It Could Happen Here Weekly 28

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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 gotta be nothing new here for you, but you
can make your own decisions. Robert Evans here and welcome

(00:27):
to it could happen here a podcast about how things
are falling apart and how to maybe put them back together. Obviously,
the biggest story probably in the world right now is
the ongoing invasion of Ukraine. In a major corollarrea of
that story is how dramatically things in Russia have taken
a turn for the totalitarian um. The country has become
increasingly isolated from most of the global community. This is

(00:50):
due to a mix of sanctions to a lot of
businesses pulling out just because of the social consequences of
not doing so, uh end of policies that have been
put down by Putin's government in order to crack down
on dissent and further remove Russia from any kind of
contact with the West. UM. As a result, it's kind
of difficult to get in touch with people who are

(01:12):
resisting Putin's government from within Russia. UM anarchist activists in particular,
UM are not easy people to reach. However, we did
recently sit down with one of these individuals and talk
to them, so this episode will both be an interview
with that person and a bit of history about the
anarchist movements within Russia. Russia has actually a very long

(01:34):
history of anarchist organizing. Two of them in generally considered
foundational thinkers and anarchists political theory. Mikhail Bakunin and Peter
Kropotkin were both born in Russia. Both lived and agitated
under the Tsars. Bakunan was an advocate and a major
theorist of political terrorism. He fled the country, was returned,
and ultimately spent like ten years in prison there. Kropotkin

(01:57):
was the author of a seminal anarcho munist text titled
The Conquest of Bread, and he was only able to
return to Russia after the nineteen seventeen Revolution. He died
there in nineteen twenty one. It's also worth noting that
Peter Kropotkin is canonically the ancestor to Tommy Pickles of
the rug Rats, but that's something you can look up
on your own now. While some of the most influential

(02:19):
anarchists in history were Russian and anarchist organizing was a
potent part of pre nineteen seventeen Russian political history, the
success of the Bolsheviks after nineteen seventeen led to the
movements near annihilation. Um Emma Goldman was yet another major anarchist,
activist and thinker who was born and educated in Russia.
She immigrated to the United States in eighteen eighty five,

(02:40):
where she promptly helped try to assassinate a steel magnate
in revenge for his brutality against striking workers. Goldman grew
to prominence as a labor activist and women's rights activist
in the last decade of the eighteen hundreds. In nineteen
o one, her work helped inspire Leon Chogosh to assassinate
President William McKinley. While Emma Goldman had no direct connection

(03:01):
to Chogash, she defended his actions by saying, as an anarchist,
I am opposed to violence, but if the people want
to do away with assassins. They must do away with
the conditions which produced murderers. There's much more to say
about him, Agoldman, but for our purposes, what matters is
that she was arrested for opposing the draft in World
War One and eventually deported back to Russia. Right after

(03:22):
the revolution. Goldman was initially psyched that the czars had
been deposed, but quickly became disillusioned by the violence of
the forming totalitarian Soviet state. She considered this a betrayal
of the revolution and wrote a series of articles for
The New York World that have gone down as one
of the first expose as of conditions in the Soviet Union.
Goldman's work was criticized by many left wing intellectuals outside

(03:44):
of Russia, but she was correct about political repression in
the new Bolshevik workers paradise. Matters did not improve for
anarchists in the first twenty years of the new regime.
In nineteen thirty seven, in his History of Anarchism in Russia, E.
Yorroslansky wrote, in the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, at
the present time, the anarchists no longer enjoy any influence

(04:06):
over the masses. They are met with only as isolated individualists.
The fall of the Soviet Union, the coming of democracy,
and the slow rise to power of Vladimir Putin did
not enormously alter this state of affairs. Russian anarchists still
exercise relatively little influence over the masses. Most of them
struggle towards autonomy as isolated individuals. In March of twenty

(04:29):
twenty two, in the third week of the Russian invasion
of Ukraine, I sat down with one of these people.
We had been chatting online through Reddit for a couple
of weeks, and the process of setting up a proper
audio interview was difficult. To say the least repression of
all political descent under Putin is extreme. More than thirteen
thousand people were arrested at anti war protests in the

(04:50):
first two weeks of the war, so you will understand
why our source was paranoid about his identity. I had
to download a secure app I'd never even heard of before,
and he only agreed to speak with me while using
a voice changing application to further disguise his identity. Due
to the difficulties this created, I will be paraphrasing him
and quoting his words myself at a couple of points

(05:10):
here in order to make listening to this a more
comfortable experience. But here he is okay, polytics or what
years or so it's bicycle and into weak two years ago.

(05:38):
Was so, just to make it clear, he's saying that
he's been involved in anarchist organizing for more than a
decade since around two thousand eleven. The initial cell he
organized with was affiliated with an umbrella organization called Autonomous Action.
We'll talk about them more in a minute, but it's

(05:58):
important you understand his cell, at about fifty people strong,
was considered quite large for Russia in Moscow inspects. I
guess in the artists in links whatever, or they were

(06:20):
worked for rent of course, and there were more or
I wasn't considered even in two thousand eleven, organizing as

(06:41):
an anarchist was rather risky. As a result, our source
actually started his career in activism on his own. As
a single protester. He would stand out in public places,
sometimes during other protests, sometimes on his own, holding a
sign that said in Russian peace to the world. Now
I'm reading you the English translation of what he put
the literal Russian words that he had on his sign

(07:03):
were a reference to a famous Soviet slogan officially adopted
in nineteen fifty one. The phrase actually has a much
older origin in the country, which begins under the Orthodox
Church and grew more popular among revolutionaries after the February Revolution.
The first leftist to use peace to the World as
a slogan in Russia may have actually been a f Krinsky,

(07:25):
who headed the brief democratic government that ran things after
the czar stepped down. In our sources case, his sign
was an act of protest against a number of things,
including the recent Russian invasion of Georgia and Russian military
operations in Syria. Oscar Pass questions against the stuff stuff

(07:52):
uh almost or Winter sent home. After he'd been seen

(08:22):
doing this for a while, members of a local anarchist
self found this person and started asking them questions, Hey,
who are you, what are you doing? What do you
think of this? And that he was not specific about
the individual political questions they answered, and we probably don't
need to get into that. They invited him eventually to
a building where a number of them tended to gather
and prepare for actions. In short order, they started organizing together.

(08:45):
At the time our source started organizing as an anarchist.
The most notorious recent action was the Kimki forest conflict.
In brief, Kimki is a forest with a long history
as in nature preserve. It's kind of outside of Moscow.
It's so densely forest that in the sixteen hundreds and
then in the early eighteen hundreds, when the Russians were
resisting Napoleon, it was used by partisans and insurgents as

(09:06):
a base of operations. When the Bolsheviks took over, it
was preserved to act as a sort of open air
therapy center for tuberculosis patients. In the early two thousands,
local city planners started to advocate for a toll road
to be built through the middle of the forest. Their
argument was that a large amount of traffic passed through
the Leningrad Highway and that had caused huge amounts of

(09:27):
air pollution in the city of Kimki. Since the forest
was protected by national environmental codes, turning it into a
road was a long political process. Activists protested, arguing that
it would be an environmental disaster which spoilers. It was
like anarchists in the United States in the period before
the Green Scare, Russian anarchists carried out a series of
occupation actions to try and protect the wild lands. So

(09:51):
it was ver it was against lance podcast or inflection,

(10:13):
oh fascists, the shield someone in the trains once in
the end, it was in two twelve, shortly after our

(10:36):
source began participating in anarchist demonstrations, the government carried out
a major crackdown against certain anarchist activists. They focused primarily
on groups and individuals who were doing things like making
Molotov cocktails and engaging in property destruction. Now our source
participated in food not bombs and other non aggressive types
of direct action, most of which involved handing out food

(10:58):
and supplies to people who are helping them to get resources.
He did not disavow insurrectionary anarchists the kind of people
who threw bombs, but that wasn't the kind of thing
he did, and he didn't have a lot of connections
with those people because roughly a year after he started
organizing as an anarchist, most of them in his area
at least got cracked down on and either killed, forced

(11:18):
out of the country, or arrested by the government. This
crackdown on insurrectionary Russian anarchists led to an even more
paranoid security culture. Among those who remained. Our source and
his comrades mostly distributed food, but they also provided support
for a large number of children whose families had abandoned
them due to crushing poverty. Even though these things were
not illegal, they had to maintain intense security culture to

(11:40):
avoid being part of future crackdowns. First, don't talk to
anyone or special companization. No, don't care, don't get them.

(12:04):
Infresition means no one. Long standing tradition among Russian anarchists
was a sort of defensive isolation. People gave each other
as little information as possible about their real identities. As
a result, despite the fact that he has participated in
multiple protests since the invasion of Ukraine and people have
been arrested at those protests, our source insists that he

(12:25):
doesn't know if any of his comrades have been taken
into custody. Now. Some of this probably has to do
with the fact that he's not organizing in a major city, um,
but a lot of it probably has to do with
the fact that he just doesn't particularly know any people
by name. Polls, which are imperfect but cannot be entirely
discounted suggest that most Russian civilians support the war and

(12:47):
their military. Even so, the scope and scale of the
anti war protests in Russia have beggared anything from recent memory.
Our source says that this has actually helped to mitigate
some of the despair you might expect Russian anarchists to feel,
given the Titanic increase in state repression. From what I
know from what I see, monitor uh Alsto came to

(13:09):
get to get help at last. An artists there if
maybe won't hear go or real they were just like, oh,
come on, we can do it all everything and we'll
just again the NFSP won't find us whatever. No, there

(13:29):
is no despair at last, we don't see it. There
are lots of action. There are lots of preparation from
what I understand, or not only artists, but all the
radical firms or gathering in Russia or in Moscow, in
Saint Aspera obviously because the most epicenter of everything there

(13:52):
not not on the ragons. I guess, oh yeah, soustraints.
So it's probably time that we talk about autonomous action
or a D. The Revolutionary Anarchist Federation that our friend

(14:13):
and his comrades are affiliated with a D actually has
members in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. It was founded in
two thousand two and briefly had affiliates in Armenia before
they disbanded in two thousand five. That's a story in
and of itself. A D advocates direct action in order
to quote create a tradition and basis for a new
humanist culture, social self organization and radical resistance against militarism, capitalism, sexism,

(14:38):
and fascism. They consider the existing government of Russia as
entirely illegitimate. They refused to take part in Russian electoral politics,
seeing even left wing opposition parties as essentially controlled by
Putin and only existing to provide a sham vision of choice.
A D activists called themselves the Autonomy and see their

(14:58):
calling is twofold, to exist as autonomous, free individuals within
an unfree system and to spread revolutionary sentiment and weaken
the state. Much has been said in the West of
Alexei Navalny, a Russian opposition politician who, whatever else you
might say about him, is certainly not controlled opposition. He
has survived an assassination attempt by the Putin regime and

