speaker 11 (01:33:24):
You're fine. I mean what I will say is, like,
it's an interesting thing about Conde Nast and like a
lot of I think these media conglomerates, it's like, you know,
other than like when I am a member of the
Conde Nasty union, and like I don't really interact with
people who work elsewhere at Conde Nasket, Like, yeah, I
interact with the people at my magazine and like the
people at Bon Appetite and I like generally get along great.

(01:33:44):
I have a really really awesome relationship with my manager.
I have a lot of admiration for him and what
he does. I think he's like the same way that
you talk about Sophie. I think he's like really great
at his job. I like have a good relationship with
our editor in chief. I have a lot of respect
for her as well. We have a really really solid
system going where we are like able to make this
food magazine every month, and able to keep this website online,
and able to make content that we're all like, you know,

(01:34:05):
recipes and stories that we're all really really proud of.
And then at the same time, we were kind of
subject to this like kind of bigger whatever media machine
that's like kind of moving around ahead or above us,
and also moving around like again with just like so
little transparency. Like yeah, going back to the action on
Wednesday the fifth, we have tried to have meetings with Stan,

(01:34:25):
Like the executive that we talked to in the hallway,
the executive that we marched on. We have tried to
have meetings with him so many times, in so many
different ways. We have emailed him questions, not gotten responses.
We have invited him to like town halls, not gotten responses,
We invited him to meet with our diversity committee and
labor relations got mad at us for se seeing him

(01:34:45):
on the email.

Speaker 6 (01:34:46):
God.

Speaker 11 (01:34:47):
Historically, like that kind of level of the company has
been extremely averse to interacting with its workers to like
answering basic questions. Which is why, like when you look
at you know, there's a video out there of the interaction,
Like this is why we have to march on our
bosses like this, because there's literally no other way to
get a single answer out of them because they kind
of I mean, they exist on this other floor of

(01:35:08):
the company altogether. So I don't know, it's very frustrating.
It's frustrating to like kind of exist in this dual
system of like, well, we have a magazine that we
are operating like very effectively on our own, and yet
there's this entire thing above it that is making these
decisions about how it ought to function and like what
it ought to be doing.

Speaker 3 (01:35:26):
Yeah, and you don't know what it does because totally
they're not there, Like they have.

Speaker 6 (01:35:30):
Absolutely no idea how your production actually functions.

Speaker 11 (01:35:33):
I would be surprised if the man who fired me
knew what my job was.

Speaker 6 (01:35:37):
Yeah, no, absolutely not. All the old critiques of like
the Soviet system were like, oh, there's just this out
of touch bureaucraft three hundred miles away making production decisions,
blah blah blah blah blah.

Speaker 3 (01:35:57):
It's like, oh, yeah, no, that's actually just like how
your job works. Is some suit in like another building
is like, oh, your jobs are all replaceable. Oh you
can you can do this with like twenty percent less staff.
Oh I don't even know what you do, but we're
firing you because we hate you specifically, Like it's just
terrible way for the world to run.

Speaker 11 (01:36:18):
Yeah, totally. And I mean we have like these models
of like what successful workplaces can look like, you know,
like places with militant unions that like actually work, like
actually give workers to say and what their conditions should
be and what their conditions are, places that have gotten
rid of the boss altogether, and like you know, again
those worker co ops that I listed, Like, there are
these functional models of what the future of media can
look like. And this is the thing that I say

(01:36:39):
all the time. It's like the reason that I'm excited
about being a member of the News Guild. The reason
I got involved in organizing in the first place is, like,
I think there is a future of media, Like I
think there is a way that like, you know, people
like you and people like me, like people who write
and tell stories and like are interested in like talking
to people and getting their stories out there. I think
there are sustainable ways that we can do that. And
I think the people who know how to do like

(01:37:00):
the sustainable future of this thing are the people who
are making the product in the first place. Yeah, Like
we are the ones with vision, Like we are the
ones who know how to make something that can continue
to exist sustainably, something that can like even under the
capitalist like framework, like something that can make money, something
that can be profitable. A lot of the great journalists
I know are like actually very interested in and very

(01:37:20):
very good at making work that like generates quite a
bit of revenue. And I don't think that's a particularly
bad thing. Like they know how to do this in
a way that is sustainable, in a way that like
keeps readers excited and engaged in like willing to like
pitch in their own ways. The problem is that the
people who seem to have that know how the people
who make the thing and the people who know how
to keep making the thing and the people who are
making the decisions like aren't the same people.

Speaker 7 (01:37:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 11 (01:37:42):
And the way that you fix that divide, like is
by demanding a seat at the table, is by demanding
the people who like are making those decisions actually do
listen to you, and then demanding that they actually follow
through on the obligation or the things that they say
they're going to do. One of the really frustrating things
about my termination is like they're saying that I was
like too aggressive eve and was harassing the chief people officer. Again,

(01:38:03):
there's a video I think is extremely exonerating.

Speaker 6 (01:38:07):
Also, oh wow, the trends woman's being too aggressive?

Speaker 3 (01:38:10):
Wow, I know how crazy.

Speaker 6 (01:38:14):
One day they're going to develop a second joke. Wow
any day.

Speaker 11 (01:38:17):
Now, No, I know. Actually, one thing, some like Chud
on the internet who was like trying to make fun
of me, said I was wearing a wig. I would
like to stay for the record, I don't wear a wig.
This is my hair. I grew it myself. It took
a while, thank you. I agree. Although one of my
friends told me that I have her fangs. The other day,

(01:38:39):
which I really actually it was the day that I
got fired, come to think of it, before they knew
to be fair. But no, I know, sorry, what was
I saying before that?

Speaker 3 (01:38:57):
I The last time I got owned that hard was
my bob hold me a talking head?

Speaker 6 (01:39:01):
So you know, it happens some Sometimes you get absolutely obliterated.

Speaker 2 (01:39:04):
But I love that band, nice good band.

Speaker 11 (01:39:09):
But if the company like actually believed that I was,
you know, being too aggressive or like committing, I think
the words that they use are like grossness conduct, Like
I know, we have just caused protections in our contract
that include like an explicit procedure that you're supposed to
go through for gross miss conduct, Like if the company
was following the contract, if they like felt the obligation

(01:39:29):
to do so, what should have happened is they shouldn't
have let me finished the rest of my workday. Instead,
I should have been escorted out of the building by security.
I should have been placed on a leave. There should
have been an investigation with like time for me and
the union to comment, and then a decision should have
came out. And the entire time that should have been happening,
I should have been paid and like if that sounds greedy, Okay,
the company agreed to it, like they didn't have to

(01:39:50):
sign the contract, but they did. But this is another
like concerning trend that we're seeing right now with like
you know, the gutted NLRB and like the kind of yeah,
you know, shirking of like responsibilities from companies is like
companies are like straight up gas lighting workers not things
that are in the contracts that they agreed to. They
are like pointing to the contract and saying that it

(01:40:11):
says things that it doesn't say, or that it doesn't
say things that are like right there for you and
clearing English stripe before your eyes. Actually, another time that
we tried to talk to Stan this year was so
we were based out of New York. Predominantly we have
remote workers across the country. Although we were told just
about everybody at the company to start coming into the
New York offices four days a week. There's a section
of our contract that says that under a declared state

(01:40:33):
of emergency, workers can stay home. Well, this summer in
New York, listeners may remember, we had a really massive,
like terrible heat wave, like temperatures up in the one
hundreds every day, like going into the subway stations, and
that week, I remember feeling like I was baking during
the declared state of emergency, which again the contract says
workers do not have to come into the office. The

(01:40:54):
company said, we don't care, you have to come into
the office. Paraphrasing those aren't they are exact words that
they're not too far off. And again we said, okay,
but the contract says under a declared state of emergency,
we don't have to come into the office, And they
said you have to come into the office four days
a week, no exceptions. And it is maddening.

Speaker 6 (01:41:12):
I mean, yeah, that's life threatening, Like oh.

Speaker 11 (01:41:15):
I mean yeah, absolutely, And I will say, like, you know,
I've been at the company five years. That makes me
a bit of a long hauler, Like we have people
who have been at the company for like fifteen twenty years.
Like there are people who are like near retirement age
who standing on a subway platform. Again it's New York City.
People aren't really in air conditioned cars driving to work.
Like there are people for whom, like at all ages,
standing on a subway platform in that kind of heat

(01:41:37):
is a really life threatening and like really dangerous thing
to demand people do, yeah, which is like one of
the things that we were thinking about when we like
fought for that contract language, and like one of the
things that we were thinking about when we were like
nearly ready, like in fact that we were ready to
go on strike and like disrupt the met gala in
May of twenty twenty four. Like that is one of
the things that we were thinking about when we drafted that,

(01:41:57):
and one of the things we were really excited that
the company agreed to give us when we want our contract,
and so for them to immediately just say, oh, just kidding, well,
oh well now if we file agreevance, it might take
like months directify. Well just kidding, those rights that we
gave you, they don't exist anymore. Sorry. And again it's
like clear, easy to understand language that they are somehow

(01:42:18):
willing to just say like the contract doesn't say what
it says.

Speaker 3 (01:42:20):
It's It's interesting because I mean, you know, there's like,
on the one hand, like companies have always like not
followed contracts, and it's always been like, Okay, if you
want your contract to do what it says it does,
you have to force them to do it. But on
the other hand, like the thing that it reminds me
of is like one of things happened with the TRUP administration.
Whenever we're talking about them pissing off their bases, there's
been a bunch of unions that they've just you knulaterally
been this is said, this is national security. We don't

(01:42:41):
recognize your contract anymore. So for example, like the the
funny version of is they do this at a prison
guard union, which is hilarious.

Speaker 6 (01:42:49):
It's like, yeah, I don't know you guys. You guys
chat in your own bed.

Speaker 3 (01:42:53):
Now you have to lie in it, like I don't
know what to tell you, but like yeah, but like
you know, the national government has been doing this to
a bunch of unions.

Speaker 6 (01:42:59):
They've just been going, I know that we don't have
to follow this contract. Any work is national.

Speaker 3 (01:43:02):
Security, and that's the future that all of these people
want and that they're like, you know, this is part
of what they're fighting for.

Speaker 6 (01:43:09):
This is part of that fight.

Speaker 3 (01:43:10):
Is that they want to fight where contract union contracts
don't exist and they could just do whatever they want
to anyone.

Speaker 11 (01:43:15):
I mean, there's also like a clear line you can
draw from say like like the Reagan era and the
like air traffic controller union strike break and then like
the way that from like the federal government unions, and
like the way that the federal government treats its unions.
That like basically the rest of the American labor movement
and rather the management side responses to the American labor
movement generally flow.

Speaker 6 (01:43:35):
Yeah, yeah, is there anything else that you want to
make sure that people know?

Speaker 11 (01:43:40):
Well, I mean, in the coming days and weeks, the
union is planning a lot to fight back against the company.
Oh yeah, that said, one of the things that we
know most about media organizations generally is that they are
very concerned about public pressure and they are very concerned
about public image. This is like ap are obsessed industry

(01:44:01):
for better and for worse. So we are hoping that
like readers and you know, fans and followers will keep
the pressure up against Conde Nast to show like employers
like them that like, we will not stand for this.
We have an Action Network petition up right now that
we are going to keep collecting signatures for that we
hope to deliver to management soon depending on onence it
comes out. I mean, we'll be collecting signatures regardless. And

(01:44:23):
that is also one of the best ways signing on
to that will get you updates for other ways that
you can you know, support us from the outside. But otherwise,
I mean, we've got a lot of fighting to do,
We've got a lot of organizing to do. I certainly
don't think my days at Conde Nast are over. I
expect that, like however long it takes for the law
of shakeout, like I hope to be reinstated, as do

(01:44:46):
the other like three terminated employees. I also am certain
that like we will be able to win justice for
ourselves and the other people who were like illegally retaliatorially
disciplined following the action. And I also think that this
is nowhere near the last action that Conde Nast upper
management should expect. If anything like this is just showing
us that if we want our contract to be enforced,

(01:45:07):
if we want the rights that they said that they
would give us, we are going to have to keep
holding them to account, and we are going to have
to keep fighting for them.

Speaker 6 (01:45:14):
Trying to figure out whether or not I can get
away with saying you have sown the wind and now
the whirlwind.

Speaker 10 (01:45:19):
Oh God, you have sown the bond appetite, and now
you will get the I can't finish that.

Speaker 6 (01:45:33):
You've sewed the butt appetite. Now you'll get teen votes too.

Speaker 11 (01:45:38):
You have sown the bond, and now you'll get the appetite.
That doesn't mean anything, that's not anything.

Speaker 6 (01:45:45):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:45:46):
Look, it's a struggling time for the whole industry. Yeah,
And if people want to find you, do you want
to be found?

Speaker 9 (01:45:54):
A and B.

Speaker 6 (01:45:55):
If people want to find you, where can they find
your work?

Speaker 2 (01:45:57):
Yeah?

Speaker 11 (01:45:57):
Totally. I plan to keep writing and doing journalism for
the however long I can allowed to keep doing that.
So I'm on basically every website as at Goodbye Alma,
including the Evil Ones sadly. I also I co edit
a literary magazine with my friend Joyce that's called Picnic Magazine.

(01:46:20):
It's very cool. It's all work by trans contributors. We
are predominantly a print first publication. You can find us
at Picnic mag on Instagram. We're also on Blue Sky.
I should have prepared our at but I'm sure I
can send that to you afterwards.

Speaker 6 (01:46:35):
Yeah, well we'll put it in that, we'll put it
in the station and yeah.

Speaker 11 (01:46:38):
We are available in a few bookstores in big cities
across the country. We also have a you can download
our pdf and a pay what you want kind of way.
We have a second issue coming soon. Although it turns
out making a magazine with just two trans women it's
really difficult. So yeah, check that out. It's all fiction, criticism,
and poetry by trans contributors. And yeah, follow me at

(01:46:58):
Goodbye Alma Online.

Speaker 8 (01:47:01):
Yeah yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:47:02):
And if you want actual news that's fit to print,
you're going to have to fight for it, Amanda, that's
us there.

Speaker 12 (01:47:24):
Hello everyone.

Speaker 1 (01:47:25):
My name is Dana al Kurd and this is it
could happen here. I'm a professor and researcher of Arab
and Pastadian politics and a senior non resident Fellow at
the Arab Center Washington. Today we're joined by Shaddin Sekai,
a professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Her book Men of Capital, Scarcity and Economy in Mandate

(01:47:47):
Palestine explores economy, territory, the home, the body, and she's
also editor in chief of the Journal of Palestine Studies. Today,
I wanted to invite Shadin on to discuss the importance
of Palestinian knowledge production and Palestinian spaces for writing, researching, analyzing, etc.

(01:48:08):
So yeah, Shdan, thank you so much for coming.

Speaker 12 (01:48:10):
On, Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:48:12):
So let's maybe start with a very basic question, what
is the Journal of Palestine Studies? Could you give us
kind of an overview?

Speaker 12 (01:48:19):
Sure? So, the Journal of Palestine Studies is the flagship
journal of Palestinian studies in the English language. It was
established in nineteen seventy one, so that makes it fifty
four years old. First it was part of the then
Bay Route based and still Bay Route based Institute for

(01:48:41):
Palestine Studies and Kuwait University, which sponsored what was understood
at the time as an international forum to discuss all
aspects of the Palestine question and the Arab Zionist conflict.
And really the people who established it were looking for
shaping a space that could discuss these matters freely. And

(01:49:05):
the story of the founders is a really interesting one
because they were people like Hisham Cherobi, Walidlidi, Brandoshani Fuatzauf,
and Konstantine Zrich, who actually was the person who coined
the way that we name the nekba in his book

(01:49:27):
Man and Nekba that he wrote in nineteen forty eight,
in which he coined this term the catastrophe to think
about nineteen forty eight, which would you know be our
ongoing condition. And I think the way to think about
these people in there, in the way that they began
their journal is to think about them as really confronting

(01:49:50):
a landscape of erasure, denial, and urgency and occupying this
kind of steady, incessant pain of the original inception of
the Nekba when you know, think about it in nineteen
seventy one, it was not that long before a decade
and a half, yeah, right, And I think what's important

(01:50:12):
about you know, in the last couple of years, people
have been kind of making demands about Palestinian studies as
part of you know, some of the student movements and
the staff and faculty movements, and I think it's really
important for people to know that this comes from a
much longer tradition of the production of knowledge as a

(01:50:35):
real insistence on existence.

Speaker 1 (01:50:39):
Absolutely Palestinians have been producing knowledge about their state of affairs,
you know, just like today academics and gaza are producing knowledge, right,
And I'm always like struck by how just ahead of
its time, you know, the general Palistine studies is like
a lot of our understanding of the conflict that are

(01:51:01):
now finally starting to seep into the mainstream were first
discussed in these pages. Some of the research findings about
the history were first articulated in these pages. And so
that kind of knowledge production is just it is a
form of resistance to erasure.

Speaker 12 (01:51:19):
Absolutely and just you know, some of those would be
for example, Plandalit, which was the you know, the plan
which would lead to the destruction of four hundred and
fifty to five hundred and thirty seven Palestinian villages. And
this plan would come to be recognized through the work

(01:51:42):
of Benny Morris as a Israeli historian who had access
to Israeli documents, but it's actually was Walid Realidi who
had been evidencing and showing the empirical foundations of Plan Dalit,
and it was in the Journal of Palestine Studies that
he publish those findings. In that case, I think that again,

(01:52:05):
for people who are really engaging the movement for free
Palestine and free Palestinians, we really have to be approaching
the political economy of who gets to speak and whose
knowledge production is uplifted as legitimate and worthy. And I

(01:52:26):
think you see a lot of this kind of centering
of Israeli voices, and I think we really have to
in this moment. It's urgent to center Palestinian knowledge production.

Speaker 1 (01:52:39):
Yeah, there's just so many ways that we witness this
all the time that it's not something worthy of discussion
unless it Israeli a voice says it, and there's an
inherent suspicion about the Palestinian scholar, the Palestinian analyst, the
Palestinian knowledge producer of some kind. Now, of course, the
last two years have been upheaval, the genocide and Gauza,

(01:53:04):
a tragedy that we honestly we haven't really absorbed and
possibly can't. And we've seen in the last two years
a concerted effort to erase Palestinians further from the American Academy,
but from also like scholarship generally speaking. But before I
get into that, I wondered if you could kind of

(01:53:26):
give your impression of what did doing Palestenian studies look
like before October seventh? How was it easy? Was it acceptable?
I mean, I know the answers, but I'd like you
to say.

Speaker 12 (01:53:39):
Though, so, I think one of the things that's been
interesting to observe, and I would date this as happening
around COVID when our colleagues and various disciplines started confronting
the reality of their archives closing. So I'm a historian,
so I speak from that place. You know, people who

(01:54:00):
study Europe, people who study the United States, kind of
confronting the reality that they might not access archives that
they are accustomed accessing, and in a similar way, facing
the kind of targeting and surveillance, the bipartisan targeting and

(01:54:21):
surveillance of academic knowledge production, and trying to explain to
people this is what we've existed under all along.

Speaker 6 (01:54:31):
Now.

Speaker 12 (01:54:32):
I think there are similarities across communities of knowledge production.
So I think people who work in black studies, who
work in indigenous studies, who work in queer studies, gender
and sexuality have also been under the dress of surveillance
and targeting. I think for those of us who have
been doing Palestinian studies, what does it mean, especially if

(01:54:56):
you're a Palestinian doing it, but whoever you are, It
means you have to show up ten times more ready
than anybody else. It means you have to conduct yourself
as if you are always being recorded, right. It means
that every single word that you say you should be
able to stand up for in a court of law,

(01:55:18):
and all of those kinds of restrictions. Actually, you know,
you give us lemons. We're going to make lemonade because
those restrictions have imposed on us a kind of rigor.
That is the least that we can do. It also means,

(01:55:46):
I mean, I think for a lot of us, yourself included, right.
I was just somebody was interviewing me yesterday about, oh,
have you faced harassment or censorship or something? And I think,
at least in my case, I'm I'm constantly, you know,
experiencing these things and just kind of swallowing it, do

(01:56:06):
you know what I mean, just getting along with the
business of the every day.

Speaker 6 (01:56:11):
So, you know, there was.

Speaker 12 (01:56:12):
This moment back in twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen where, for
whatever reason, every couple of months, one of the bots
of one of these surveillance websites would start highlighting me
and insulting me on Twitter, you know, liable calling me names,

(01:56:34):
going after how I look like really vulgar, misgendering me,
that kind of thing. And I'd come out of my lecture,
you know, and you know, I teach big classes, and
I'd come out of a big, you know, two hundred
and fifty percent lecture, which requires so much focus and

(01:56:55):
energy and being present and you know that adrenaline. And
I'd look at my phone and I'd have fifty notifications
and it would just be one insult after another. And
that's just.

Speaker 1 (01:57:08):
Part of the job.

Speaker 12 (01:57:09):
Yeah, And that's just how it's been, right, like, you know,
from the beginning, at least of my graduate career, and
I started grad school. You know, September eleven happened when
I was in grad school, and I was in New
York when it happened. And you know, we've been under surveillance,
we've been named, we've been watched as part of what

(01:57:32):
we do, as you said, And in fact, I got
my masters at the Center for Contemporary Studies and they
wrote a book back in the eighties about the surveillance
and I think it's called They Dare to Speak, well, right, right, yeah,
these early accounts of the concerted attempt to silence us.

(01:57:54):
And so what I like to remind people is at
this moment, you know, you said, oh, they're trying to
erase Palestinian scholarship. I mean, at least they're trying to
erase the voices who are putting forward a critical take
on Israeli sellar colonialism and genocide. And I think what
I like to remind people is that there is way

(01:58:16):
more of us now than there's ever been before.

Speaker 1 (01:58:18):
Yeah, good point.

Speaker 12 (01:58:20):
Ten years ago, people like you and me wouldn't have
jobs in the academy. It may be in a couple
of years we won't have jobs, but I don't know,
Like I'm not I don't want to sit on our
laurels and think, oh, okay, we arrived. In any case,
the whole concept of arrival and career arrival at this
moment has completely changed for me. I don't know how

(01:58:43):
it is for you, But the effect of the genocide
has made it so that the bankruptcy of the institutions
we work for, the rapid ways in which they're engaging
with obedience and authoritarianism. Yep. Yeah, it's like what we've
worked for our whole careers. It's like, well, I don't

(01:59:04):
think this makes sense actually, do you know?

Speaker 1 (01:59:06):
Right?

Speaker 12 (01:59:07):
So I would say it's been like that all along.
People even sitting to you things like oh there, what
do you mean you study Palestine?

Speaker 6 (01:59:16):
You know, like what is that?

Speaker 12 (01:59:18):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:59:19):
So yeah, yeah, I mean, I'm in a different discipline,
but certainly it was. I remember as a student hungry
for information. I mean, it was rare to find something
about the Middle East to be taught, let alone Palestine.
The level to which they delegitimized Arab and Palestinian sources

(01:59:40):
or questions of importance to Palestinians and Arabs normatively speaking,
politically speaking, also theoretically speaking, I mean, I mean, I
can tell you so many stories, Like every person who's
ever wanted to study Palestine, especially as you said, if
you are Palestinian, is discouraged from it and is told
not to, is told this doesn't fit, is told. You know,

(02:00:00):
I'm in political science. The theories don't account for Palestine.
It's just outside of space and time and theory, and
you can't account for it, you can't discuss it. And
the harassment, the harassment campaigns all of us have been facing,
I mean, it's it takes such a mental and emotional toll,
and yet we produce, and yet we get tenure, and

(02:00:21):
yet we teach our classes, and we're excellent in our teaching,
and our students love us and want to learn. But
you know, as you said, like it really has exposed
the degree to which these universities because they have been
well one like we are in America, but also because
they have been so divorced from their actual missions. Like

(02:00:42):
how meaningless the space this has now become. But that's
like on the harassment and like kind of these kinds
of obstacle side. I also think like people don't recognize
like the resources that are needed to teach and study
and research Palestine that other people in the academy, other
knowledge producers get very easily. And it's there is so

(02:01:06):
little for people who study Palestine, and of course that
impacts what kind of academics are able to do this
and how many people we even missing from this discussion, right,
I agree with you that has been the condition before
October seventh. I think now after October seventh, that after
they have attempted to use Palestine as kind of a

(02:01:26):
cudgel to attack the higher education generally, like now people
are recognizing it maybe more, but that has always definitely
been the case.