(15:20):
is currently incarcerated after leaving his exile in the West
to return to Russia and fight the sham case against
him in court. No one can doubt that Navalny possesses
significant physical courage, and it seems fair to say the
man believes in what he says, AIDI Activists, from what
I have seen, do not fault him in his willingness
to suffer for his beliefs, but they believe that he

(15:40):
is at the very least deeply misguided. Navalny, they say,
holds to a fundamentally errant belief that Russia could ever
be a parliamentary democracy in the Western tradition. Their argument
is that corruption, investigations and electoralism are useless in Russia
and always have been, and from a historical standpoint, it
is difficult to argue with these claims. Autonomous Action members

(16:02):
do not support the Ukrainian state, and I have read
articles from them where they describe the conflict in the
Dawn Bass, which simmered for eight years before exploding into
the current conflagration, as two fascist paramilitary forces backed by
two capitalist governments. However, they have been consistent for years
that the proper stance of Russian anarchists is to support
the Ukrainian people against aggression from the Russian state. Before

(16:26):
Putin commenced his broader invasion. In February of this year,
Autonomous Action published an article with the title why we
should support Ukraine quote Putin is not just the gendarme
of Europe, but the gendarme of the whole world, from
Syria to Myanmar. Whenever a dictator tortures and kills thousands
of his old people, Putin is there to support him.
There are no elections in Russia anymore. Even the most

(16:49):
moderate attempts to change something results in criminal cases and persecutions.
I do not believe that the result of this yet
another round of threatening declarations and building up pressure, is
a full scale war, But as the conflict is not disappearing,
a full scale war may start after five to ten years,
even as a result of a cycle of escalation, even
if no one really wants it. And in case of

(17:09):
a full scale war, we should be on the Ukrainian side.
As Mala Testa said, for me, there is no doubt
that the worst of democracies is always preferable, if only
from the educational point of view, then the best of
dictatorships neutrality and a war between Ukraine and Russia would
mean neutrality in an invasion of a democracy by a dictatorship.

(17:30):
Now our source concurs with the extant evidence that Russian
citizens still broadly support the war. As I stated earlier,
nant attacking Russia with Nost don't know. He was certain

(18:00):
to acknowledge that there's still a great deal of propaganda,
largely pro NATO propaganda on the anti war side of things.
Given the information situation within his country, he admitted that
he'd had difficulty parsing some things out, while acknowledging that
his side also lacked perfect information. He felt that their
stance against the war was safe because in the end
it opposed blood letting. We can claim on the kind

(18:27):
of waganda or the West are crowing, sam If even
if you're under some kind of waganda, even West Western
is basically a case as well, you're still of this

(18:47):
your side because you don't want to. He did admit
that a number of people in his life, family and
close friends, knew about his political sympathies, and he claims
that the outbreak of war are in the massive futalitarian
swing Putin has taken over the last month have caused
some of these people to be more open to his beliefs.
So I'm kind of open just on talking to one

(19:10):
w one of the people much pants. Oh my friends,
do you know what what kind of stuff what I'm
into or the war or the just came to me. However, personally, Hey,

(19:32):
you've been precurring for that, so for years you've been
telling us, hold us for years. I thought you BERNOI
and not understand. You're right, wander water. So we don't
have people know about what gives no the picture At

(19:52):
the moment. The political situation within Russia is tremendously uncertain.
All manner of dubious sources have claimed that a palace
coup is in the offering or has been attempted. Some
have even spoken of the possibility of a revolution, or
at least a massive protest campaign that forces Putin from office.
Our source did not consider that likely in the unlikely
event the government collapsed entirely. He was not particularly optimistic

(20:15):
about what might result. You mentioned the central Wist governments
and there is no they just just or oh, it's

(20:48):
a science. He mentioned me that a number of his
loved ones had come forward recently to ask what they
ought to do. I asked how he responded it to
that question. Right now, we try to organize and help
you all because there is a there is a chance

(21:09):
or currency local stuffing, and we'll just need to survive.
That's the first thing. Quick, So organization and interactions are
available than any currents or now for well, I see
it with the way. Uh. Second thing is that we

(21:31):
need to training or start. I guess there is there
is a term in English case the very weak don't
pour when you have all infrastructure. Basically, for now we
need to have from enough folding of water points we

(21:55):
all can train even with the form rooms people to
cularly mentioned the revolutionary importance of finding some way to
either smuggle or produce medical supplies and medications. He knows
one person who already had to flee the country because
his wife could no longer get the medicine she needed.
He mentioned the sanctions levied against Russia as a major
issue for regular working people, but when I asked what

(22:18):
he felt Western countries could do in this conflict, he
was actually quite focused on something else. Entirely. He believes
the United States has access to high quality satellite images
of what happened in the immediate lead up to the
Russian invasion of Ukraine. Putin's government justified much of their
invasion on so called attacks from the Ukrainian government that
they claim it escalated against the separatist regions. Our source

(22:39):
believes his government is lying about this law or point

(23:00):
many states, so here's the same thing, or yeah, we
need to cover of course it's been goin So it's
I don't believe that Ukraine or being with let's say,

(23:25):
let's a military power compared to Russia or not. So
she stuff yea, so we didn't need those things covered
published at least maybe not as long as possibly canst
still walking on would at least it's helpful people see

(23:49):
you get there are points queer from crom It's pretty good.
Since the invasion, it has gotten notably harder, but not
impossibly hard for Russian citizens to get information about the
conflict that does not come from the Kremlin. Our starts
explained how he does it a combination of using VPNs
and understanding the nature of authoritarian propaganda. In short, even

(24:12):
when the government is lying to you, you can get
an idea of what the truth is by understanding what
they want you to believe, work stuff, all sources, what
science I saw it, or Korean side, Russian side, great side.

(24:36):
Oh so find and staff as well. I don't really
believe me. Let's see firsts because they are past. They
say what's goins? What's they're trying to contain to points?

(25:01):
Or if you have a say okay, let's put this one. Uh.
When Russian Ministry of Foreign offers selling or solution and
at the same time we hear all the Syrians, Syrian

(25:26):
or mercenaries are going to rail uh. For for me,
it means one thing they want to us Paul or
the pointing to get some time, so professional sources or
council racially. He felt that one way US activists could
be helpful to Russian activists was by continuing to document

(25:49):
and study the different munitions and tactics used by police
in cracking down on demonstrations. He noticed that Russian police
used similar and sometimes even the same weapons to the
ones that the US police used on out in protests.
He believes the documentation done to study these weapons is
helpful to people all around the world. He expressed some
frustration at friends and colleagues of his who after years

(26:11):
of failing to truly grapple with the degree to which
Putin had centralized power. We're now fleeing Russia to avoid
living under an increasingly totalitarian state. A swampoint colleagues, I
guess of her radio whatever trying to support me like

(26:34):
stuff scoring along the sports Russians. Yes, if that's for him,
trying to blame him expence, And that's why against this,

(26:55):
before against the commons, he has decided to stay and
to resist. While he has admitted to now studying martial
arts and military tactics, he did not have high hopes
for any kind of confrontation with the Russian state, and
as a generally peaceable person, he has decided that he
will continue to resist in the way that makes the
most sense to him, by helping people and providing them

(27:17):
with things that they will increasingly need. Is the economic
situation in Russia degrades further for me? How many people
most kind of since constant sense of that's for at
least six years or one. Uh. But then understood that

(27:46):
once a thing about archists and wish I call myself
and you before I call myself an larchists, then I
should make once a thing. Oh we need to before
it's all ah, welcome to it could happen here the

(28:21):
podcast where this Today I sit down with my buddy
Jake Hanrahan and we talk about Corsica Jake, are you
how's the showy? How you how you feeling? Yeah, I'm
all right. Thanks. I got a bit of a flu,
but otherwise everything's really good. One Yeah, um, we you
just took a little reporting trip um down to the

(28:43):
island of corsica Um, which is not a place I
know much about, and I'm going to guess not a
place most of our listeners know much about. So why
don't you Why don't you start with kind of like
what what brought you down there? Yeah? No, it's a
really good point. A lot of people don't even know
it exists. I sent the documentary made Um with Pular
Front to a friend of mine today and he said, brother,
that's the first time I've ever heard of Coursico. Like,

(29:06):
a lot of people don't know about It's so it's
a very old island, um. You know, in more than
two hundred years people have inhabited the place, but generally
for the last kind of two hundred years there's been
an on again, off again independence movement. They're people that
don't want to be under the control of France or whoever.
They want control of their own island. Because Corsican is

(29:28):
quite a specific culture. Um, it's very different to French culture,
it's different to Italian culture. They even have their own
language called course. Unfortunately, it's kind of dying out, as
you know, a lot of languages do in kind of
contested areas if you like. Um. But yeah, so so
they've always kind of wanted to be independent in some way.

(29:50):
Not everybody, not the whole place. I'm sure you'll find
some course because that will say their course of Confrench.
But generally the majority of people if you go there
and say, well are you there to are you with Corsican?
We're not French with Corsican. So in the nineties seventies,
that kind of coalesced was rebirthed, if you like, with
the backdrop of you know, guns, bombs and independence movements

(30:12):
of course Europe and a group called the f l
n C formed the Nationalist Liberation Front for Corsica and
they arrived with twenty one bombs on the island in
one night. I mean not arrived, you know, they were
already there, of course, but they bombed twenty one times
in one night, mostly French infrastructure, and they were all

(30:36):
very very well armed. There was literally hundreds of members
and at one point I have to I don't want
to say this because it's been a while since I
looked at the research, but if I'm right, at one
point in the in the late seventies or early eighties,
the Effllency was actually the most active militant or terrorist
group in the whole of Europe, even even more active

(30:59):
than the provision i RA now privileged IRA called a
lot more people the FLNC. Their targets weren't really to
kill people. They were to blow up holiday homes and
blow up French infrastructure. They didn't have open gun battles,
and they did assassinate the the highest ranking French officer
on Corsica on the island eventually. But yeah, so so

(31:19):
there was this real backdrop of very militant um independence.
When I say nationalists, it's not it's not what we
might associate with like far right nationalists. You know, when
an independent movement doesn't have its own country, you know,
the ultra nationalism in their sense comes out in a
very different way. It's not we want to ban everybody

(31:39):
else from here. It's simply we want our country, you
know what I mean. So when I say ultra nationalists,
that's not to be confused with fascist ultra nationalist. It's
very different. Not to say that couskins all believe in
in leftist causes and that that wouldn't be true. A
lot of them do. There's a big socialist element to
to the cause, and there's also quite a right we

(32:00):
element to the cause. But ultimately they all kind of
want the same thing, autonomy or independence of Corsica. So yeah,
So that that's the kind of history very briefly of
militant independence movements in Corsica. FLNC put down their guns
and recently one of the fln C was suspected FLNC
militants who shot this this high ranking French official that

(32:23):
I told you about. Um this this guy is called
Evan Colina. He was arrested m after the shooting in
the nineties and sent to a French prison for life.
And on March the sixth, I believe it was, he
was no very much. Second, he was attacked in a
French prison by a Jahadic inmate and beaten into a
coma yesterday or two days ago. Now he died of