Speaker 6 (02:01:35):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (02:01:35):
Also, I just wanted to remind listeners and bring it up,
Like I remember Barry Weiss who is now the head
of CBS. I mean she made her claim to fame
attacking Arab and Palestinian professors in Colombia as an undergrad,
and that's seen us totally valid.

Speaker 12 (02:01:56):
Yeah, no, I mean I think, you know, Palestine has cugel.
And also, you know, I've been saying this for a while,
Palestine is paradigm, right. You know, if you look at
the memdenuine, I think it reveals also kind of what
Palestine also stands for, which is the way that both

(02:02:17):
the Democratic and the Republican Party have really no link
to the popular realities on the ground, right, and that
in effect, you know, part of the Trump base was
really responding to this disparity, right, this lack of investment

(02:02:38):
and in the political system. And I think, you know
that for me was the I don't have hope in
electoral politics. And you know, I don't want to be
cynical or anything, but I think what the memdnni wind
shows us is that people are disgruntled and they're sick

(02:02:58):
of the kind of extractive billionaire class doing what they
want to do at the expense of the rest of us.
And I think the media is really complicit in all
of this, absolutely complicit in the genocide. It's been absolutely
complicit since the you know, war on Iraq, since the

(02:03:20):
Second War on Iraq, in rendering news as entertainment, you know,
And and it's like you could see the freak out
that people had, the media had about mem Denny across
the board. It wasn't just the Fox News.

Speaker 1 (02:03:38):
No New York Times, everybody.

Speaker 12 (02:03:40):
Yeah, and all of the you know television media too.
So it's just I think it's I think there's also
a link to higher education in that way, because I
think there has been an investment in making people stupid.

Speaker 1 (02:03:55):
Right, Yes, that's what I was going to say. Yeah, absolutely,
I mean that's exactly what I was going to say.
Is the Palestinian issue and Palestine studies and research and
knowledge production, the fact that there exists the few Palestinians
in higher education has been used to attack higher education.
But it's not really about Palestine. I mean, it is

(02:04:16):
a little bit about palasaide. Of course these people are
anti Palstinian, but it's about preventing social mobility. So you're saying, like,
there's all this disgruntlement in the public space. Our students
are disgruntled. They want to learn, They've been promised something
with this college education, and you know, even the slight
bit of social mobility that has existed as a result
of higher education is too much for the Trump administration. Yeah,

(02:04:39):
it's too much for this right wing. So Palestine is
a class issue, absolutely.

Speaker 12 (02:04:44):
No, it absolutely is. You know, are as are all
of the kind of struggles we stand on solidarity with.
You know, it's like, really it is intersectional. And we
didn't need Trump to teach us that. But that's the
lesson that keeps being delivered time and again. And one
of the things that's really struck me, and this has

(02:05:06):
been the case for the last ten years, eleven years,
long before Trump, and I think one of the challenges
we face today is not to overdetermine the Trump administration
as the site of all of the catastrophes that we're
in today. And one of the things I've noted for
the last fourteen years is I don't have to teach

(02:05:26):
students that history isn't about things always getting better. That's
not a lesson. They need to know. They understand that
teleology and the fallacy of advancement is a lie. They
understand that because they live it, as you say, you know,
they're in debt, especially those of us who teach at
public universities. You know, most of our students are indebted.

(02:05:50):
A lot of them have two or three jobs. They're
housing insecure, their food insecure. They don't have a clear
vision of the future.

Speaker 1 (02:05:58):
And if they protest side, they're labeled antisemitic. Yeah, their
university's cracked down on them, they're docsed. I mean, it's
so outrageous.

Speaker 12 (02:06:07):
Obviously, I don't need to tell you their identification with
Palestine is also about their own experiences with repression, of course,
So I think that's the that really is the momentum
you know that we're witnessing. Is is that kind of identification? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (02:06:24):
Absolutely. I think it's important for listeners to know some
of the contours of what has happened after October seventh,
And like you said, it's not a Trump thing, it
started under Biden. About how Palestine has been used in

(02:06:47):
the academy, I mean, as I said earlier, I have
done an episode on this, so I will link that.
But also you know, there is now evidence and data
around how this issue has been weaponized. So the AAUP,
the American Association of University Professors, alongside the Middle Ease
Studies Association, just put out a report on this exact
question about how titles six investigations, so investigations of alleged

(02:07:11):
discrimination specifically about anti semitism and nothing else. First of all,
there's been a huge uptick in them and have been
used to target these universities. Vast majority of these cases
has to do with faculty extra mural speech, so like
these faculty members having an opinion about genocide outside the classroom.
I mean, honestly, I always remember I think Edward Side said,

(02:07:33):
like being a Palestinian academy is like being an outlaw.
That's like how it feels. That's how it feels.

Speaker 12 (02:07:39):
Yeah, it's fugitive labor for sure. Yeah, definitely, And I
think one of the findings has been also, I don't
know if it's ninety five percent of the cases have
been shown to be be fraudulent. Yeah, it'd be totally fraudulent.
So yeah, it's a real policing of speech. It's a
real kind of weaponization of the charge of anti semitism,

(02:08:05):
And honestly, sort of one of the things I think
that really happens too, is that students don't get the
tools to actually recognize and understand actually existing anti semitism,
right as it is being rehearsed in like these show
trials that we saw in Congress, and these in the

(02:08:25):
rhetoric of many of the people affiliated with the administration,
in the kinds of alliances that even the Israeli state
right has made with various right wing anti Semitic states.
So it's like, I think one of the things that

(02:08:46):
it's kind of like watching a train wreck, just hitting
one train after another and just being like, what is
this absurdity? You know, I myself was accused of being
anti semi for having a history of anti Semitism. So
what surprises me is the way that people are allowing

(02:09:10):
and facilitating this to happen, you know, and the way
that they're not able to recognize how high the stakes
are what it means to be a Palestinian in this moment.
You know, when you've been sitting watching for two years
your people being shredded and you're facing the reality of
what the stakes are in this moment, which is the

(02:09:31):
annihilation of Palestine and the annihilation of Palestinians, your threshold
for a shock becomes very high. And so I mean,
I'm sure it's the same for you. I don't know
if like what. It's like a constant trauma response. You know, absolutely, yeah,

(02:09:53):
they're My emotional reactions are shut down, and I'm in
a state of being in the present. Okay, we got
through today, Hopefully we'll get through tomorrow. I don't I
kind of am prepared for the worst at all times.
And you know, it's a condition of vigilance that I

(02:10:14):
think people when they continue to feed this kind of
right wing agenda of making people stupid and eroding even
the possibility of higher education, it's the kind of condition
that will be much more general, you know. Yeah, and
all these ice rates at the same time. You know,

(02:10:35):
it's I just saw I haven't been able to listen
to it. But a scholar who powerfully is talking about
the Mexico Palestine border and the and the links between
ice and the idea and the and the ways to
think about these two things together.

Speaker 1 (02:10:52):
And please share that with me. I haven't seen it.
I mean, yeah, as you said, when we take away
Palestine from the Academy, when we use Palestine to attack
the academy. As imperfect as the Academy is, it is
this larger attempt to take away people's analytical tools and

(02:11:13):
frameworks to understanding their reality, to understanding how their reality
intersects with these other things, because they don't want you
to be able to solve it. They don't want you
to be able to mobilize. And then of course there's this,
as I said, this class dimension of wanting to keep
people in their place. There are too many black and
brown people in the academy. Now we can't have that

(02:11:33):
kind of social mobility. I just want to emphasize for
the listeners why it's so important for Palestine to be
researched and studied and things like that is self evident.
I don't need to explain it. But why is it
so important that Palestinians are the ones who do that?
I mean, again, it feels self evident, but I'll say
it like, Palestinians have agency, and they are full human beings,

(02:11:56):
and they know best what questions are relevant, and they
have a unique perspective on the issue of Palestine as
well as other issues. And so not only are you
engaging in the rature of Palestinians when you don't amplify
that kind of knowledge production, but you are making scholarship poorer.
You are limiting what you know about this issue. Yeah,

(02:12:22):
so what do you think, you know, kind of broadly speaking, students, scholars, sympathizers,
what do you think they should do in this moment.

Speaker 12 (02:12:31):
I want to just go back to the point about
why is it important to have to sure Palestinian voices,
Because when we say that, we're not doing it in
an identitarian way, right of course, Yeah, anybody who wants
to study Palestine should study Palestine. In doing so, you
should be centering the lessons that Palestinians have offered us

(02:12:52):
first and foremost in this moment, the Palestinians of the
Gaza strip and in my own practice at the Journal
of philos Steine Studies. What I've tried to do in
each of the editor's notes is really lift up all
of the testimonies that we've received from Palestinians in Gaza,
written and social media and all of these, but also

(02:13:13):
lift up the international voices of Palestinians like yourself and
many many people who are writing and giving us tools
to understand and analyze. And the reason that's important is
because the main problem that we face, I believe, is
the way that certain people are more susceptible to being

(02:13:36):
excluded from the category of the human. Once you exclude
people from the category of the human, it's much easier
to kill them and make them expendable. And I think
our work really in centering Palestinian voices rejects that logic, right,
rejects the logic of are we human or not? Are

(02:13:57):
we going to evidence our humanity or not? You know,
we tell our stories, and I think that telling of
the story changes the angle of vision. If you're looking
at what's happening in the Gaza strip from the perspective
of people who are living it, you will see different
things then if you're looking at it from you know,

(02:14:20):
a drone or you know, a geopolitical lens. So that's
one thing.

Speaker 6 (02:14:25):
I think.

Speaker 12 (02:14:26):
Another thing that's really important is you know, I mean
Mahma Dwish said this actually in an interview in journal
Pasteine Studies. He said, you know, the Palestinians are talked
about because they're facing Israeli Jews, because the Jewish question.

Speaker 1 (02:14:45):
Is the question of Europe. Oh that's right, yeah.

Speaker 12 (02:14:48):
And I find that one of the things that continues
to be an issue until now is that what scholars
and thinkers and analysts are judicating is the question of
Europe and the question of the sustainability of European values
and European notions and all of these things. And I'm

(02:15:10):
not interested in that. I want to center the question
of Palestine and what kind of other tools that might
offer us. So, I think, in a way link to
what the earlier conversation about a political economy of value
of scholars, right, there's a kind of also here a
political economy of concepts. And I believe that we have

(02:15:35):
to really provincialize Europe. We have to provincialize Europe as
the means and the ends of all things. It is
not generalizable. No, just ask different questions and look at
it from a different perspective in terms of what do
I think students and scholars and all of us should do.

(02:15:56):
Is it's going to sound strange, but first and foremost study, read, learn,
Those are the critical tools that you gain that will
allow you to defend yourself in a world that is intent.

Speaker 1 (02:16:12):
On making you stupid.

Speaker 12 (02:16:14):
We all have to reject that. I think there it's
a moment where there's a temptation to slide into sensationalism
or to slide into circulating, especially on social media and
that whole economy. Right, So I think we have to
be vigilant. I think we have to be rigorous, and
I think we have to study. And I think more

(02:16:37):
than anything else, the lesson I keep coming back to
is we have to take care of each other in
the communities that we build.

Speaker 1 (02:16:46):
Yeah, that's exactly right. I think you begin arming yourself
with the tools to understand this moment and think of
ways to defend yourself in your community. And you can't
do it that without being grounded in this knowledge that came
before you. So listeners, please crack open a Journal of

(02:17:07):
Palestine Studies, and of course I'll link to all of
this in the in the show notes. Siday and I
could talk to you for hours. Thank you so much
for your time. This has been really interesting.

Speaker 12 (02:17:17):
Thank you so much for having me and for all
the work that you do.

Speaker 1 (02:17:22):
Thank you so much, listeners. I'm going to also put
in the show notes a fundraising campaign for the Journal
of filesTime Studies. So if you can, you have the capacity,
it's a sure fire away to help resist these dynamics.
All right, thanks so much, Take care.

Speaker 6 (02:17:57):
This is it could happen here. Executive Disorder our weekly
newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling
world and what this means for you. I'm Garrison Davis
today am joined by Mia Wong, James Stout, and Robert Evans.
This episode recovering the week of November thirteenth to November nineteenth.
The biggest news I think of this whole week. Jd

(02:18:18):
Vance has been sentenced to two years in prison for
threatening Donald Trump and jd Vance. This is, of course
James Donald Vance Junior different jd Vance, a sixty seven
year old man from Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Speaker 2 (02:18:33):
Second. Jd Vance has hit the Discourse.

Speaker 6 (02:18:36):
Who's also named Donald, which is phenomenal, amazing, It's amazing.
Who plead a guilty to three criminal accounts based on
the social media posts about killing the President, the Vice President,
Elon Musk and Trump Junior.

Speaker 5 (02:18:49):
Jeez yeah, don a good cod Garrison.

Speaker 13 (02:18:51):
I would quibble that that is the biggest story this
week because this is the week of cause that Nicki
Minaj addressed the United Nation.

Speaker 2 (02:19:00):
This is a week where years happened.

Speaker 5 (02:19:02):
Ye Nicki Minaj.

Speaker 13 (02:19:03):
If readers are familiar with her, it will doubtless be
because of her contributions to Discourse on her cousin's friends testicles.
But this time she's back and she is talking about
the person's baby.

Speaker 5 (02:19:15):
Yeah, that's what we do here.

Speaker 13 (02:19:18):
She's talking about the persecution of Christians in Nigeria. Just
for listener to another way. Nicki Minaj is from Trinidad.

Speaker 2 (02:19:26):
Yeah not.

Speaker 13 (02:19:26):
Don't worry if any particular expertise or insight she has
on a topic.

Speaker 5 (02:19:30):
But yeah, she she did that this week.

Speaker 6 (02:19:33):
Yep, at the United Nations.

Speaker 2 (02:19:35):
How did do we know? How she decided that this
was a problem she needed to get involved.

Speaker 13 (02:19:40):
She reposted a truth that Donald Trump had made great
and I've had a great start. I believe they reached
out on the basis of that. There's some tremendous like
statements calling her the greatest female recording artist in history. Yeah, yeah,
which sets us up nicely for a Nicki Minaj Dolly
part in beef.

Speaker 7 (02:20:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (02:20:01):
I think I joined on the side of Dolly Potton
in that one.

Speaker 2 (02:20:04):
It would be hard not to, yep.

Speaker 13 (02:20:06):
So yeah, I guess she She reposted a thing about
a truth that led to him reaching out, and she
volunteered her time to address the United Nations. Organizations set
up after Wood what to to try and prevent genocides.

Speaker 5 (02:20:21):
Yeah, outstanding.

Speaker 6 (02:20:24):
The truth is so beautiful. Yes, speaking of the truth
and the truth coming to light, we're talking about Jeffrey
Epstein again, I guess.

Speaker 2 (02:20:35):
Yeah. The ongoing revelations based on j He's this guy's
post depth career has really been one for the books.

Speaker 6 (02:20:42):
Yeah, he really really rivals Michael Jackson in more than
one way.

Speaker 2 (02:20:47):
Yeah, or Tupac, I would I would say Tupac.

Speaker 9 (02:20:51):
No.

Speaker 2 (02:20:51):
There it was when when fucking John McAfee died, there
were all these people being like, oh, he's got you know,
because his McAfee had lied and said, I've got like
an insurance folder that'll come out in the event of
my death that'll, you know, reveal a bunch of top
level secrets. And John McAfee didn't know shit.

Speaker 9 (02:21:08):
He was.

Speaker 2 (02:21:09):
He was a crazy old drug addict who killed his
nephew and then fled to South America or Central America anyway, whatever,
one of the America's one of the part He fled
to a different America than the one that he came
from anyway. But that's actually happening with Jeffrey Epstein. We
actually now have a lot of dirt on a lot
of people. Larry Summers just left the board of Open

(02:21:30):
AI because he was revealed as a rampant misogynist and
friend of a pedophile sex trafficker. Not a good look.

Speaker 6 (02:21:38):
He's also announced that, after finishing his current class at Harvard,
he will be resigning from Harvard University.

Speaker 2 (02:21:45):
What a loss for Harvard. I don't know how they're
gonna run.

Speaker 6 (02:21:47):
Well, it's the biggest los since President Gay. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:21:51):
Look, Harvard, if you need someone to teach his class,
I'll do it. I don't know what his class is.
I don't actually know what Larry does, what his expertise is,
but I feel like I could do a better job.

Speaker 6 (02:22:03):
Yeah, bring me in.

Speaker 5 (02:22:05):
We do know a little bit about what Larry does
in that is the problem.

Speaker 9 (02:22:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (02:22:10):
Yeah, the sex crimes right after recording Executive Disorder last week.
Not the most important, but certainly the oddest. Email was
uncovered as a part of that big document's release. This
is an exchange from twenty eighteen between Mark Epstein and

(02:22:32):
Jeffrey Epstein to brothers. Let's start with Mark, how are
you doing? A while back? You mentioned that you were
pre diabetic. Has anything changed with that? What is your
boy Donald up to now? Jeffrey replies, all good, Bannon
with me. Mark replies, ask him if Putin has the

(02:22:55):
photos of Trump blowing Bubba. You know, yeah, I'm going
to continue the exchange, yeah, because, Jeffrey replies, and I
thought I had terrists. Mark replies, you and your boy
Donnie can make a remake of the movie Get Hard

(02:23:20):
sent via tin Can and a string.

Speaker 2 (02:23:22):
Oh god.

Speaker 6 (02:23:23):
Jeffrey replied, you mean Donnie T And Mark replied, I'd
rather be in Donnie D's shoes. That's the exchange.

Speaker 2 (02:23:30):
Also, what Epstein said was was sires, which is a
Yiddish word that means like problems, like I got I
got problems, I got shit, I'm a I'm all fucked up,
which he was. He was not wrong about that.

Speaker 6 (02:23:46):
Look, Yeah, so Bubba. Many people have speculated that this
could be a reference to former President Bill Clinton, whose
nickname was Bubba, and whose name is Bubba in some
of these other emails, or is referred to as pub
in some of his other emails, which.

Speaker 2 (02:24:06):
Is something that I've seen surprise a lot of people.
If you grew up in the nineties, you were aware
that his nickname was Bubba, but he has not been
called Bubba in a very long time when he like
lost all that weight and went vegan and like it
kind of stopped seeming like as much of a Bubba
as he did when he was the president. The Saturday
Night Live made fun of in that great McDonald's sketch.

(02:24:28):
But yeah, anyway, continue gare.

Speaker 6 (02:24:31):
I mean, and I don't know how abut what else
there is to say here? You know, photos have been
recirculating bub Trump, Yes.

Speaker 5 (02:24:39):
Bubba Gump shrimp, Well, the real.

Speaker 2 (02:24:41):
Bubba, please stand up.

Speaker 6 (02:24:43):
Photos have been recirculating of Trump, I would say, groping
Bill Clinton's penis. Yeah, yep, yep.

Speaker 2 (02:24:51):
There's more there than you'd expect, right, yes, yeah, but.

Speaker 6 (02:24:57):
Bubba has referred to a few people, Yeah, including other
people like in Epstein's circle, like a golfer and models. Yeah,
but Bubba was also the name of Gleainne Maxwell's horse. Oh.

Speaker 2 (02:25:10):
I'm just not hearing this, and that's I'm sorry. And
here's the thing. I see the appeal to believing that
this is the answer. I simply don't believe Donald Trump
ever had that kind of throat game. I'm sorry, I
just don't. I just don't accept that this is.

Speaker 6 (02:25:27):
By far the funniest possibility that he did like a
joke photo shoot where he pretended.

Speaker 2 (02:25:35):
I can see him doing that.

Speaker 6 (02:25:37):
This is really understandable. This is like, this is really doable.

Speaker 2 (02:25:43):
Haven't we all been there?

Speaker 13 (02:25:45):
So that is.

Speaker 6 (02:25:48):
Yeah, and you know, take this however you will, Like
Mark Epstein, has denied that the bubba referred to the
email is a reference to Bill Clinton, while also admitting
in this same like interview to News Nation and a
statement that like, you know, Jeffrey certainly did have dirt
on the president and thought that he was the only
one that could sink both candidates career in twenty sixteen,

(02:26:09):
both both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 (02:26:12):
Pretty good chance that's true.

Speaker 6 (02:26:13):
Actually yeah, but he he for what it worth is
saying it's not a reference to Clinton. Who who knows
that there's a real sort of you know, if if
you if you want to do the sort of pop
Marxist line is there's a real sort of historical unity
of the ruling class moment. When you read these emails
and the people in them, it's like it's Bill Clinton.

(02:26:37):
It's Bill Clinton's like the people around Bill Clinton it's
Ken Starr. And you know, you go back and you
look at like you look at like the actual like
impiachment of Bill Clinton, right, and you realize that every
single one of these people are all friends with Jeffrey
Epstein and are just kind of hanging out like yeah

(02:26:58):
on like on the pedophile and.

Speaker 14 (02:27:00):
It's just, yeah, it's something that you couldn't It's like
the most the most sort of on the nose, like
I like completely didactic, I'm pounding your head with a hammer,
like Marxist thing from nineteen sixty where they go, yeah,
all of the presidents are hanging out on pedophile Island
like consecretly conspiring behind your back, and they're taking photos

(02:27:22):
of them like grabbing each other's dicks like you wouldn't believe.

Speaker 6 (02:27:25):
But it's like no, no, no, no, this is just this
is just the historical unity of the ruling class is
literally they're all friends with this pedophile.

Speaker 2 (02:27:33):
Well, it's just these are all wealthy, powerful people and
the only people that they socialize with is each other.
You know. The New York Times came up with an
out with an article this week that was like the
Epstein emails or an insight into an old New York
long departed or since.

Speaker 13 (02:27:50):
Yeah, that was an incredible headline, and yeah, I mean
it was.

Speaker 2 (02:27:54):
This was like the transition between all of these people
writing each other letters and all of these people just
bitching publicly on the internet, openly and losing their minds.
Like the awkward interstittle period was them all emailing each
other from their iPads. Right, So, to that extent, the
New York Times article is right. Not the main takeaway
from the Jeffrey Epstein emails, I would say, probably not

(02:28:16):
worth an article in the Times, but it's not wrong technically.

Speaker 13 (02:28:19):
Yeah, yeah, it's a fascinating thing to choose to go.

Speaker 6 (02:28:23):
Yeah, that poor horse.

Speaker 2 (02:28:25):
Yeah, it's a little bit. It's a little bit like
a journalist showing up in Berlin in late nineteen forty
five and like going through like papers in the ruins
of the Reichstag and being like, wow, this really reveals
a lost to Berlin. Like, I mean, yeah, that's really
the point.

Speaker 6 (02:28:49):
Any other comments on on Bubba.

Speaker 5 (02:28:53):
Did anyone ask guys his brother about the Hortz.

Speaker 6 (02:28:56):
I don't believe Mark has been asked about the horse.

Speaker 2 (02:28:59):
Mark is in a not that I have a ton
of sympathy for this guy, but just recognizing things objectively,
he's in a tough position because his brother is an
was an incredibly famous he'shit a file sex trafficker, and
he is desperately trying not to get disappeared by the regime.

(02:29:20):
Or he also knows what'll come after the regime, so
he doesn't want to set himself in a self up
in a way where he gets in trouble from that either, right,
Like it's a legitimately complicated situation he finds himself in
that his brother just kind of laughed for him. And again,
I don't have a lot of sympathy for the man,
but I can recognize it because he also said at
the same time, he was like this definitely was not him,

(02:29:42):
referring to Donald Trump giving a blowjob to Bill Clinton.
He did also say that he believed that the Republicans
were removing the names of Republicans from the Epstein files
before release. Right, So he's he has been like hedging
his bets because again he's in a lot of danger.

Speaker 6 (02:29:57):
H in trouble.

Speaker 2 (02:30:01):
This man, this man is in trouble.