(32:45):
his injuries. Ever since he was beaten into this comma,
the youth would just kind of lit the place on fire,
you know. They were really clashing very violently. And for
for the last kind of seven years, since there was
as a was a relative calm on the island in
terms of collectivism and militancy. The politicians, the more moderate
parties have tried to do this politically and for the

(33:06):
first time in a while, the youth have gone, no,
fuck it, We're not playing that anymore. We're we're going
to knock the place about. We're going to smash the
shop up. And basically it's kind of worked, which we
can go into. But yeah, so sorry to go on
a lot, but there's quite a lot to it because obviously,
like you said, a lot of people don't know. But
one thing I always say is courtA is just one
of the most beautiful places anybody will go to. Like objectively,

(33:28):
it's idyllic. It's not really had this horrible holiday home
vibe there because genuinely, when when some contractors tried to
kind of gentrify a course to come and turn it
into the next ib through. I believe one of the
quotes was from one of the people doing this. The
f l n C kind of waited for them to
build their homes and then blew them all up and

(33:50):
blew up all their hotels. So it was like they're like,
you're not going to do that here. A lot of
these companies were infringing on the environment, which is beautiful there.
And yeah, so there's a lot more to it, but generally,
you know, this all kind of revolves around militant independence. Yeah,
that's interesting. I mean, I I I think it's fascinating

(34:10):
the idea of targeting, like the degree to which a
lot of this seems to be focused on stopping this
place from turning into another vacation destination or like rich
people's second homes push out the population that's born there. Um.
I think there's a lot of places that, like, uh,
organizer complain about that sort of thing. Um, But I'm

(34:31):
not aware of anyone who's gone to these kind of
lengths to stop themselves from turning into another a visa. Yeah. Yeah,
And honestly, if you go to Corsica and see how
beautiful it is, not just I mean, it's one of
the few places in Europe where you can see the
mountains from the beach. You know, it's the incredible island.
I've been obsessed with this place since I was about
twenty four years old, firstly from the nature and the

(34:53):
beauty there, but secondly I was very interested in the
militant group there, um because the culture there was so different.
But yeah, if you look at the place, you go
there and you realize, like, right, this place is very
much worth preserving. I don't want to act like there
hasn't been businesses doing their thing there. There definitely is,
but certainly it feels preserved. There's no high rises. All

(35:14):
of the old buildings are still there and they're still intact.
And you know when when these big businesses came in
and a lot of these businessmen were almost showing off
like yeah, we're gonna turn course of Carns waib Etha,
which as a brit Um I would apologize to anyone
living inever, you know, like having sex in the street

(35:35):
and throwing up at bars and everything. Here you go there, Um,
it's kind of been turned into one big not the
great club, yeah yeah, not the great club definitely. Yeah.
So so you know, it's it's one of these ones
where it's like I could kind of understand. I'm not
saying anyone should bomb anywhere, certainly not, but I do
understand the sentiment there. And one of the one of

(35:56):
my course and friends said, um, some people were calling
it like the cold bed policy. So you come to
our island, you buy a holiday home, and if you
leave that bed cold as in you're not even living here,
it's going to get blown up, you know if you like. So.
Very militant, very violent, but effective. I mean, it doesn't
mean that you have to agree with it, but no

(36:17):
one can deny that it hasn't been effective. But at
the same time, there's a very big mafia presence on
the island as well, so that you know, it's not
to say that everything is all for the people. I'm
going to guess that the mafia is more or less
on the side of, you know, turn this place into
a vacation destination because that's where the money is. That
that would be my essentially. Really that's interesting. No, so

(36:39):
the unfortunately the independence movement, not all of them, but
there is an element to it that is very hand
in hand with the mafia. Most definitely. Perhaps some people
that were independent militants are now mafia if you like. Um,
and people have been killed on the island quite a lot.
There's quite a lot of you know, unsold of murders

(37:00):
that it's quite sad um. But no, they they were
more for keeping their own interests. You know, Um, we
have this island, we can run the docks, we can
run this, we can run that. And whilst what you
said like makes sense, right, you would think, oh, no,
they'd be for this money. I think what they want.
They're still nationalists. At the end of the day. They
won't control, but they won't control in their own way.

(37:22):
And the big business comes in and start saying, oh, yeah,
we're doing this and that and the other, and we're
bringing all these people in by the docks. I guess
they lose control of that essentially. So they were very
much on the side of yeah, do what you like
sort of thing, and I think fascinating, so very unique,
very specific place. You mentioned that this action you shut
up for people bombed twenty one targets in one night.

(37:47):
In one night. Yeah, when you say bomb, are we
talking like your standard malatabs or were they are? Were
they kind of like more elaborate devices. Shall we say,
how would you describe what they were using? Yeah, a
good question. I mean when you think of twenty one
in one night, you think, right like monotor small night,
something simple. Yeah, yeah, no, No, there weren't even pipe wombs.

(38:08):
You're talking fertilizer bombs. Yeah, like blowing the whole buildings,
you know, not all of them, you know, there were
some smaller ones, but some very significant ones um and
very very big. The way of Corsica is the way
it's laid out. Like I said, it's a small place.
I think currently like three people lived there roughly, and
there were mountains, there were beaches, there were very rural communities,

(38:31):
eight's and islands. It's quite far away from France, actually,
it's very close to Italy um and Sardinia is just
to it south. And it's just for them. If you
were you couldn't ask for a better location, if you
wanted to be a kind of guerrilla group, you know,
you really couldn't. It's kind of built for them. So
they just got away with it, you know, farmers whatever,
they went into the mountains, build bombs dropped them off.

(38:52):
And not to say that everybody was for them, but
there is some It wasn't just we want independence, there
was there was subjugation by the French. You know. Firstly,
they're like, we don't want to be a French colony
or whatever you would call it anymore, which I think
anybody that wants their determination to not be held by
our former colonial power, it's fine, or current colonial power

(39:13):
if you like, I think, yeah, fair play to them.
But secondly, they're one of the most poorer regions, despite
having all this holiday stuff, despite having a lot of produce,
despite having a lot of reasons to be there. So
there's definitely something. I won't claim to know too much
about the law situation, and I'm sure a lot of
French people get angry whatever, but it is genuinely doing

(39:33):
very badly in many different aspects. Is that mismanagement by them?
Is it because of the French? I couldn't tell you.
I don't know enough about it, but I certainly find
it very weird that all of these beautiful things that
happened on the island and they're they're constantly in you know,
the lower bracket of situations economically, culturally, they're getting kind
of sidelined a bit so I do. I do understand,

(39:54):
and certainly when the clashes or even protests happen in
the seventies, the police, you know, French police. I'm sorry,
but there's some of the worst fucking police ever, you know.
And I've been in front of Turkish police, like French
police are fucking up there. They're horrible, and they beat
the ship out of a lot of people in Cortica
just for peacefully protesting, you know. So it didn't come

(40:16):
from nowhere, you know what I mean? There is there
is more to it than just nationalism and independence. There's
a lot more to it. They wanna, they want to
they want to deal with their own affairs, a lot
of them, you know, most people probably now want to
do it democratically. But like I said, the youth were said,
no funk, that we're not getting anywhere, and they've Actually
it's actually worked because the day after the riots that
we filmed on March thirteen, the Interior Minister of France

(40:41):
basically said, right, we're willing to discuss this with you.
We will go as far as autonomy. That's literally a
quote he said, which is quite significant. Yeah, after seven
years of basically stalemate through the politicians. So the youth
in a way, one of the very few examples of this,
specifically in Europe, the youth, what they're doing kind of worked,
you know what I mean, Like directly action got got

(41:03):
some goods, started the process of getting the goods hopefully. Absolutely, yeah, yeah,
it has. And the thing about the course scan youth
is they're very intelligent, they're very they're very authentic in
their political activism in the sense of it's just they're
born into it. It's in them, you know, from the
age of like twelve thirteen, they're understanding it. They're getting

(41:25):
told about the legends of blah blah, you know, um,
there's there's militant group and whatever whatever. So there's very
much in them in that sense, kind of in a
you know, like the Kurds are kind of you know,
not on the same level, but that kind of vibe.
So when they go to students, when they go to
UNI and they become students, they're not really forming their
political opinions. They already have them, they already got them,

(41:47):
and then they they sort of higher, they sort of
germinate together. So that's from what I understood anyway, that's
from what I gathered and you know, your average trendy
young man and woman on the street there is very political.
It's kind of like Greece in that sense, like it's
cool to be political, but in the sense of not
the kind not like um, you know, not not something

(42:10):
you brought into as a teenager, something that was already
there and then which which there is nothing wrong with it.
You know, most people fall in their political opinions in
unis or whatever, but for them, it's already in there,
you see what I'm saying. So they already have they're
already united in that sense, you know. So when they
get to the UNI, they get there it's like, okay,
well we all want independence or autonomy, but then the
other things are lesser, so you know, for that in

(42:32):
that really, in that sense, I think that was quite interesting.
And we saw eight thousand, nine thousand people marching maybe
and then when the clashes started, you know, it is well,
but like normally it's like what a hundred three people
stay talking, like two thousand people help clashing, and men
and women like young girls, young men, like many many,

(42:55):
you know, So it was really I was like, wow, okay,
and one one thing that I've never I have seen
for a very long time. I've very rarely seen it. Normally,
when the clash happens, everybody, you know, your grandma's, you're
working man, you know, the people that support what's going
on but are not able to clash or don't want
to clash, they normally step back. In the Coursicum protests,

(43:16):
everybody just stayed like we were getting tear gas next
to like fifty lads with balaclabas on, next to like
grandma or auntie, you know, and we're like helping people
into the side street to get away from tear gas.
It's very weird. They just didn't leave. They just were
there the whole time. It's weird when you're talking about
like tactically, what is this, How are these kind of

(43:38):
bombings being pulled off? As so you've got like this
huge crowd and they're just kind of like marching from
target to target. Um. So the youth are not really
I mean, they have some small kind of I D
s you know what I'm saying, that youth student youth protesters,
but generally it's Molotov's bricks, burning barricades. But they very
clearly know the island inside out. They know their streets,

(44:03):
you know, obviously because they lived there. And most of
the police, from what I understand, are actually French called
in from the island, from the mainland, sorry to the island.
A lot of the CRS riot police, thousands of them
were brought in. There was that they were actually completely outnumbered.
They had to retreat at one point in in the
evening to go back to the prefecture kind of cultural

(44:25):
French administrative building where the main the main target of
violence was. They had to retreat to get more ammunition
because they just they just shot so much tiggas um.
They just couldn't, you know, they couldn't do anything. There
were some teams, like the youth. Some of them had
green arm bands or green leg bands, so they were
very clearly like a different unit, and they were very