Speaker 13 (02:30:03):
Yeah, yeah, I would not be granted infused I was him,
I would be I wouldn't say shit, yeah, like literally
under the ground.

Speaker 2 (02:30:13):
Yeah, I would I would, for one thing, not be
in a country that extradited. Would I would never set
foot in a country with extradition treaties to the Western
world Again.

Speaker 13 (02:30:22):
Yeah, the next strike in Venezuela will be Mark Epstein.

Speaker 2 (02:30:26):
I would be living in Tehran right now.

Speaker 6 (02:30:28):
Like, let's talk about Marjorie Trader Green.

Speaker 2 (02:30:34):
Sure, why not? Yeah, so Marjorie Taylor Green is part
of the resistance.

Speaker 6 (02:30:41):
Now hashtag welcome to the Resistance.

Speaker 2 (02:30:43):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 5 (02:30:45):
It's very like and Or.

Speaker 2 (02:30:47):
Sure, it's like that point in and Or where the
person who did nothing but help Emperor Palpatine suddenly at
the last minute was like, you know what, this guy
want a step too far from me, you know?

Speaker 6 (02:30:57):
Or Ah, Actually I hate you too much that I
think that's the I think that's the reality.

Speaker 13 (02:31:04):
I wasn't sure if there was an analog for anti
Semitism in the Star Warcks universe. That I wasn't Well,
you probably don't want to, you know what, I've asked
the wrong people.

Speaker 6 (02:31:14):
Right now, you have three hours, James.

Speaker 2 (02:31:18):
In the early two thousands, George Lucas invented some names
that are themselves hate crimes. Just be remembering the names
is a hate Crime, James, do.

Speaker 6 (02:31:27):
You want to read about the troyd Arians.

Speaker 13 (02:31:30):
No, No, I'm as far as I get into into
Star Wars Big Tree discourse is Jia jar Binks and
after that I leave.

Speaker 6 (02:31:39):
Well from the same movie. But no. So, Yeah, Marjorie
has been more combative against some of the you know,
Trump cultist mega right on a few issues. One she's
extended her already evidenced anti Semitism all a Jewish space
lasers towards foreign policy in this like America First Nick
Fuentzi way of being critical of Israel. You see seeds

(02:32:04):
of this because like Martin Taylor Green like attended the
Nick Fuontes America First conferences like four years ago, Like
this is this side of it not a surprising turn
for her. Her finally flipping on Trump in terms of
the pedophile stuff may be a little bit surprising because
she was the original like QAnon candidate. Yeah, and q
Andon's built on this, like trying to justify in some

(02:32:26):
ways Trump's proximity to Epstein by building this grand narrative.

Speaker 2 (02:32:30):
And she made a statement recently that she's no longer
all in on the q stuff right like she had
she is. This is a pivot for her, but it's
a pivot that's pretty consistent with you know, her anti
sense and it makes sense.

Speaker 6 (02:32:42):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it makes sense with with the Israel
foreign policy stuff. It also makes sense in terms of
Trump's made a lot more statements directly addressing this Epstein stuff,
which kind of does call into question some of like
the Q narratives, which for someone like Marjorie might actually
get her to kind of ref on some of like
this Trump cultish status that she's had for a while.

(02:33:05):
This has frustrated Trump, and you know, Trump's also been
frushtyed with other members like Lauren Bobert and other like
congress people who were pledging to vote in support of
the release of the Epstein files. And this pressure was
building a lot last week during this like twenty thousand
document release and all this new news coverage and as

(02:33:29):
these as more and more Republicans bean to deflect from
Trump over the release of the Epstein files. Trump himself
flipped his rhetoric over this past weekend, still calling the
debate over the files a Democrat hoax, but truthing that
the files should be released because we quote unquote have
nothing to hide, and he called on Republicans to vote

(02:33:50):
in favor of the bill to release the Epstein files,
which they did on Tuesday in a four hundred and
twenty seven to one vote, with Representative Clay Higgins, the
republic In from Louisiana, the only Congressman to vote no.
Hours later, Chuck Schumer unanimously passed the measure through the Senate.
Mike Johnson had previously expected the Senate to amend the

(02:34:12):
bill to quote make sure we don't do permanent damage
to the political system unquote, and after its passage through
the Senate, Johnson seemed quite worried that it went through
the upper chambers in its current form. And I want
to play this clip here because it's kind of shocking
to hear him, hear him freak out.

Speaker 3 (02:34:34):
And before we say this, you owe it to yourself
as a person to go actually look at this clip
and watch his face.

Speaker 6 (02:34:42):
It is amazing.

Speaker 5 (02:34:45):
Sorry, I haven't seen this.

Speaker 6 (02:34:46):
I'm excited it'll be in the sources below.

Speaker 15 (02:34:49):
Any reaction to r foon you seeing the bill without
adding amendments.

Speaker 2 (02:34:53):
Or changing it, I am.

Speaker 5 (02:34:56):
I'm deeply disappointed in this outcome.

Speaker 2 (02:34:58):
I think I'm told I've been at the State dinner.
I don't know. I was just told that Chuck Schumer
rushed it to the floor and put it out there preemptively.

Speaker 6 (02:35:06):
It needed amendments.

Speaker 2 (02:35:08):
I just spoke to President about that, and we'll see
what happened.

Speaker 5 (02:35:10):
So is he do you think he may beat on it?

Speaker 7 (02:35:12):
You say you spoke, I'm not saying that.

Speaker 12 (02:35:14):
Is he supportive of it in its current form?

Speaker 13 (02:35:17):
We both have concerned about it, so we'll see.

Speaker 6 (02:35:20):
As I was staying there with the Crown friends with
in Paul, are you frustrating the majority leader?

Speaker 2 (02:35:25):
Are you up with the majority leader?

Speaker 6 (02:35:28):
Cool?

Speaker 2 (02:35:30):
Nice?

Speaker 6 (02:35:30):
What a what a normal? What a normal interaction? That
is also also worth doing.

Speaker 3 (02:35:35):
The very end of that video, he says I was
eating with the Crown Prince because he is again walking
out of a state dinner with one Mohammad bin Selmond
the the yeah, I don't even list of war crimes here,
the Sudanese child soldier, exterminator, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 6 (02:35:55):
But no, It's safe to say that both Johnson and
President Trump have concerns about the state of the bill,
and Johnson samed a little bit wishy washy on if
the President would even sign this or veto this. Now,
it's not all bad for the president. I oh, I'd
like to seal Donnie J wiggle his way out of

(02:36:16):
this jam. This bill that has passed does allow Attorney
General and Bondy to withhold or redact portions of the
files that could jeopardize active federal investigations and personally determine
if information in the files should remain classified to protect
national security. The last weekend, Trump ordered BONDI to launch

(02:36:39):
investigations looking into connection between Epstein and prominent Democratic politicians
and donors. Here's clip from a Wednesday, November nineteenth press conference.

Speaker 16 (02:36:52):
Attorney General, do you mean that you will provide all
the files by thirty days?

Speaker 17 (02:36:57):
We will follow the law. The law both chambers last evening.
It has not yet been signed, but we will continue
to follow the law again while protecting victims but also
providing maximum transparency.

Speaker 16 (02:37:13):
That Maternity General the DLJ statement earlier this year saying
that the files would not release mention the fact that
the review of the documents and the evidence did not
suggest that any additional investigation of third parties was warranted.
What changed since then that you launched this investigation?

Speaker 17 (02:37:34):
Information that has come for information, there's information that new information,
additional information, and again we will continue to follow the
law to investigate any leads. If there are any victims,
we encourage all victims to come forward, and we will
continue to provide maximum transparency under the law.

Speaker 6 (02:37:57):
Very normal, very normal response.

Speaker 2 (02:38:00):
Uh huh, Yeah, that's that doesn't sound sketchy.

Speaker 3 (02:38:03):
I have never, at any point in the last eight years,
twelve years, however long we've been in this hellscap been
a been a piss tape believer. This looking at these
people's faces is the closest I've ever been to being like, no,
maybe that shit's real, and maybe it's in there, because
there's clearly something in there that they are just they're

(02:38:25):
just going through it.

Speaker 5 (02:38:26):
Yeah, it's is wild.

Speaker 6 (02:38:28):
Yeah, some of these guys seem to seem a little
bit concerned.

Speaker 2 (02:38:33):
Yeah, yeah, I wonder why, surely there's no.

Speaker 6 (02:38:37):
I mean, imagine the workload ahead of them. They have
to redact so much. Yeah, if you get so many
of those markers, imagine how tired their risks are going
to be.

Speaker 9 (02:38:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:38:46):
It's like that feeling when you come back from a
reporting trip and you're like, shit, now I have to
do the job.

Speaker 5 (02:38:52):
Yeah, yeah, yes, I'm familiar with that feeling.

Speaker 6 (02:38:56):
Do you know what we have to do right now?
And as pivot to ads.

Speaker 2 (02:39:00):
Yes, yeah, let's go ahead and do that and we're back.

Speaker 5 (02:39:16):
Now.

Speaker 6 (02:39:17):
I would like to take some time to discuss probably
the second most important news story of the whole week,
can do it Sure? Which is totally not a hail
Mary distraction to get away from the Epstein stuff. This
is totally legitimate and totally newsworthy. On Monday, November seventeenth,
a piece in the prestigious outlet The New York Post

(02:39:40):
opinion section provided earth shattering relevations revelations care that's the
word about the attempted Trump assassination, claiming to have discovered
evidence that Thomas Crooks, the shooter, had two possible accounts
on Devian Art, which, yeah, this really is the biggest story,

(02:40:04):
which the Post New York Post describes as quote one
of the biggest online hubs for furry art and the
furry community. A furry is someone who has an interest
in hormorphized animal characters, often as a sexual fetish unquote
every time. Later reporting in The New York Post claimed
that one of these accounts had only shared a single

(02:40:27):
post quote a repost of a towering, muscular female bodybuilder
and a slight man in his underwear unquote and quote
multiple searches for muscular women and female bodybuilders found on
Crook's supposed YouTube search history.

Speaker 2 (02:40:43):
He's a real pervert, then excellent, Yes, beautiful quote.

Speaker 6 (02:40:47):
Oh it's not it's oh, Robert, that's that's not even
the worst part. The furry stuff obviously problematic considering our
past few furry mass shooters. Is maybe a trend here,
we should look into this. But possibly the most danning
piece of information in the New York Post reporting is
that Crooks quote described himself with the pronouns they them

(02:41:08):
on the platform deb and Art, which is one of
the biggest hubs for furry art and the furry community.
This became the big thing among the right. Another trans shooter,
the Trump the Trump assassin was trans the whole time,
and we didn't even know the FBI covered up the
trans connection. Here it's all coming together more more red

(02:41:29):
string on the board. The trans the trans shooter narrative
is growing more and more evident by the day. Right, this,
this is the way that this was framed across all
of these all these commentators, who's the president right now?
What is this supposed to work?

Speaker 13 (02:41:48):
At the time they investigated it, Biden would have been
president right or they began their investigation.

Speaker 6 (02:41:53):
The New York Post did reach out to the current
FBI for comment. They did not receive a response. State
The New York Posts reporting like in these in these
opinion pieces, and I think later an article they did
did did later include references to quote, violently anti Semitic
comments and racist remarks about Hispanic immigrants m that Semmens

(02:42:16):
Crooks also made, including YouTube comments from twenty nineteen quote,
this is going to be blatantly racist, but I hope
Trump has these people a squad murdered.

Speaker 2 (02:42:27):
Oh great.

Speaker 6 (02:42:28):
I always believed being patriotic was lighting up a bunch
of socialist Jews like the ones that booed Trump and
blasting their useless brains out with an ar. I hope
a quick, painful death to all the deplorable immigrants and
anti Trump congresswomen unquote. Obviously, the right wing commentators are

(02:42:48):
not talking about this sort of stuff. They're not talking
about Crook's actual politics or political shifts during the pandemic
where he started getting kind of more Trump critical but
still from a conservative perspective. Instead, the story is now
to quote libs of TikTok, Charlie Kirk, killer furry fetish,
Trump shooter, furry fetish, Idaho firefighter killer furry fetish. What's

(02:43:12):
going on? Right wing podcaster and disgraced BuzzFeed journalist Benny
Johnson quote it has now been confirmed that attempted Trump
assass and Thomas Crooks used they them pronouns, had a
deep interest in furries and was exploring gender identity. Add
it to the list. This list is then a list
of both real and many not real quote unquote trans

(02:43:37):
mass shooters. Another account in d C. Draino, who was
part of the White House photo op team during the
initial fake release of the fake Epstein files, not that
the files were fake, but like this fake media presentation
around releasing the already released and actually even more redacted
versions of already public files. DC Drena was one of

(02:43:58):
these guys who was like pray it around as like
a prop holding up these binders of files. He posted.
Quote it is now confirmed the deep state tried to
cover up that Thomas Crooks was a transgender extremist to
use the then pronouns and then shot President Trump. We
need a massive crackdown against violent trans extremism. This sort
of stuff is losing steam. This sort of stuff is

(02:44:19):
not spreading around the way that it has been previously.
It's very clear that this is a blatant distraction away
from unflattering stories about Trump in terms of the economy
and specifically Epstein and all of this. Uh. You know,
you might be wondering why maybe no other outlets of
picking the stuff up, and that could be due to

(02:44:40):
the dubious nature of the New York Posts sourcing on
these claims, but also the fact that devian Art automatically
lists a user's pronouns as they them as the default setting.
If pronouns are not specified, this is the setting that
everyone you have to actively try to change it. There

(02:45:03):
is no indication Thomas Crooks specifically set pronouns to bay them.
He is not a transgender extremist. He, like many gen
Z people, is aware of furry art online. This is
very common. This is a very common thing. But the
post had a few other things they tried to try
to wrap this story around to give it some credibility,

(02:45:24):
including this post from the Devian Art alleged to belong
to Thomas Crooks, which is a picture of someone shooting
someone else in the head, which your post calls another
artwork appear to feature a shooting against a backdrop of
the trans flag colors. This is not the trans flag

(02:45:48):
nor the trans flag colors. This is a blue and
purple background. What purple is not in the transflag colors.
You can maybe argue this is maybe, but this is
not a trans flag. This is not an LGBTQ pride flag.
This isn't even the bisexual flag, which does use these
same colors. This is just like a sky blue and

(02:46:10):
a magenta purple backdrop, which they are trying to frame
as further evidence of Thomas Krook's transgender ties. But what
is kind of interesting is as a part of the
social media accounts alleged to be linked to Crooks that
have appeared in new reporting from both The New York
Post and Tucker Carlson's own news outlet. But as a

(02:46:32):
part of this reporting on Crook's possible online background included
a collection of search results or like search history from
April of twenty nineteen to May of twenty twenty, which
lines up with stuff that me and Robert have been
talking about for a while, in that this guy seemed
to have the ideology or non ideology of a school shooter.

(02:46:55):
This is the actual through line across this act of violinces.
Researches include quote crazy chemical reactions, deadliest mass shootings in
the world, people attacking pride parades, cars running over protesters,
getting away with racism, best places for a mass shooting,
Pulse night club, Pulse night club, police body camera, mass shooting,

(02:47:16):
El Paso mass shooting, Trump's civil war, Trump church shooting video,
guns versus protesters, Orlando shooting reaction. Why I'm missing handgun?
Firing an air fifteen as fast as possible, fertilizer bomb,
How do you use a tourniqueit? How to make napalm,
maltov cocktail? How to make maltov cocktail? Mixing ghasoline with styrofoam,
mass shooting Canada, Oklahoma bombing sniper in Dallas shooting.

Speaker 8 (02:47:40):
Man.

Speaker 2 (02:47:41):
Yeah, who's doing real trouble hitting with his pistol.

Speaker 5 (02:47:43):
Huh and his rifle.

Speaker 2 (02:47:48):
It turns out probably choking up too much on the trigger,
I'd guess.

Speaker 13 (02:47:51):
Yeah, many such cases, Yeah, yeah, but that's that's a
pretty clear theme that you've established there.

Speaker 5 (02:47:56):
Garrison.

Speaker 6 (02:47:57):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, like you see this in some way
being like a not necessarily an actual precursor, but in
the same vein that some of these like TCC people
later would you know, start developing these past few years.
It's just obsession with doing violence, this subception with mass killings,
with bombings, and some of it takes the form of

(02:48:19):
like you know, what looks like political violence, like the
Oklahoma City bombing, but a lot of it is is
very nihilistic. That's all I have on the explosive reporting
from the New York Post.

Speaker 2 (02:48:33):
Great.

Speaker 5 (02:48:33):
Great.

Speaker 6 (02:48:34):
I don't know how to segue from that list of
Google searches to tariff talk. But you know what I've
been searching for is this music.

Speaker 7 (02:48:44):
Loppy jazz bomb.

Speaker 11 (02:48:48):
Locking jazz bot Sary lacking, locking jazz bomb, locking jazz bob.

Speaker 6 (02:48:59):
So this this is actually a very This has been
a very very light week on tariff news. It is
almost entirely composed of people arguing about whether you're going
to get the tariff check, which no, you're not. You're
not going to get a check from the government with
teriff money. It's just not happening.

Speaker 3 (02:49:15):
So I thought, I thought I'd take a second to
pull out and look at some of the macro stuff
that's happening in the economy and look at why it
feels like a recession even though there isn't one. And
the answer is that you and me, and everyone in
this room and probably most of the people's syste keep

(02:49:37):
listening to this podcast, are effectively in a recession. And
the reason I can say this is that there's there's
pretty good numbers from the Harvard economist Jason Furman, who
points out that if you if you look at so okay,
so recession is is three consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth, right,
and this is not like a perfect economic indicator, but

(02:50:00):
you know, Jason Furrin points out, ninety two percent of
GDP growth in the first half of this year is
in a category that's called information processing equipment and software.
And so, okay, what is that? That is all data
center it's all data center construction. It is ninety two

(02:50:21):
percent of all our GP growth.

Speaker 2 (02:50:25):
Well, the good news is that, for example, Oracle didn't
just make a big deal with open Ai to provide
them with computing resources, and after making this three hundred
billion dollar deal, has dropped three hundred and fifteen billion
dollars in valuation. That didn't happen obviously, Like these are
things are good in an AI world. There's not a

(02:50:47):
bunch of people pulling their money out of Nvidia as
fast as they can.

Speaker 6 (02:50:50):
Yeah, yeah, we're getting to that.

Speaker 3 (02:50:52):
Yeah one of them again, Peter Deal pulling his money
out right now, getting all.

Speaker 6 (02:50:57):
Of his shit out.

Speaker 2 (02:50:58):
Yeah, get your shipped out, fucking my Michael Burry is
now shorting the as here.

Speaker 3 (02:51:04):
I will say this, the Michael Berry short thing is
literally the only thing that I've ran into that actually
makes me be like that. Like Michael Burry versus the
AI industry is like really truly is the great duel
of the stoppable force and the movable object. Yeah, like
that's we're not dealing with like world rending titans here,

(02:51:25):
but you know, but we are.

Speaker 2 (02:51:26):
We are going to get a sequel to the Big
Short that's going to really struggle to be entertaining. Because
with the Big Short, what was fun was these guys
realizing how fucked this like system based on like really
bad like tranches of debt and how badly it was
going to fuck the economy. And with AI it's just
going to be like literally everyone in the world except

(02:51:47):
for the people in media and politics, being like this
seems like a fucking grift. This seems bad, and them
all being like no, no, no, bro, trust me, no,
no no, and then it all goes to shit.

Speaker 6 (02:51:59):
Yeah, I'm gonna do a full episode about this to
some point that there's a really good interview on a
Bloomberg podcast called Odd Thoughts with its kind of Paul
Katrowski who points out that well a, he has a
great line but calling this like the super bubble basically
where it's it's every single kind of speculative bubble rolled
into one because all these data centers are being financed

(02:52:19):
with like the with the equivalent of mortgage backed securities.

Speaker 2 (02:52:22):
Well, yeah, these are these are subprime loans for tech companies, right, Like,
that's that's what's financing all of this.

Speaker 6 (02:52:28):
Yeah, and then these buildings. Right. It's also it's also
a real estate bubble because all of these data centers
are taking a ridiculus amount of real estate. There's a
tech bubble, and the.

Speaker 3 (02:52:39):
Single thing that and again we're going to do a
longer episode about this later, the single thing that's the
most unhinged to me about this. And it's you know,
even even excluding the fact that you know, all of
these processors that they're using in these data centers burned
out after about a year and a half because they're
just running them constantly. Is that if you look at
like the housing collapse in two thousand and eight, right,

(02:53:00):
and you look at what was underlying all of those
bad assets. There were houses there right at the end
of the day, all of these banks can go in
and they can take your house, and that's really bad obviously,
But what is the underlying assets for all of these
tranches of all these tranches of debt. The underlying asset
that you're supposed to be taking, you know, that's supposed

(02:53:22):
to be the collateral is compute power.

Speaker 5 (02:53:24):
Yeah no, no, it seems fun.

Speaker 13 (02:53:33):
Because people can live in the computer and we all
need to live in a computer paler, so it's fine.

Speaker 6 (02:53:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:53:42):
Look, the the bad news is things are going to
be really bad for a lot of people. Oh yeah,
and they already are probably most people that end they're
going to get worse. The good news is once we
get past you know, if if this is the way
the dot com bubble went right, once we get past
this crash that's brought on by you know, a mix

(02:54:03):
of greed and insanity and ignorance and lies, then we
can finally get to the Internet changing society in only
positive ways, which is what happened after the dot com bubble.
You know, we got Facebook, we got Google, we got Twitter,
we got Instagram, we got all of these great apps
that have made our lives nothing better but better, you know.

(02:54:26):
So I'm looking forward.

Speaker 13 (02:54:30):
I'm gonna forget Getter wouldn't be ferries if it wasn't
with the.

Speaker 2 (02:54:36):
Dvn RT exactly, How would we know who was without
that and what their pronouns may have been.

Speaker 3 (02:54:46):
Well, I do want to make a serious note about
this because I've seen a lot of people who compare
this to the dot com bubble, and this is so
much worse because the dot com bubble and you look
at the telecom bubble afterwards, right, there were actual assets there, right,
you know, like the only way people talk about this
is like.

Speaker 2 (02:55:02):
There was pets dot com, but there was real stuff too.

Speaker 6 (02:55:05):
Yeah, yeah, and you know what a telecom bubble goes under, Right,
there's still a whole bunch of like fiber optic networks
that they've set up that you could get you know, people,
people with a bunch of money afterwards can come scrape
up and there's there's a material basis something here these
data centers, there's.

Speaker 2 (02:55:20):
They're not practical if the because and this is what
the reason, because our colleague at Zetron had a big
scoop last week that's getting a shitload of attention right
now for good reason, which is that inference cost has
been raising consistently for open Ai, which is increasing their
like it's fucking their margins and it's increasing their losses,

(02:55:41):
which is why they keep losing more money each quarter.
And the idea behind why people thought open ai could
be a good business is that these inference costs, which
is basically how the cost that it takes to keep
making the models better, right, that that was going to
decline once they hit a certain level that like you're

(02:56:02):
not going to need to it. It's super expensive to
get the models to a point where they're good. But
once they're good, then they get to be really cheap.
And that's not really true based on the data that
we have, and they were lying about it kind of,
you know, they were not in a way that was
legally actionable. They're not a publicly traded company that were
not required to release this to the public. It does
seem like they were honest with their investors, like Microsoft, right,

(02:56:23):
they were lying to us, right to regular people, in
order to pretend this was a business that had a
lot better of a shot of being successful in the
way it needs to be. The problem with AI as
a money thing is not that there's no profit in this.
It's not that there's no use for any of these tools.
There are many uses, and there are many potential businesses.

(02:56:44):
It's that none of them equal trillion dollars, which is
what the minimum that they need to be profitable, right,
And these data centers are all based on the bet
that no, no, actually, this is a multi trillion dollar
industry and we need this much compute, right.

Speaker 3 (02:57:00):
And this is this is the greatest misallocation of capital
in human history. There has never been anything like this.
There has never been crazy this much of the capital
on Earth poured into.

Speaker 6 (02:57:10):
Nothing because there's there's not there's not even physical assets left, right.
The physical assets are burned out graphics.