(44:46):
well organized. They didn't have walkie talkies, mind you normally
that that shows a closer sign of organization. But some
of them were like that. Some of them were just
turned up to fight, and some of them were splitting
off into different groups. You would see one come in,
they'd fight, fight, fight, and then they'd leave and as
they're leaving, another load would just come in the line.
It was. It was really quite interesting. You know, they'd

(45:06):
really thought about it. Um, it wasn't just a free
for all, which it might look like. But you know,
after a while of covering riots, there's certain things you
notice where you're like, Okay, they're planning this, they're planning that,
you know what I'm saying. So it's quite interesting in
that sense. Um, but yeah, man, it's yeah, thousands of
thousands of youth fighting. Um, it did get messy. I

(45:28):
think forty four police were injured, thirteen protesters and one pedestrian.
That was the official figures. I saw at least three
pedestrians injured, and I think probably more protesters and definitely
more cops, I would say. Yeah. I mean, obviously it
also depends on like what you're raiding as an injury
for that sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah, And a lot
of folks probably are avoiding the hospitals and being dealt

(45:49):
with at homes and whatnot because they were committing some crimes. Yeah,
just like you know, at home with superglue in seat
of stitches or whatever. Yeah. Do you have a sense
of like how long? But the kind of the back
end of this was the preparation process was for this. Yeah,
so the classes have been ongoing before we got there

(46:10):
for about a week. So even Colinar was beaten into
this coma. He was he was attacked in prison. There's
some rumors that he said some kind of Islamophobic thing
to the inmate, and don't know how true that is,
but all we know is the guy was actually, you know,
convicted jahadist. It's not kind of hear say that the
guy the inmate was a convicted jahadist because obviously even

(46:32):
Colinar is in the type of prison where what the
state says is terrorists are there, you know what I mean,
anybody terrorists is there, So it makes sense he's amongst
these people. And I think he was attacked in the
gym when he was on his own and he was strangled,
and this this is where yeah, yeah, this is where
there's a weird point of contention. He because of the

(46:53):
special status he had as such a violent militant or whatever,
he shouldn't have really been in on his own like that.
And some people were speculating did something happen, But generally
most people we spoke to were like it was probably
just negligence, you know, They weren't very conspiratory. There was
someone like, oh the French, the French plan is I

(47:14):
doubt it. It doesn't make much sense to do this
right now, Like you know, they would knew what would
happen to be on calling to the people. Sorry if
he've on Colling. I was hurt because he's a big
you know, a big name there. There's also some you know,
maybe interesting arguments around the case, the way he was arrested.
Apparently the gun doesn't match up. I don't know. I

(47:35):
didn't really get into that, but either way, he's like
a you know, people they love him, you know what
I'm saying. He's like a matter for them, even though
you know, he shot this guy in the back in
in cold blood essentially, but for them that was a
political assassination whatever. So so for about a week, the
youth were fighting, and I saw a video and anything
that happens in course, I'm like, right, I'm looking at it,

(47:56):
and I was like, okay, this this is a little
bit different. Okay, molotovs are out again. Hasn't haven't seen
that for a while. And then the next day and
then the next day, and then it spread one night
to like five different cities or like sorry, three different cities,
like big, big places, and then they burned like a
very specific monument, so that was like, oh it's on.
So for at least a week they were they were

(48:21):
planning something, you know, and there was enough kind of
um momentum there, I think for them to organize. Certainly,
we know that there was people from a jat CEO
of the capital city in Bastia where we filmed it,
like a lot of people drove in, they came you know,
specifically for this clash, so that was quite interesting. I
think the youth movement have a very strong network there,

(48:42):
and there's also quite a big football ultra scene there.
So the day before the clashes, Bastia and the JATSO
had a derby. So obviously I imagine a lot of
the ultras, or at least I know a lot of
the ultras were also part of the independence groupings and
part of the clashes, so I imagine that a lot
of the football ultras kind of organized you know, you know,

(49:04):
the match the day before or at least a week before,
so I think there was quite a lot of organization there.
You know, what do you feel like is next? Is
this the case? Do you get the sense that because
the government has announced their willingness to sit down and talk,
that maybe folks are going to wait to follow up
this or do you get the sense that they're going
to kind of keep the pressure on. Well, the thing is,

(49:29):
there was one option before Evan Colonard died, and now
there's a new option that he's died. You see what
I'm saying. Before, I think what you're saying would have
would have happened, like I mean, I don't know, but
I think that youth would have they would have held
off the fact that the Interior Minister of France, who
answers directly to mcron within one day or less than

(49:53):
one day, said we're willing to go as far as
autonomy in these discussions. Stop being violent. I think the
youth was smart enough to realize, all right, let's stop,
let's see what he's got to say. I'm sure if
things faltered, if things didn't move quick enough, they would
have very quickly stepped up the stepped up the violence again. However,
now that even Colin has died, I don't think that

(50:16):
they're just gonna wait now. From what I understand from
speaking to contacts and friends in Corsica. There's a period
of mourning right now. You know his funeral. He died
in a prison in Marseille. He wasn't even transferred to
to Corsica to die, So for a lot of them,
that's incredibly offensive. That's the kind of spark that started
these clashes. It's all about independence and autonomy on one level,

(50:39):
but the thing that drove this and sparked it was
even Colonize attack, and and the fact that there's a
lot of course cam prison prisoners, which are political prisoners,
are in prison in Frances at the Corsica anyway. So
now that he has died, I really think that there
will be a moment of calm due to the funeral
and respect for even Colin arm whatever. Then I think

(51:00):
maybe a week after this week, I think it's almost
inevitable that we will see some form of violence again.
I've spoken to some people that are maybe going a
bit far, maybe being a bit dramatic. I don't know,
but they speculate that there will be a little bit
more than just clashes. One one person I know said,
I think they're going to blow something up again. Do
I think that, probably not, But certainly when we were

(51:23):
in the streets they were using. There's there's photos of
it as well. They were using very crude but very small,
improvised explosive devices. Now, when a group even starts to
do that, you know, okay, it's a very small device.
It was in a kind of like a basically a
tennis ball type thing with it with whatever in it.
But it was fucking loud. It wouldn't really do much

(51:45):
unless it probably blow up right next to your foot.
But when they're even considering that, in my experience, that
tells you that people are there's an element that are
ready to go further up the ladder to the next level.
Does that mean they're going to blow somewhere up. I
don't know. I don't see it personally. You know, these
these young people are very clever. I think that would
be in an insane decision because it would France would

(52:08):
have no option but to basically flood the island with
a lot more police and maybe even military type police.
I don't know, maybe not, but but yeah, anyway, we'll
see what happens. But again, my point is not not
that I think this is gonna happen, But there's that
talk which we haven't seen that kind of talk in
Corsica for quite a while, you know what I mean,
And there's actually people now genuinely worried like Okay, where's

(52:29):
this going to go? Which can never be a good thing.
I guess the French state really has to be careful here,
and I think the fact they've now said we're gonna
go as far as autonomy, maybe they at the very
least have to be shown to be doing that very quickly.
I think, you know. Otherwise, for a lot of people

(52:50):
in Corsica, it's like even Colin Colinar died in Vain,
I guess, and it's not just the youth, it's everybody,
even people that perhaps really don't like that the youth
were fighting, really don't support that level of violence. They
still support Evan Coliner and a very sad he's dead,
you see what I'm saying, and the way he died,
And even even past DNFC, the football team and one

(53:13):
of the main football teams in Courtsco, they said, are
you know, we're very sad that he's dead. You know,
hero has died that kind of thing, so he's a
very He's seen as a Martineau definitely, Yeah, I mean
that's a predictable outcome from killing the guys in prison. Um, right, right, right, right,
So we're kind of in this like waiting to see
what the next step is. Then I guess, like the

(53:36):
it's it's kind of this weird sort of like political
liminal space. I guess where the next steps are. There's
a number of things that could happen. Um, yeah, definitely,
it's this very everything's in transition. It's it's very it's
it's either calm before the storm, or it's calm that

(54:00):
turns into something positive. But I I just don't see,
you know, after almost two weeks of extremely violent clashes,
very well organized, after seeing them on the ground as well,
these are brave lads, these and women as well. These
are not your kind of average weekend warriors. They're very,

(54:20):
very up for it. Um you know how people clash
in Paris, like French people, they're very up. As soon
as final they'll fight, you know. Um, it's like that
times ten for from what I experienced, because it's got
the the kind of incubated nationalist identity separate from France,
but whilst also having kind of fiery French culture and

(54:43):
fiery Italian culture influences and fiery Corsican culture. Um not
to say that they're not very nice people. Everyone was
absolutely lovely, very very friendly, but you can tell they're
you know, there are fiery people. They're active, they're about it,
they mean what they say. So I don't think that
the youth will just go quietly from this essentially a
political prisoner m A. Martin now and then for them

(55:07):
to just go, Okay, we'll just relax now. I don't
see it. You go. You're talking from like you know,
probably in the full week of clashes, maybe four or
five thousand people together throwing rocks, burning barricades, throwing small
improvised devices at cops, to then just to go to
nothing after even Colonarde dies, I would be very very surprised.

(55:28):
I think the only way that that would happen would
be for France to go, okay, here's your autonomy, and
then that energy could be turned into a celebration. What
I'm saying that should or shouldn't happen. I just think
theoretically that's the only way that it could avoid violence,
because the energy is there. Now, you see what I'm saying,
not on like an essterry level, it's just the level
of like they're revved up, they're ready, you know, in

(55:49):
the attitude, the kind of it's in the air. It's
in the air right now. So you published just a
couple of days ago, your a little documentary like short
documentary from Popular Front which footage a little dispatch which
has footage from this um, which people should definitely check out,
especially if they'd like to see some of the tactics
that we've talked about UM on this this episode so far.

(56:11):
Is there anywhere else you might recommend they go for
further reading on this subject UM not not to be um,
oh you're only Popular front um, but we we have.
It's just something that I've just been specifically fascinating and
obsessed with for a long time. So when the time came,
I was very well prepared. Everyone has said like, oh,

(56:31):
you know, this is this is crazy, like, you know,
how did you understand all of this so quickly, because
I've been reading about it and and the problem with
a lot of the French reporting is, you know, it's
it's naturally very fresh, skewed. It's a little bit sneary,
like all the island people are kicking off again, whereas
it's like, no, come on like this, it's an incredible,
beautiful place. Of course they want to preserve it. Of

(56:53):
course they want to control it in whatever way they
want to. So again it's very difficult, but I will
say that there are some really good reporters um there.
There's a a friend of mine from Corsica, Lionel Doomus.
He runs like a thing called um Corsican passport or
were used to, which was kind of kind of humorous

(57:15):
but at the same time in our news about kind
of course and related um patriotic stuff. And then who
we worked with, Jean Colinar. He's not related to m Yvonne.
Like it's it's quite a you know, common COmON last name,
Yeah exactly, yeah, so us it sounds quite you know, right,
you must be related, but over there it's like not Smith,
but you know it's quite common. Um, so yeah, Jean Colinar,

(57:39):
he's great. And there's also the local papers in Corsica course, Mattin.
They're really good. You might have to translate stuff, but
they're very on the ball, you know what I mean
that they're focused on everything. So if people are interested
in it, honestly, I would say like seek out local
French reporters. From what I gathered as well, there's there's
a quiet, but really thriving kind of youth media. I

(58:02):
wouldn't say it's a it's a movement, but there's something
growing there, you know. I spoke before I went out.
I spoke to quite a few reporters, really nice people,
really enthusiastic, really you know, love loving their island, but
not full of hatred or anything like that. That that's
something that I've seen a lot of French people say, oh,
Corsicans are really full of hatred, their racist, They're blah blah.

(58:23):
And it's like, I didn't experience that. And at the
same time, it's like have you been to Paris, right, yeah, yeah,
you know, like it's like the end of the day.
I think the whole region probably has a has an
issue with that, but certainly the youth are very open minded,
very nice. Um And like I said, this isn't just

(58:45):
me basing it off of one trip. I've been fascinated
with this place for about six to eight years and
I I have not experienced anything like that. Sure you'll
hear the old comment like you know very yeah it's Europe,
Yeah exactly, exactly Europe. Not to minimize it, but like
it's just Corsica exactly whatever. Generally, you know, for a

(59:09):
small island, it could be way worse. And so I
had a lot of French people, like they're really nasty,
they're really violent, and it's like they're not actually like
they're very angry, but they don't hate. They don't hate
the French in that sense of like, oh you're a
French person, kill you. It's the same thing as we
hate the state, you know. Like and at the same
time they have a very quite a few people brought

(59:30):
up Ireland and the Basque situation and Sardinia, and so
they have this they have an internationalist mentality as well. Actually,
and in fact, years ago there used to be a
youth conference in Corsica hosted there. I don't think it
goes on anymore, but it was hosted in Corsica by
what was a very well organized radical socialist youth movement

(59:51):
in Corsica, where people from northern Ireland, people from the
Basque country, people from um, uh, what's the one in Barcelona, Oh, um, Calonia, Catalonia. Yeah,
people from there would come, you know, all people from
different breakaway regions or whatever, and they would all come
and they would all meet in courseco and they would

(01:00:13):
talk about tactics and politics and whatever. So it's a
very very interesting culture place, amazing history. Fucking the Poland
is from Napoleon is from there. You know that's what
you want. Um. So yeah, it's a really cool place.
And you know, we only documented one side of it,
a very radical side of it, because that's what was
happening that weekend to dispatch. But there are a lot

(01:00:34):
of moderates as well. There were a lot of like political,
very smart political moderate moderates that are like, look, we
don't want violence, but we do want autonomy, we want something.
And they you know, they said, oh, you only showed
the militant side of It's like, well, you weren't on
the street that day, you know, these kids were, so
obviously that's how it works. But yeah, I would to
actually a question again. Sorry, I would say just if

(01:00:55):
you're interested in the region, um check it out. And
they're there's there's a film if you can find it
in English subtitles, send it to me. But there's a
fictionalized film about the effllency. I think it's called A
Life of violence. Um, that's actually like quite good. It's
a bit romantic size, but it's quite good in terms

(01:01:16):
of explaining this situation there if you speak French. Checked
out and just check out like course Martin and all
these these other kind of local reporters there. People are like, oh,
it's too hard to find them. It does feel like that,
but once you find them, you find them all. So yeah, awesome. Well,
Jake Canrahan, thank you so much. Check out the new
Popular Front dispatch on Corsica. Um, by the way to YouTube. Yeah,

(01:01:39):
so check out all the Popular Front stuff on YouTube.
You've got a great documentary out also about the territorial
defense militias in Ukraine that you're filmed right before ship went.
Yeah you know where it is. Yeah, yeah, we're standing
it because we're a bit like how do we yea,
how do we make this most relevant? But it's it's
coming that it's it will be quite interesting. Excited the

(01:02:00):
perspective before. Yeah, the ship you're posting on Twitter was
really interesting. Um, so yeah check that out when it's out.
Check out all the Popular fronts other stuff. Um and yeah,
thank you Jake. Let's uh, well we'll have you back
on soon. All right, thank you very much. Welcome to

(01:02:33):
it could happen here the podcast, the podcast, every episode.
When you open too many podcasts, you you lose the
ability to open podcasts anyway. Uh St Andrew, UM, this
is your episode, so I'm gonna let you. Let you
take it, take it away, take us on a journey. Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello, Hi,

(01:03:00):
good afternoon, and good night. UM. Today we just wanted
to cover rather broad topic. I don't even know if
it's gonna be released before the end of February, probably not,
But in honor of Black History Month, I wanted to
cover the history of Caribbean resistance to slavery and the

(01:03:23):
different ways that manifested across the Caribbean. For those who
don't know, UM, slavery in the Caribbean took place for
several hundred years, beginning with the enslavement of the Amerindians
the and continuing up until the abolition of slavery in

(01:03:49):
three four, at least in British territories. UM. Before then,
there were multiple struggles UM against the institution, both passive
and active, and in every step of the process. UM.

(01:04:10):
And then, of course post slavery, they were also multiple
rebellions and insurrections and strikes that took place in the region.
But I can't cover the well they about seven thousand
islands in the Caribbean, give or take, but I can't

(01:04:30):
cover the histories of all of those for the past
couple of thousand years. But I will try to cover
fairly generally the different forms of resistance that took place,
starting with, of course, the resistances took place in Africa.
I mean even before and state of people were put
on these ships, even before they were captured. They were

(01:04:51):
measures they were taken to protect themselves from enslavement. There
was of course flight in the sense of running away um.
But there was also evidence of Africans moving their villages
to inaccessible areas like mountains or um or deeper into

(01:05:12):
the forest were less accessible for enslaved people UM sorry
for enslavers to try to capture their people. One of
the more famous enslaved people um Luada Equino. He founded
a society in Britain after being enslaved and taken to

(01:05:38):
the Caribbean and eventually moving to Britain after becoming a
freedman and starting the Sons of Africa abolitionist group. He
had written his own autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the
Life of Daquino, and he detailed some of the horrors
of slavery from an enslaved person's perspective and to a

(01:06:00):
lot of what we knew about slavery and how it
could ah comes from his personal account, among others. Of course,
so he spoke about some of the measures that were
taken in his own village to defend against capture. But
um he after being captured, of course, from the Kingdom

(01:06:24):
of Indian around he ended up being taken on the
slave ships, separated from his families and carried with four
other people across the Atlantic to Barbados, and then eventually
taken to Virginia, and then from Virginia being bought by

(01:06:46):
a Royal Navy lieutenant and eventually being freed. During the
voyages that it could, and they were multiple during the
whole Triangle trade, it has been said that one in
ten of all Atlantic crossings through the Middle prop passage
had some kind of rebellion, whether it be through taking

(01:07:10):
control of the ships and attempting to seal them back
to Africa with the assistance of the crew without all
of Africans battling against other ships um or in one
case in Amistat, in some Africans were taken captive above
aboard a cargo ship and they free themselves, killed the

(01:07:32):
captain and the cook, and forced them to take them
back to Sierra Leone, but instead the owners of the
ship ended up taking them to the United States, where
they were captured by the coast Guard. Jesus, yeah, it's
a lot um one slaveship surgeon guy named Alexander Falconbridge

(01:07:58):
became an abolitionist because he's so well. The first of all,
he saw the horrible conditions that were present on those
ships in the Middle Passage, where you know, hundreds of
people were shackled together and crammed into these tight enclosed, dark,
wet infected spaces for weeks on anger being taken across,

(01:08:25):
and of course a lot of the so called cargo,
the people who were on route to be enslaved, were
killed by the conditions presidents on those slave ships. However,
despite the fact that you know, so many people were
dying from the terrible conditions of the ships, the slave

(01:08:47):
trade was so profitable for the enslavers and for the
economies of the colonial nations that it was still there
was still they were still not only able to break
even but profit massively from the excursions. And even though

(01:09:07):
the Middle Passage got more and more dangerous for cruise
as rebellions became more and more expected, production for more shackles,
more weaponry to keep captives secured a rose in England
and helped to secure some of their travels. Of course,

(01:09:28):
they were also times where Africans would burn the ships
they were on, or where they would jump off of
the ships. As I'm sure many people remember kill Monker's
famous Final Woods in Black Panther. And from what I remember,
the first and slaved people who arrived in Hispaniola immediately

(01:09:51):
ran away and we're able to escape before being recaptured
once Um and say people arrived in the horrible conditions
at the various colonies in the Caribbean. One of the
major projects of their colonial overlords was to convert them

(01:10:16):
while in the process of you know, enslaving them. Of course,
a lot of enslaved people were dying very rapidly due
to the diseases and the terrible working conditions they had
to endure. Right for those who did survive, Um separated

(01:10:37):
from their families, from their ties to kinship, from really
their home and everything that came along with it. As
displaced indigenous people, they had to figure out ways to
maintain and protect their cultures um from you know, naming conventions,

(01:11:00):
to craftsmanship, to the language, to philosophy, to believes to
music to dance. These are all elements of African cultures
that would provide psychological support for captives. We need to
resist the process of enslavement because enslavement is an act
of breaking the will and erasing the humanity of the enslave.

(01:11:23):
Practices like voodoo um in Heity or obia in Trinidad
and Jamaica, we're able to strengthen the revolutionary efforts of
rebellious Africans and so in the Haitian Revolution, you know,

(01:11:49):
they were fueled by voodoo and the ceremonies that oc
could then and we're able to eventually, you know, free
the people of Haiti and established the first independent black
republic in the New World. You need to know for
so other forms of cultural resistance, and one of the

(01:12:12):
main forms of culture resistance was the preservation of African
culture through pre realization, through the melding and the hiding
in some cases of elements of African culture with um
European cultural forms to create these new cultures and new languages.
Um Quol is one example, particularly Antilian Creole, which is

(01:12:36):
related to Haitian Creole. These languages helped to maintain um
some measure of identity for people who will be actively
being stripped of it. Women in particular play a major
role in this process of culture of resistance and cultural

(01:13:01):
preservation because in African societies they were. African societies often
made trilineal and mature, local and women played a key
role in passing traditions onto their daughters and other young
women and to the community at large through storytelling and
through um the sharing of skills and beliefs and ideas,

(01:13:27):
and so African women played a major rule in keeping
the tradition going and at lineage going, maintaining the memory
of people like a Nancy and Rare Rabbits and Mamadalu
and Sukyans and all these other folkloric figures who bavy
marks of African traditions. Women under slavery also had to

(01:13:56):
do what they could to resist the consist consistent UM violence,
sexual violence that was um being done to them. By
their cool your masters, UM abortion and UM birth control,

(01:14:18):
UM and other forms of resistance against sexual assault, resisting
their masters, feeling illness. All these things worked too, not
necessarily protect them, but two keep them going and try

(01:14:40):
to steve off the worst elements of violence it was
being done to them. As I mentioned the Haitian Revolution
and being fueled by voodoo and whatnot. It really scared
planters across the Cribban and across the world, really like
this is the first time something I did sort of

(01:15:00):
happened before. And I'm sure, uh the U s audience knew.
Is a bit about the consequences in the US. How
you know Southern slave masters were so terrified by the
Asian Revolution, how France um imposed restrictions on heity, and

(01:15:23):
how the US and other European powers were complicit in
that attempts to strangle the first Black Republic. But there
were cases in other parts of the Caribbean where planters
um in their terror, used the Asian Revolution has an
excuse to crackdown on the enslaved um, for example in

(01:15:47):
Trenidad in the Christmas of eighteen o five. The Hassian
Revolution ended in eighteen o four, so in Christmas of
eighteen five, UM, the planters were so fraid and had
really seen some acts of poisoning that we're occurring on
some of the estates, because part of the cultural resistance

(01:16:09):
involved the passing down of certain recipes and poisons and concoctions,
and so many enslavers you know, fell victim couldn't quote
to poisoners, and so they had to try to find
a way to prevent what they saw was a planned uprising.