Speaker 2 (02:57:16):
Cards because a lot of these data centers aren't built
and they don't last, right, that we're going to do Like, yes,
they have a building, they have a building you can
run power to, but the graphics cards don't last.

Speaker 3 (02:57:26):
Yeah, and you know, and at the end of this,
right it's you. You have a bunch of buildings that
don't do anything attached to like extremely expensive diesel generators.
And I am praying. The one thing that makes me
be like, I hope this goes down quickly is that
I am praying that this bubble goes down before they
actually start trying to build nuclear like really truly get

(02:57:46):
off the ground building a buch of nuclear reactors, because
can you imagine these guys who created a computer that
can't win at chess trying to build nuclear reactors.

Speaker 2 (02:57:57):
I think we should let them do it.

Speaker 6 (02:57:58):
I agree, fuck it?

Speaker 2 (02:58:00):
Why not? Why not?

Speaker 6 (02:58:01):
Long for stalker?

Speaker 2 (02:58:02):
No, I mean it's one of the this is like,
the point that is meaningful here is that after the
dot com bubble, you were able to have a massive
boom that created a bunch of wealth. It created wealth
doing things that were often super bad for society, But
it created a shitload of wealth because real infrastructure had
been put in place that actually enabled the whole country

(02:58:23):
to get connected it enabled the birth of like the
mobile computing revolution and whatnot, because a lot of groundwork
had been laid that was really meaningful, even though a
number of the businesses involved in it didn't work out.
And that's really not what we're seeing because it's hard
to imagine assuming there's not a multi trillion dollar need
for AI, assuming everyone isn't going to do everything for

(02:58:45):
the rest of their lives through AI agents and do
all of their thinking through chat GPT. Unless that's the
reality we'rein, these are not good investments. And the only
thing I can compare it to in terms of what
you were saying to me about this being like the
worst allocation of capital in history, because I've been reading
a lot about like the nuclear arms race, and it
was one of those things where you go from we've

(02:59:07):
dropped tens of thousands of bombs over the course of
five years to if we were to accidentally launch these
ten missiles, it would be more explosive power than has
ever been detonated in the entire history of human war
added together up to the present moment. Right, Like that
that is the because of and part of this was
enabled by the actual like internet boom. Right the one
that brought about Web two point zero in the social

(02:59:29):
media era, right, like, all of that wealth and all
of the money that poured into these vcs who'd gotten
on board companies like Facebook that had to be created
to allow something this irrational, because twenty years ago, if
the technology had been there, there wouldn't have been the
money to enable this kind of insanity.

Speaker 6 (02:59:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:59:47):
Well, and I think the last thing, I mean, I guess,
I guess there's two more things that I want to
say about this. One is is that you know, this
is also part of the cyclical economic crisis that we've
been looking as since the seventies, which is that one
of the ways you get these bubbles is that there
are suddenly these unbelievably massive trillion dollar pool like trillions
of dollars of pools of capital that you're trying to

(03:00:09):
find something to invest in, right, you have to reproduce it.
And this is one of the things that causes, for example,
the Third World debt crisis in the seventies, is all
of this capital flows into all of these there will
debt things it eventually. This is one of the things
that powers first the Japanese giant housing bubble that they
did that caused the Asian market collapse in early nineties

(03:00:31):
and then cost two thousand and eight is that there's
all of these pools of capital they have to turn
into more capital, and they can't do it. And when
they can't do it, you get two thousand and eight, right,
And they've been able to sort of hang on for
about a decade, a decade and a half ish roughly,
because there was so much money coming in from this
from this tech sector. But everyone outside of the tech

(03:00:53):
sector it sucks. It's bad. So this is part of
the reason why everything feels unhinged right now, right Like, Okay,
there's obviously kind of a problem with trying to track
employment data just by seeing news of firings, because companies
just do firings because it makes their stocks go up
because it makes investors think they're being more efficient, which
is nonsense, but it's why it feels like this is

(03:01:14):
why you feel broke. And everyone is like talking about
how the economy is growing, and it's like, well, yeah,
this really small sector of tech has accumulated an unfathomable
amount of wealth and they are getting very, very rich
and everyone else is fucked, you know, And when this
bubble colass, when these people take all of the money
they got out of Tech and have thrown it into
the metaverse and AI. When that blows up, it is

(03:01:39):
going to be cataclysmic, and we're getting closer to it.

Speaker 2 (03:01:44):
Yeah. Yeah, the only one of them that will be
left is Gab Newell sitting on his yes, finally releasing
Half Life three.

Speaker 6 (03:01:54):
He could probably appoint himself dictator for life after that light.

Speaker 2 (03:01:58):
Yeah, he'll be the only one with money left.

Speaker 6 (03:02:00):
Else.

Speaker 2 (03:02:00):
Yeah, all of the money and gave Newle's pockets. We
only ask that esteem we've had, We've we've had it
replaced the military.

Speaker 6 (03:02:10):
Now, this is a basically the plot of yu Gi.
Oh yeah, you think I'm joking, I'm actually no.

Speaker 2 (03:02:17):
I I never paid attention to the u G.

Speaker 14 (03:02:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (03:02:20):
The plot of Yugo was the card game becomes so
profitable that the guy who runs the card game company
fights a battle with all the entire Builty industrial complex
and defeats them because he's making more money than they are.

Speaker 2 (03:02:29):
So okay, yeah, I guess I think that's that That
sounds better than what we're doing.

Speaker 6 (03:02:36):
Yeah yeah, yeah, okay.

Speaker 13 (03:02:39):
We can't get his fine with that mentoring tulip mania. Yeah, yeah,
share the perfect historical comparison. Right, No one, you can
eat a tulip bowl if you have to think they're poisonous.

Speaker 2 (03:02:50):
I don't think you can eat a tuli bowl.

Speaker 6 (03:02:52):
I shouldn't say that, but they're more edible than a
graphics card. MIA is telling every listener to go out
and find a tula bowl, then eat it. Putting this
on my tombstone.

Speaker 13 (03:03:03):
More iliph and a graphics card, do it side by side.

Speaker 5 (03:03:09):
Don't do this, don't do that.

Speaker 13 (03:03:11):
If you have eulip, you can tag near on blue Sky.
I write, okay, send her a picture of your face
post tulip. If you've eaten one that, don't eat one
on our account.

Speaker 9 (03:03:24):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (03:03:25):
Talking of other things not to do? Yeah, all right,
fuck it. HiT's an ad for tulips. All right, we're back.

Speaker 13 (03:03:44):
And I am going to talk about a number of things.
I guess the first thing I should talk about is
the the sanctions and fto's designation for various leftist groups
in Europe. There are four entities that the State Department

(03:04:04):
has announced they've already been sanctioned, and I believe they'll
be added to the FTO list either saiday or tomorrow
as we're recording this, so it'll be on the Foreign
Terrorist Organization list by the time you hear this on Friday.
The four entities are called Anti for aust aka Hammerbund
hammer Gang, the informal Anarchist Federation that's an Italian group.

(03:04:27):
They use the initials f A I. Also they use
fr I that is not the same as the FAI
that you're familiar with from the Spanish Civil Wars.

Speaker 2 (03:04:36):
That's your thing.

Speaker 5 (03:04:38):
And then two Greek groups called Armed Proletarian Justice and
Revolutionary Class Self Defense.

Speaker 2 (03:04:46):
Notes on the names, guys, I guess I shouldn't, but
I have notes on the names.

Speaker 13 (03:04:49):
Yeah, yeah, well, I mean yeah, but the European leftist
groups it's going to.

Speaker 2 (03:04:53):
Be yeah, yeah, of course it's going to be as
many syllables as they can possibly have.

Speaker 13 (03:04:58):
Yeah, yeah, it is a alphabet soup. So a couple
of notable things here. The US doesn't seem to have
coordinated with the states where these entities exist. For example,
the German government and they prosecuted people who they've accused
of being members of Anti for oust recently, I think
it was in September, and they claimed that the threat
of violence for them has quote decreased significantly, which is

(03:05:22):
contradicting the claim that these are these are violent groups.
The State Department, when it talks about anti for Oz,
talked about a series of attacks in February twenty twenty three.
What's missing from the analysis of February twenty twenty three
is what was happening in February twenty twenty three. It
was an event in Hungary which existed to honor Nazis.

(03:05:44):
I don't mean Nazis like people who have a right
wing political ideology. I mean like members of the NSDAP
in Germany who fought in World War Two at the
time when they were doing the Holocaust. The rally included
several groups which were already sanctioned by US allies, including
Blood and Honor Combat eighteen. Jesus, I'm not going to

(03:06:06):
go into an in depth history of either of those groups.
They're neo Nazi groups, right. That eighteen is Adolf Hitler
one eight. These are the people who are, as far
as I'm aware, the victims of that February twenty twenty
three violence right. Notably, though Antifa oust was sanctioned by

(03:06:26):
Hungry earlier. This year right Hungary under Auburn fast moving
towards an extremely right wing I didn't think what political
scientists like to call it an illiberal democracy.

Speaker 5 (03:06:40):
Right.

Speaker 6 (03:06:40):
This sucks to hear. I mean, with this news, I
feel like we might need to pull out of Victor
Orburn presents Hungary for comedy the upcoming Cool Zone headlined
comedy festival.

Speaker 13 (03:06:51):
Yeah, so many of our famous comedian friends have been
planning to join us.

Speaker 2 (03:06:57):
We are doing that show in Riad though.

Speaker 6 (03:07:00):
That's the lot.

Speaker 5 (03:07:01):
Yeah, that's still what yeah?

Speaker 2 (03:07:03):
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 13 (03:07:04):
The other groups aren't explicitly anti fascist, right.

Speaker 6 (03:07:09):
Because this is getting framed support of Trumps like anti
antifa crackdown. Yeah, I'm trying to find foreign terrorist organizations
linked to antifa, But these other three groups are not
explicitly like Antifa in name or scope.

Speaker 13 (03:07:22):
It seems no exactly, right, So most of them are
anarchist groups. Right, and just to like delve very briefly
in two lines into things that have literally written a
book about anti fascism is a left unity position derived
from the common term position that it adopted its Congress
in nineteen thirty five. These groups do not call themselves

(03:07:42):
anti fascist, right. There is a distinction between anarchism and
anti fascism, which can be seen very acutely in the
May nineteen thirty seven events of the Spanish Civil War.
But these groups have neither claimed anti fascism, nor, as
far as I'm aware, have any of them killed anyone.
I believe believe that the antifa ost people being prosecuted.

(03:08:03):
One of them is being prosecuted for attempted murder. In
other cases they have been responsible for explosions or attempted bombings. Normally,
to be designated in FDO, they would have to be
a threat to either US people or the United States
as an entity. Right there doesn't appear to be any
evidence that these groups have any ties to anyone in

(03:08:24):
the United States or present any immediate danger to the
United States. I don't quite know where they got these
particular groups from.

Speaker 6 (03:08:31):
It's so weird. It's a completely baffling list of groups,
like even looking at like Greek anarchist groups.

Speaker 2 (03:08:38):
I mean, my guess is that someone in the Trump
administration has a friend in or Bond's administration and ask
them are some antifas we can go after that? You guys,
like you know Europe, Yeah.

Speaker 6 (03:08:51):
The Greek anarchist groups specifically, are are some of the
more interesting inclusions here. They're not the Greek anarchist groups
you would expect them to be going after.

Speaker 7 (03:09:00):
It's very weird.

Speaker 13 (03:09:02):
Yeah, Like, they're not groups I was familiar with, like Miley,
you know, I don't speak Greek, I don't I don't
read Greek.

Speaker 8 (03:09:08):
I don't know.

Speaker 5 (03:09:08):
I don't pay that much attention to that part of
the world.