(01:16:32):
They basically invented this idea of a conspiracy in their
paranoia that was meant to wipe out this entire slave
owning population during that in one go. So of course,
as historians have uncovered, the conspiracy most likely didn't actually
exist or maybe perhaps not today the scale that um

(01:16:55):
the slave owners thought, but it was more so an
attempt by the planters to impose greater authoritarian rule as
Christmas Day needs, you know, five approached the details of
this conspiracy, of this plot sorted to be uncovered by

(01:17:15):
the planters. UM they thought that, you know, at this
place called Chance Estate, enslaved people we're organizing to launch
their revolution. And of course this terrified them because at
that point in time, the enslaved population was somewhere around

(01:17:35):
whereas the white slave owning class it was like half
that number. And so the authorities declared martial law and
apprehended those involved if they were even involved. Oftentimes they
were not. But it does bring attention to an important
part of enslave resistance, and that being the conspiracy and

(01:18:02):
actual existence of slave secret societies. Secret societies are something that, ah,
It's something that's common in the African Madan land where
tribal rights and initiations and advancements through those rights um

(01:18:24):
in secret groupings would occur um to sort of denote
levels of ranco maturity and so in slave society, as
different tribes mixed and mingled and plantations for security reasons.
These secret societies continued but had assimilated some European systems

(01:18:50):
of order and designation. So they gave themselves names like
major or Captain and described their societies as regiments and
the echoes the descendants of those societies still exists to
this day in Trindad. They are highly obscured. I honestly
don't know much details about them. I just know that

(01:19:12):
I have some friends whose relatives um are involved in
those secret societies, and in some places like for example
Grancouver where and stay people seized the land and sort
of held that land and kept it and passed it
down across the generations. Um, such secret societies and membership

(01:19:36):
in such secret societies is not unheard of. So is
what the the modern ish versions of them do? Like
what what what? What what are they doing? I guess
like these days if if there's something that is, I
don't know much about about them or how they operate. Yeah,

(01:19:59):
and so I don't think all the secret societies and
turned at are descended from enslave serious societies like obviously not.
There are other um secret societies, their societies of doctors
and of lawyers and different treads um. There of course
Mason groups as well, and I well, you know, the

(01:20:24):
most um superficial details of most of these groups essentially
thing that comes up a look that there there's a
whole bunch of like these sort of secret society groups
that like wind up being part of an engine leven
revolution in China, but they sort of, like most of them,
kind of go bandit like after the revolution happens. And

(01:20:44):
so it's just it's interesting to see I guess, like
different contexts where they don't seem to have like just
over itly turned into organized crime groups. Right, what's the
like organized crime groups descended from secret societies in China,
the Triads, for example. Yeah, I actually don't think the
Triers send it from them. A couple of them joined
the Communists, a lot of them kind of got wiped

(01:21:06):
out in the sort of just general warlord fighting, and
then some of them kind of got stumped up by
the Communists because they were basically turned into organized their
own organized crime things were sort of distinct from the
other ones existed. But right, there were seven major rebellions
in the Colony of Jamaica between sixteen seventy three and

(01:21:27):
sixteen six, and several others in Antigua, in Nevus, in
Fujian Islands, in you know, Barbados, in just across the Caribbean.
There was continual African resistance and rebellion, and that really
is what struck fair in these stave woulders at the time.

(01:21:47):
In one case, um in seventeen thirty three, during the
Amino Rebellion on St. John, which is part of the
Danish Fusion Islands, or was part of the Danish Fusian Islands.
The African inslusions to controlled the island for six months
before being defeated, and the most slave rebellions really occurred

(01:22:08):
in Jamaica, in fact, more than all the other colonies,
more than all the other British colonies in the Caribbean combined.
One of the most famous of the Jamaican rebellions was
one of the Sudden seventeen six day by a man
known as Tachi, had lasted for over a year before
being suppressed by British colonial forces. Because Jamaica's population was

(01:22:33):
massively overwhelmingly black in comparison to the very small minority
of large slaveholding white, they were more likely to launch
and more likely to succeed in slave refools. Um. Slave
refolds are more likely to happen, of course, where slaves
outnumber white, where masters are absent, where there's economic distress,

(01:22:55):
where they are split within the ruling elite um, and
when large numbers of Native one Africans from one area
of brought in one time, which is why they often
have to split up. There the people that they captured
so they wouldn't be able to collaborate with their king.
We often remember the flashy of forms of revolts such

(01:23:16):
as the revolt in St. Joseph in seven led by Dagger,
who is a former African chief in Guinea and the
leader of the first British West India regiment Um. He
mutinied along with two men, and although they were taken

(01:23:37):
into custody and sentenced to death, they marked just one
example of this sort of bold actions that were taken
by in state of people in Tobago um in the
year seventeen seventy. There were numerous armed the volts over

(01:23:58):
the next eleven years, from seventy sev one, six armed revolts,
one by led by an enslaveman named Sandy in seventeen
seventy two in seventeen seventy one, one in June lyet
in August one in seventeen seventy three, another in seventeen
seventy four, another eighteen o one. And so these revolts
to that constry didn't one specific year of the island.

(01:24:20):
They would happened in some cases over the entire island.
Tobago is of course separate from trained Dad until eight nine,
where it became a ward of Trina Tobago. But and
so their history is the history of Trian Island history
of Tobago. We're separate, running separately for the first couple

(01:24:41):
hundred years of the age of colonization, but Tobago's history
of resistance is still connected in some ways to trend
dads history of resistance in the sense of the bold
actions that would taken by a slave people. Of course,
not all resistance to slavery was so bold. Day to

(01:25:06):
day resistance was by far the most common form of
opposition to slavery, whether it be through feigning illness, staging slowdowns,
pretending ignorance, deliver a carelessness, awsome sabotage, breaking tools. These
sorts of expressions, while they reinforced previously held perceptions of

(01:25:33):
enslaved Africans at the time, they also ways of enslaved
people to express their alienation and to sort of corve
some level of space or breathing room, or to give
themselves some sense of catharsis in that brutal period. And

(01:25:55):
so what we see is a sort of continuum of
resistance from that sort of individual level of slowing down
or failing ignorance or what or whatever, to the sort
of broader cultural methods of passive resistance, such as you know,

(01:26:15):
cultivating and passing down culture and cultural memories to the
more bold aspects of resistance such as revolts and rebellions
and revolutions. And of course there was the practice of maroonage,

(01:26:36):
both petite and grand maroonage. Petite maroonage was an effort
by individuals or groups of unstated people to escape from
their plantations permanentally sometimes but usually for a limited amount
of time, to escape mistreatment, to nick sheet better treatment,

(01:27:02):
or it's even just catch a break honestly. Grand moonage
is more commonly understood and recognized where communities of fugitive
slaves would establish communities on the fringes in the swamps
of Louisiana, for example, or in the mountains of Jamaica,

(01:27:27):
and these moon communities have been established since the very beginning,
since the early sixteenth century. When the fust and slave
Africans are brought to the Caribbean by the Spanish, they
would often unite with Amerindians, whether it be you know
Tinos or Kalinago's, or go to base and unite with

(01:27:48):
them in their resistance in carving out settlements or strongholds
of safety. For example, in fifty forty six. In Hispaniola,
there were over seven thousand Maroons among a slave population
of eight thousands. After the island was split between the

(01:28:09):
French santoming which is later which is now known as
Haiti and the Spanish Santo Domingo, which is the Dominican Republic.
In Maroons took advantage of the hostility between France and
Spain to maintain settlements along the border between the two
throughout the period of slavery. Addition, there were the Ruins
in Cuba, in Puerto Rico, and in some cases with

(01:28:32):
Puerto Rico. Fugitive slaves from the Virgin Islands would literally
set sail to Puerto Rico to settle and escape the
enslavemands there. In Jamaica, of course, there are many ruined communities,
and in fact, there is still an active Maroon community

(01:28:52):
in Jamaica to this day that has persisted and maintained
their traditions. Um Insane Kits in Antigua, in Barbados, in
Martinique and Guada Loup. All of these islands have had
Moon communities established um However, as European cultivation the islands increased.

(01:29:13):
As Europeans ventured further and further into the islands, into
the depths of the islands, it became more and more
difficult to establish moon settlements because if you look at
some of the smaller islands, it's kind of difficult to
hide or to establish any sort of sustainable community on
the fringes of an island that you could easily jog

(01:29:38):
from one side to the other, or you know, walk
from one side to the other. Of course, even on
those smaller islands, there were still attempts to maintain moon settlements,
such as in St. Vincent or Dominica. In St. Vincent,
the Garifuna, which an indigenous group mixed who mixed with Africans,

(01:30:00):
preserved they depend their independence against both French and the British,
and they ended up spreading to um if I recall
correctly Central America as well, and so the Garifona community
is still very much alive and well to this day.
In Jamaica and Cuba and Guadeloupe and Hispaniola, Marion communities

(01:30:21):
were able to last longer because they had um more
mountainous terrain to hide in, particularly in Jamaica. Um but
they were also Maroon communities on the South American mainland.
You know. In Brazil there was the famous Moroon community
or quilombo known as pal Mares, which has existed for
nearly years. From sixteen o five to six, there is

(01:30:47):
a certain invasion by both the Dutch and Portuguese and
had at least ten thousand organized UM members ready to
defend their operation. They were governed by a king who
used the political traditions drawn from Central Africa, but they

(01:31:08):
unfortunately were eventually destroyed. In the Guyana's French Guyana UM,
British Guyana which is now called Guyana UM Dutch Guyana
which is now called surname. Marion communities were also able
to establish themselves and they still persist to this day
due to the um Amazon rainforest and the river wheels

(01:31:34):
that allowed them to conceal themselves from colonial encroachment. Of course,
in the US they were all Summaron communities, like the
Black Seminoles of Florida or the Morion communities in Um
I believe it was the Louisiana It's most places. Of course,
Maroon communities were not very large UM or often did