Speaker 13 (03:09:10):
But like, there are other groups which are more notorious. Like,
it's very odd that they've come up with the anti
for OUST one. I agree, Garrison. I think the lineage
is more obvious that the other three. Yeah, I'm not
entirely clear on how they got to those of any
you know, contact us if you have ideas. The other

(03:09:31):
terrorist designation that happened this week, which is breaking as
we record on Wednesday, the nineteenth of November, is that
Greg Abbott has declared care this Center for American Islamic
Relations and the Muslim Brotherhood as foreign terrorist organizations. Jesus yeah,

(03:09:54):
Jesus Christ. Texas doesn't appear to have an FT list
as far as I can tell. What this seems to
be is a designation under SB seventeen, which parts passed
earlier this year, which relates to property law. It would
stop the Muslim Brotherhood or Care as a national five

(03:10:14):
oh one C three renting or buying property in Texas.
I'm not sure the Muslim Brotherhood intended to rent or
buy property in Texas. Most of SB seventeen deals with
with like nationals and entities linked to like China, Russia,
and North Korea. It's trying to not have them by
large chunks of Texas. But it also does have this

(03:10:35):
this mechanism in it. So just Muslim Brotherhood is the
sunniest limits organization. It has participated in violence, but not
for some time. It has its origines in Egypt. It
does a lot of like social programming Care most people
will be familiar with.

Speaker 5 (03:10:50):
Right Care has already issued a.

Speaker 13 (03:10:52):
Response letter, and in their letter they said, quote, your
proclamation has no basis in law or fact. You do
not have the authority to you later any Americans or
American institutions terrorist groups, nor is there any basis to
level this smear against the organization. It's probably worth noting
that there was a dog investigation into epic, not that epic,
the one you're thinking of, probably, but this is the

(03:11:14):
El Paso Islamic Center. That investigation was closed, right, but
this is not the first time that they have attempted
to u It's just very clearly in Islamophobia out of Texas, right, Like,
that is what this is.

Speaker 6 (03:11:29):
There's also just an ancient sort of Obama era conspiracy
where all of these people were all convinced that the
Obama was part of the Muslim Brotherhood and that there
was this whole network of Muslim Brotherhood operatives that were
like running the country and really sort of if you
squint hard enough, it was like, well, there's a bunch
of people from the UAE who are kind of involved
in some stuff, but this is like one of their

(03:11:52):
they're kind of fusing this old school like old old
schools a homophobic stuff with their like kind of very
specific current contemporary targets by you guys sort of running
these two together. Yeah, me, it's right.

Speaker 13 (03:12:06):
Like I think Ted Cruz has has tried to get
the Muslim Brotherhood on the FTO list like several times. Yeah,
there's this old like from like the golden age of
right wing conspiracies, right, like the Bohemian Grove era. That's
this idea that yeah, they're on like, it's like a
fifty or one hundred year plan to bring the US
under sharia lore and like, yeah, it's it's it's it's

(03:12:28):
boomer stuff. Yes, combined with now trying to explicit eating
them to Hamas, Right, So yeah, that that is great.

Speaker 6 (03:12:36):
That that's not great.

Speaker 5 (03:12:37):
I would not agree, James.

Speaker 6 (03:12:39):
I think that's not great. I'll be brave enough to
say it.

Speaker 13 (03:12:42):
You know, it is a it's an assault on the
First Amendment. Like, the the stuff.

Speaker 6 (03:12:48):
The inclusion of CARE is is like is absolutely outrageous.

Speaker 13 (03:12:51):
Care is a very respectability for like a civil rights
like liberal civil rights.

Speaker 2 (03:12:56):
The least threatening organization in the world.

Speaker 13 (03:12:58):
Yeah, Like, and they have advocated for an end to
the genocide of people in Palestine, which is a perfectly
reasonable and legal thing to advocate for. They have not
expressed support for political violence. Care is like as as
protected by the First Amendment as things can be in
this country. This is bonkers. So yeah, I guess CARE

(03:13:23):
is already presumably preparing a call case.

Speaker 6 (03:13:27):
In other Texas news, a three panel judge in Texas
just struck down Texas's newly drawn congressional map in federal court,
with Trump appointed Judge Jeffrey Brown finding that quote, substantial
evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the twenty twenty five

(03:13:47):
map unquote. The judge has required Texas use its previous
twenty twenty one map for the upcoming midterm elections. What's
really what's really funny here is that before the elections
in November, where the California redistricting measure was up for vote,
Newsom specifically removed language in that measure that framed the

(03:14:12):
California redistricting as a triggering event, as in, if the
Texas one passes, then the California one can go into effect.
You've specifically removed this.

Speaker 5 (03:14:22):
Yeah, the trigger language was from MA.

Speaker 6 (03:14:25):
Which means that California now doesn't wipeout five Republican seats
and Texas probably won't be able to do anything about it.

Speaker 13 (03:14:33):
That's still a challenge. The California gopire also trying to challenge.

Speaker 6 (03:14:37):
Yes, and this Texas case is set to be heard
before the Supreme Court. There's a few other redistricting measures,
I think in Louisiana and in North Carolina. A few
other states are trying to do this. But there is
a possible future in which Texas is not allowed to
racially jerrymander and California is able to go forward with

(03:14:59):
their redistricting because it may not have been specifically violating
this like a racial gerrymandering aspect that Judge Jeffrey Brown
found was affecting the Texas maps intentionally.

Speaker 13 (03:15:13):
The GOP claim is that California is quote favoring Hispanic voters.

Speaker 6 (03:15:17):
That's going good.

Speaker 13 (03:15:19):
It's gonna be a harder landing to stick, right, given
that there are Latino people in every square mile of
California like it. Yeah, it's going to be a rougher
one for them.

Speaker 6 (03:15:29):
And specifically, the stuff that Judge Brown found is like
in the way that these districts were redrawn, it was
to totally exclude non white voters and some of these
districts all right.

Speaker 5 (03:15:40):
One for the train fans in the audience.

Speaker 13 (03:15:42):
A section of railway that connects Warsaw to Lublin in
southeastern Poland, which then connects onto Ukraine was destroyed by
an explosion earlier this week. Overhead cables further down the
track were also damaged. This comes as drone incursions into
European space continue. Donald Tusk, the Police Prime Minister, called

(03:16:03):
the ax sabotage, and it seems extremely likely that he
is correct about that.

Speaker 14 (03:16:08):
Right.

Speaker 5 (03:16:09):
I guess we haven't explicitly covered this on ed.

Speaker 13 (03:16:12):
Very much, but there have been dozens of documented Russian
operations in Europe since see the expanded invasion of Ukraine
that began in twenty twenty one. What's concerning to me
about this is that Europe is responding to some of
these by accusing Russia of trying to quote destabilized polities

(03:16:32):
by sending migrants there. It's likely true that Russia is
messing with migration flows. It is demonstrably true in some cases.

Speaker 6 (03:16:42):
Right.

Speaker 13 (03:16:43):
Responding to this by hardening borders, deploying troops to borders
is not the solution to that problem. Europe's Iron border
kills more people than any other border, and hardening that
border is only going to kill more people. Like, if
you want to be the shining city on a hill, right,
if you want to be, I think that title is

(03:17:04):
maybe up for grabs. If you want to be the
place that stands out as like a safe place for democracy,
you don't do that by killing migrants. And so Europe's
response to this is extremely disappointing, Right, and I wanted
to highlight that because I don't see that in the coverage. Yes,
Russia escalating it's meddling in Europe is extremely concerning. But

(03:17:26):
if we accept that Russia is a totalitarian state or
going in that direction, then we should also therefore accept
that people are going to want to leave that in
many other states where they cannot have autonomy, where they
cannot live healthy and full lives, and we should welcome them.
Talking of people leaving places where they cannot have autonomy
and have full and happy lives, let's talk about immigration

(03:17:46):
in the United States. Very quickly, Border Patrol and Gregory
Bovino have moved their internal enforcement I of Sauron to Charlotte,
North Carolina. Seems in large part due to to some
racists on x dot com demining that they do so
I shouldn't say in large part, I guess in some
part there has been video already showing Bovino participating in

(03:18:09):
detentions at a home depot car park.

Speaker 5 (03:18:13):
I've said two.

Speaker 13 (03:18:13):
Words there, which of coursed one of my colleagues a
smirky giggle at me stand by both of them. So yeah,
it is in part right due to x dot com
the Everything website being a haven for racism. But I
think it's also worth noting in twenty eighteen, Democratic sheriffs
in five North Carolina counties ran on the platform of

(03:18:35):
not cooperating with ICE. All of these I believe were
black sheriffs, and ICE pushed back hard right, including with
a billboard campaign. Last year, the North Carolina Republican state
Legislature over rode a veto to pass HB ten, which
required agencies to cooperate with ICE and honor their detainers.

(03:18:56):
A detainer is basically when ICE is like, hey, you've arrested.
We want you to hold them for a bit longer
so we can come pick them up for ICE reasons.
Since then, Meckelberg County Sheriff McFadden has claimed that ICE
has failed to collect people on detainers one hundred and
sixty three times, So this will be. They normally have

(03:19:17):
a forty eight hour detainer, right, they more than forty
eight extra hours I should come get When they are
held on the detainer, it is still the state that
is responsible for them. It is a state that is
paying for the cost of incarcerating that person. It is
the state that is still incarcerating that person. Right. This
has led, I guess, to Republicans claiming the McFadden is

(03:19:38):
ignoring his obligation under HB ten. Mcfahnen says, isn't he
is holding them for the duration of detainer, but then
releasing them when no one comes to get them.

Speaker 5 (03:19:45):
Right.

Speaker 13 (03:19:46):
This has led to like CIS right, it's Center for
Immigration Studies, and SBOC has designated it as a hate group.
CIS has listed Charlotte and Mecklenburg County on its map
of quote unquote sanctuary jurisdic There's a link to the
map if you want to look at They actually cite
the twenty eighteen policy and don't even mention HB ten.
So it's unclear to me if they haven't updated this

(03:20:08):
map or if they just believe that nothing has changed
because they believe that HB ten is being ignored. I
think that might be a lot of the reason why
we're seeing this now. Then, finally, I want to talk
about something local. Southern California, in Temecula, north of San Diego,
seventeen year old boy was pulled over at gunpoint by
a man who was known to locals as an ice agent.

(03:20:31):
The man does not appear to have been in his
professional capacity at this time. Neighbors were able to de
escalate the situation and get Gerardo Rodriguez, the man in question,
to stop pointing his gun at the teen. LA Tucker
got video of this.

Speaker 5 (03:20:46):
It is wild.

Speaker 13 (03:20:47):
The guys just in the middle of the road with
a handgun pointing out at a truck that's driving down
the street. Rodriguez accuses the young man, he's seventeen years old,
and we're going to say his name right as a child,
of speeding in the neighborhood, not generally something that warrants
drawing a firearm. Rodriguez was detained by the Riverside County
Sheriff's Office. I believe he's bonded out now that this

(03:21:11):
is an interesting development. Right elsewhere, like in Santa Ana,
an agent pulled a gun on a community watch member.
Fullerton police on the scene did not detain the person.
They also refused to assist, right, they just kind of
were present. But this is one of the few cases
I'm aware of an ICE agent. There was someone else

(03:21:33):
arrested in l A who I believe died. I believe
that was a Border Patrol agent that first unfortunately passed
away of an overdose. But this is one of the
first instances I've seen of this, right, like a kind
of a state federal a direct confrontation where this guy
appears to have been pseudo claiming that he was acting

(03:21:55):
under his authority as an ice agent.

Speaker 5 (03:21:57):
That's not entirely clear to me.

Speaker 13 (03:21:59):
The young man's parents that rushed a scene with the
young man's passport, but by that point neighbors who had
already been able to de escalate them. So yeah, I'm
going to keep an eye on this because I think
it's interesting. All Right, This week we have a fundraiser
from Borderlands Relief Collective. I know they're helping a lot
of people who need a lot of help right now,
some folks whose roofs are really struggling to keep up

(03:22:21):
with the recent rainstorms we've had in southern California.

Speaker 5 (03:22:25):
They have an Amazon wish list. The url is too
long for.

Speaker 13 (03:22:30):
Me to read out to you, so we will include
it in the show notes. If you'd like to help,
you can look on that and buy something for someone.

Speaker 5 (03:22:37):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (03:22:38):
All right, well, folks, this has been the news. Goodbye.

Speaker 6 (03:22:44):
We reported the news.

Speaker 2 (03:22:46):
We reported the news. Hey, We'll be back Monday with
more episodes every week from now until the heat death
of the Universe.

Speaker 15 (03:22:58):
It Could Happen Here is a product of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
now find sources for It could Happen Here listed directly
in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.

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