(01:31:59):
not last very long. They're usually small thriller bands led
by an elected chief. But of course these smaller bands
in there. Although they were small, that sort of protected
them to some extent from detection and from recapture. In Cuba,

(01:32:19):
for example, they were hundreds of small Maroon communities and
they were guarded, and they were and they had their
settlements guarded by ditches and steaks and secret paths, and
these settlements communicated with each other while remaining isolated, so
they could grow their own crops and hunt and fish
and trade in peace, sometimes with other islands. In what's

(01:32:43):
to prevent again capture and destruction. I think there's a
lot that we can learn from the different forms of resistance,
small and large that instead of people, and it took
throughout the period of colonial settlements and expansion and enslavement,
elements of their practices and I think could be applied

(01:33:08):
to these struggles. Do you have any thoughts before the wrap? Yeah.
One thing I kind of want to plug is Russell
Maroon showed wrote a really interesting I I don't know
exactly what the name for essay, I guess called the

(01:33:30):
Dragon and the Hydra, which is a study. Yeah. Yeah,
it's called Dragon the Hydra study of historical study of
organizational methods, and it's about basically a comparison of like
different different kinds of resistance to colony Linsman Enslavement that
talks a lot about the Roan movement, talks about sort
of the problems that these sort of like highly centralized,

(01:33:52):
top down movements ran into versus the kind of stuff
that the that these sort of more decentralized, less hierarchical
momber movements face. And it's it's really interesting and it's
pretty short, so everyone should just read it because it's great. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He covers the us p T, Suriname and Jamaica, and

(01:34:14):
you know how those different Moon communities dealt with their conditions.
I'm pretty sure you brought this from prison too, if
I'm remembering my timeline history correctly. Yes, I highly recommend
folks without to read. I mean, I don't want to
give the impression that Uron communities where these like valiant utopias.

(01:34:35):
I mean, in some cases Mouron communities who manipulated UM
against the other and often in exchange for maintaining the autonomy,
they were made to sign treaties where they would have
to turn in UM fugitives. So it was not, by
any means are perfect situation to be in. But they

(01:34:59):
were trying to cough out their survival. Yeah, I guess
do you want to plug your stuff? So you can
find me on Twitter, at on discore seeing True and
on YouTube seem to on tourism, where I have lots
of stuff. I mean, if you were interested in, for example,
the details of how spirituality played a role in African resistance,

(01:35:23):
I have a video on that. If you're interested in,
you know, how Wada Equa New established the Sons of
Africa group and how that was one of the foundations
of what eventually became the Pan Afganist movement. I have
a video on Pan Africanism that you could check out. So, yeah,

(01:35:46):
that's it for me. That was great. I didn't know
there were still marine communities actually yeah, yeah, the one
in Jamaica, the one in Suriname. They are still very
much alive. And well, yeah, it's fascinating. Ah st Andrew,
thank you for that. That was wonderful. And uh, that's
that's our episode for today. So go home and doom

(01:36:09):
scroll for several hours probably, or or do something productive
or something. I had a cat, big some cookies, hand
out food to people who were hungry, you know, big
some cookies and then handled the cookies to people who
need or doom scroll, you know, all productive things that

(01:36:30):
are some significantly productive. Alright, friends, that's h that's the
episode piece. Oh that's how you start a podcast. This

(01:37:07):
is it could happen here. That's right. That's Robert talking.
That's right. Also with us, Christopher Wong and Garrison Davis
do your podcast. Yeah, So we're all gathering today on
on the day after what I think we'll go down
as the single most momentous moment in the twenty one century.

(01:37:29):
Will Smith slapped Chris Rock on stage at the Oscars.
So the entire world has pivoted from obsession with the
massive land war in Eastern Europe to discussing how Chris
Rock getting slapped is like the massive land war in
Eastern Europe or or eleven or nine eleven. Yes, yes, yes,

(01:37:51):
So it's a it's an amazing, like an unprecedentedly incredible
time to be on on Twitter right now. That said,
we're going to talk about Nazi cat boys today. I've
seen everyone's post on the subreddit being like, why aren't
you guys giving blow by blows about the war in Ukraine?
Then this is this is pressing topic, and we're going

(01:38:13):
to talk about Nazi cat boys previous to the Chris
Rock slap. This is the most pressing topic of the
twenty one century. Um is why there's Nazi catboys? And
now we're going to talk about it well, because I mean,
the roots of the crisis in Ukraine are the different
kinds of cat boys that Zelinsky and Putin are. Yes,

(01:38:34):
Robert is fan art. Up, It's gonna be fine. I'm sure.
I'm sure we'll find some horrible fan art. Yes, m yeah,
we have. We have to figure out if if Putin's
ever watched Helsing, and then we'll build to know. So
I don't know what that means, but okay, you're you're
about to find out. So great we we have. We

(01:38:56):
have gathered here today to talk about to talk about
the curious case of why there are Nazi capboys. Um
throut through one TikTok and Twitter pushed from boys and
cat boys into kind of the cultural mainstream, plunging these
once much more niche subcultures out of the dark depths
of fortune, Reddit, Tumbler and discord and uh the latest

(01:39:20):
rebirth of these kind of gender bending communities. It's pretty
socially progressive and affirming. Uh. Like generally most most fem
boys catboys are are lefties. There's a whole bunch of
like Twitter communists. I'm sure there's a whole bunch of
cat boys who like stalling or something. Um, but they're
they're generally more generally more on the left. But but

(01:39:45):
but for for those who've dug deeper into the history
and origins of these Internet subcultures, you may have found
a dark, racist, and hateful underbelly. So we're going to
talk about that today. I do have to note, Garrison,
as soon as you said that, I found a Stalinist
catboy the Twitter. It's an incredible account. So the their

(01:40:07):
their background image for their Twitter account is a picture
of Dang Xiaoping and the Ayatollah of Iran having a meeting.
Their their PfP is a lavender haired Uh. It's like
a it's like an anime pic here avatar cat boy, yeah,
with like a Soviet hat and then Marxist Leninist bisexual

(01:40:28):
catboy stalin did nothing wrong at North Korea. Stand incredible.
This is this is this is why the Left will
never win. That's perfect. I'm pretty sure this is like
illegal in those countries. It's it would have had this

(01:40:50):
person shot In the second someone tried to describe a
catboy to Joseph Stalin, he would have had this person executed.
Oh yeah, oh wow, yeah, I see, I see it. Now,
that is that is intense. You know. The thing is,
this type of thing is not going to be uncommon.
We're gonna be again, We're gonna be going into like
actual fascists who are also cowboys, and obviously they would
have been would have been killed for being degenerous as well.

(01:41:13):
But now we're gonna kind of talk about how this
how this kind of came to be. And I've been
writing this for like over a year. Actually, I've interviewed
a few people for this that I've kind of contributed
to the script. And initially this was going to be
conceived as a video. Um, and you can't really talk
about these things in a video format without dressing up
like a silly character. So I am. I'm wearing a

(01:41:36):
very actually a very very high quality catboy outfend right now,
which the audio will just have to you'll have to
You'll have to see it through the audio, So good
luck with that synesthesia. Um, yeah, yeah, yeah, so you
are at the same time, You've done that enough that
I don't know that anyone really noticed. I've never dressed
as a catboy for recording. Before you dress is something

(01:41:58):
every other recording. That's true, I addrest as something I
generally addresses something. So first section one, Section one, what
is what is a cat boy? What? What is what
is this? Um So? But first of all, of a
few ground rules will be circling back too often. UM One,
not all catboys and femboys identify as LGBT or queer.

(01:42:20):
Um and two, gay people can still be racist. These
are these, These are these, These are two points that
we're gonna be coming back to over the course of
these of these deep type episodes. So first things first,
let's let's just define what a cat boy is for
all of the boomers in the audience. Um And if
you are, if you are a boomer listening to this,
how why how did you find this? Why are why

(01:42:41):
did you choose to listen to Garrison? The instant I
became a boomer was the first time you tried to
describe explain cat boys to me Like I I suddenly
developed a strong opinion on hr Halderman because of because
of me, you so administration Joe, but most simply, um,

(01:43:02):
a cat boy. Is this what I'm doing right now?
So someone who is kind of kind of boyish, who who? Who?
Who sometimes enjoys dressing in cat like apparel? I guess
it's like cat ears. It is different from furries from
and we will we will get into this, um. I mean,

(01:43:23):
but I'm I'm definitely less boyish than I first was
when I wrote this like a year ago, now that
I'm on recreational estrogen. But nevertheless, someone who's a boyish
and dresses or likes to dress in cat like kind
of uh outfits generally on an anime trajectory of aesthetics. Uh.
Now this is this is this is different from furries
from multiple reasons. The physical cat like attributes on catboys

(01:43:46):
are mostly confined to ears and pause sometimes with tails,
but it's it's iffy um. Whereas you know, furries like
to have like the full first suit thing going on,
whereas catboys they still have like human faces and they
wear like human clothes. So this is actually a very
key difference, which will lots of made costumes like and
yes a lot and the other other big kind of

(01:44:06):
recurring trope um is that is that well they well
catboys you usually wear clothes, is that they usually dress
up in something similar to like a French made outfit
um or or like different outfits like anime girls will
where so like the tennis skirt thing, but generally on
a made outfit to anime trajectory. So despite despite the

(01:44:27):
animal ears, right, despite like the furry cat ears, the
catboy or cat girls saying has much more in common
with the fenboy community than the furry community and a
lot of instances but more more more on that later.
So after some initial research into the Nazi cat boy meme,
I decided it would be useful for tracing back the
roots of this kind of odd online phenomenon to broaden

(01:44:48):
the scope of research to include fem boys as well,
which is syccimctly just cat boys without the cat part.
It's like boys who or generally male identifying people who
dressed in like feminine ways. Um. Not a lot of
fen boys will turn out to be trans and not
all of them do a lot of fen boys and
identify as straight. But you know, i'd like to wear

(01:45:08):
you know, boys generally kind of in the twink of
variety who likes to wear skirts, dresses, whatever. So I
have a much of it a dissection to which gets
a little bit more silly. Um but but yeah, so
m boys, it's excited this. This doesn't get less silly
as we go on. But but yeah, catboys, feen boys.
Feen boys identify as male dress up in more stereotyptically

(01:45:31):
feminine ways. There's a lot of similarity and crossover between
fen boys and catboys. Um. But since fenboys have more
of an established online history, uh, including them in the
research seems like the best way to kind of dig
into like the fascist femboy nazi catboy idea. So, speaking
of section two, the racist femboy meme the past the
past few years, there's been kind of a growing meme

(01:45:53):
and perception across social media that fem boys are like
really racist, um and just kind of pretty fashion in general, um,
even really homophobic and transphobic and a lot of in
a lot of senses, as much as a homophobic or
transphobic femboy may see them contradictory at first. But again,
more more on this later. Um. So when I'm talking

(01:46:14):
about this going forward, I'm probably gonna be mixing words
in terms like nazi and fascist all right or far right. Now,
not not all of these racist femboys are what I
would call Nazis by any means um and not not
not all advocate for even joke about genocide, but there
were absolutely recruitment attempts from self described Nazis. And you know,

(01:46:35):
the line between jokes and actual beliefs is intentionally very
foggy in this kind of internet subculture. So I'll kind
of be lazily lumping together everything from racist to far
far right wing folks for the sake of simplicity, because
it's all like in the same spectrum. And like I
mentioned at the beginning, not all femboys and cat boys
identify as being queer, um, and gay people can still

(01:46:57):
be racist. These there are these are points we're going
to be circling back to a lot. So at this
point the alright femboy meme has kind of actually overshadowed
the actual phenomenon of it happening. Right in the past
few years, the popularity of leftist fem boys has skyrocketed.
Yet if you still do digging on like Twitter or Discord,

(01:47:17):
you can indeed fed users who appear to be fem boys,
but are also everything from racist to just openly fascist. Now, naturally,
that leaves people wondering how can one have such a
kind of contradictory lifestyle and belief system, which leads us
to Section three. The Internet and that's it. That's kind
of that's kind of the answer. We that's we can

(01:47:38):
kind of pack it up here. Um, that's the answer.
It's the Internet. That's that's why that that's why this
has happened. That's what I'm getting out of this. Yeah, sure, whatever, whatever,
it's it's Garrison. Are you are you are? Have you
been caught up on why people say, I'll Gore invented
the Internet? On where that joke came from? Are you? Oh? Boy,

(01:48:00):
you have to you have to remember Chris Carrison's no
was so there was like al Gore was among a
bunch of different people who like voted to fund some
of the different government kind of projects that became the Internet, right,
like you had the rpnet and ship all that stuff.
Like he was one of the people who like pushed

(01:48:21):
that and then in the debate with George Bush while
running for president in UH two thousand, he uh like
basically made some claims that you could uncharitably translate as
him saying that he invented the internet. Um, he didn't
actually say that. It was more like he was saying, well, I,
you know, supported from an early stage the development of

(01:48:41):
the Internet. But it got turned into like al Gore
claimed to have invented the Internet because it was funny.
Ab yes, and and so now that's that's that's the
joke is even though he didn't really, he just was
not you know, but anyway there, so, well we can
we can blame not the cap was on al Gore.

(01:49:02):
Well that that does it for us today. Um, you
can find us on Wait okay, we still have a
we still have like half an episode to do. Alright,
well here's here's speaking of of of al Gore and
the Internet. Here's some ads brought to you by the Internet.
Ah boy, those ads were so good they made me

(01:49:23):
wanna be a cat. Okay, all right, wow, moving on. Uh.
If you're in any way familiar with facism, you are
probably aware that one of it's more consistent traits is
that it's notoriously ideologically inconsistent. Um. So, for for this project,

(01:49:45):
I interviewed multiple people who have a more personal history
in the cat boy and femboy online communities than I do. UM.
So those interviews plus my own online digging through like
hundreds of threads from various form websites, I've I've literally
looked through hundreds hundreds of the cat boy posts on Fortune.
But doing doing all that has been very helpful for
understanding kind of this intersection of politics and subculture. And

(01:50:08):
since I did all this research, you don't need to,
so there you go. Um. But one of the first
kind of big takeaways I had after the research and
interviews is that the nazi femboy catboy thing is not
actually unique at all in terms of Internet radicalization. It
just has some aesthetic abnormalities that can confuse on liquors
or normal ease, which makes the internet phenomenon seen more

(01:50:30):
outlandish than that actually is. But before we dig deeper
into this litter box of hate, I would like to
divide the femboy and catboy kind of racism spectrum into
actually to two assistinct categories. First, um, we have we
have type one, which I'm calling the fem fast people
who are initially into the femboy community and aesthetic and

(01:50:51):
then got introduced into far right politics online. And then
we have type two, the fasci fem people who were
already into far right politics and only then got introduced
to the femboy community online. So I I usually break
down lots of instances of fascists mixing with various subcultures
into these like similar like to two categories of people
starting off with politics and then getting into the culture,

(01:51:12):
and the people starting off with the culture then getting
into politics. I think it's actually kind it's useful for
understanding a whole bunch of how there's like differences between
different types of fascist people in various subcultures. So these
two types I'm gonna I'm gonna be using to help
to help talk about these different kind of strains of
of the fascist femboy. For for now, we're gonna focus

(01:51:35):
on the first one, the fem fast. So let's let's
let's wind let's wind the clocks back. Let's say a decade. Broadly,
gay people can't get married, and to most kids, trans
people are ostensibly a myth um. So what kind of
person is going to become a femboy in this in
this type of in this type of environment. Simplest answer

(01:51:55):
is like a certain sect of social outcasts and anime nerds,
as well as some people who maybe don't consciously know
or accept that they're queer yet. Really the only way
to get initially exposed to the fembo aesthetic back then
was via anime, manga, anti porn, and you know, select
video games, specifically multiplayer games, and random and internet browsing.

(01:52:17):
Right this, this is, this is how you're gonna get
exposed to this type of aesthetic. In fact, one of
the probably the old example of a Nazi catboy is
from an anime called hell Singh where they had they
had this Nazi catboy character who is the who was
the source of a lot of Nazi catboy memes on
fortune Like, it's a very very popular meme figure um,

(01:52:38):
And this is I think a lot of where that
aesthetic tied to fascism actually really starts from. But of
course there's a lot of fascist fans of anime in general,
so that the type of aesthetics that the type of
aesthetics of femininity that anime kind of presents get used
by fascism a lot. Even among like they're more like
a cottage core styles, it's still a that very like
patriarchal um type of inity that is popular among Japanese animation.

(01:53:03):
So now, the reasons that someone might be drawn to
this specific community can vary from person to person. Maybe
they just don't feel as connected to like the hyper
macho masculine style that American culture promotes. Maybe it's a
way to get attention and validation, or maybe you just
like wearing skirts or find it kind of hot. There's,
but there's, and there's there's always the possibility that someone

(01:53:23):
is transfer gain they just don't fully know it yet.
This is the case with a lot of these people actually, Um,
but some of some of you may be surprised to
hear that before our modern TikTok femboy craze, most fem
boys did self identify as straight ancests. Uh. There is
a lot of reasons for this, including like increased omophobia
and transphobia back then, plus like non binary was hardly

(01:53:44):
even the thing like culturally at that at that point. UM.
One of the people I interviewed for this project talked
about how some of the cis straight fem boys he
knew back then now do identify as trans or queer. Um,
but back then that wasn't really the case. Um. The
other person I interviewed before this called themselves asis gender
femboy at the time of the interview, but has now

(01:54:04):
since come out as trans. So, like it says, it
is definitely a recurring pattern, but it's not a thing
for everybody, Like there is definitely like a lot, like
a lot of these people do call themselves straight even
still now, UM, and that is something that a lot
of kind of people don't have a don't have the
easiest time kind of comprehending that's gonna what I'm gonna
kind of try to get into. So let's let's let's

(01:54:26):
say you're a kid, young teen and like eleven, you're
getting into anime and video games. What kind of websites
are you gonna gravitate to? Right, You're gonna gravitate to
read It, You're gonna gravitate to four Chan, especially in right.
These are the these are kind of the cultural mecchas
of of those types of type type types of subcultures.
So what is prelevant on these websites? Well, on four Chan,

(01:54:48):
we have a slash B which is their random channel UM,
which also has a not safe work designation, and it's
was often flooded with femboy picks um, and since there
are so few female users of that site, you see
a lot of hentai and occasionally boys dressing up like
not safe for work female anime characters, just because there's
people still like femininity, but there's so few actual girls

(01:55:12):
using those sites. At the femininity that you see is
either through anime or it's through kind of cross dressing um.
And then there's also the slash d page which is
just completely dedicated to henta I. So you get a
lot of a lot of a lot of that type
of like anime style of femininity through kind of that
that type of appropriation and and fetishization on the slash

(01:55:32):
d page. So there's there's a decent chance that anime
and gaming nerds that browse their interests online will get
exposed to fen boy staff at some point. Right nowadays,
it's discord, used to be fortune and used to be
read it. So it becomes this type of figure right
infinity loop of people who are exposed to something and
then start propagating it and get exposed to new people

(01:55:54):
to it, And it's just like continuous cycle. Because if
if you're a kid who discovers they kind of like
the super niche almost taboo thing. Where are you going
to go to find other like minded people? You're gonna
go back to online multiplayer gaming, Reddit and four chane.
It's it's it's it's all. It's all the same circles.
So if if even if you don't get exposed to
it in places like four chun, you're probably gonna end
up there or somewhere similar regardless, and the other other

(01:56:19):
and and the other thing that's important to talk about,
which is going to talk about like how how the
femboys start getting into politics is like who else is
very prevalent and actively recruiting on these types of sites
with on like on multiplayer gaming, on Reddit and four chan.
It's it's nazis right that the people who are who
are into very far right politics trying to mask trying

(01:56:42):
to mask some of their beliefs initially in like humor
and memes. You know, a lot of large, large part
of an Internet radicalization is done through is done through memes,
especially especially back in there's like so so many like memes.
Memes as a social and recruitment tool, we're very very common,
especially on like you know, if you're on like an
image board. That that's the whole point is that you're

(01:57:03):
sharing images. Um. So a big part of this overrepresentation
of racists in the femboy community was simply the online
proximity between these groups of people, between the femboys and
then the fascists on four Chan or they read it
in certain online games. Will it be like Second Life,
whether it be like mms, you know, all these types

(01:57:23):
of places and in any place that you can design
your own character as well, You've got got a lot
of this type of like anime femboy type thing, because
a lot of a lot of these games that are
main in Japan can like give like more feminine options
for like male characters, or just have like cowboy like
years and stuff available as a cosmetic option. So a

(01:57:44):
lot a lot of this fetish fetishization that we see
on four Chan and on the and in the early
two thousands and twentieens is now is now applied to Discord.
Like this, you did kind of carry over four trans
obviously not the kind of cultural behemoth that it used
to be. A lot of this stuff just happens on
Discord now, um, where you can kind of cultivate online
communities that are more self contained. So throughout the entirety

(01:58:07):
of the twenteen's, fascism was pretty successful infesting among nerd
spaces right nerds and geeks of many types, whether that
be gaming or anime or these more like esoteric communities
esotericism like niche um. But these communities generally they attract
people who are more disenfranchised right and them boys generally

(01:58:27):
feel disenfranchised in one way or another, which just pushes
them into these, you know, less mainstream subculture. At this point,
they can be pretty easy targets for fascist recruiters to
start suggesting that maybe some of their problems in the
world are actually coming from feminism, immigrants, dealing jobs, affirmative action,
and slowly leading into talk of like i Q and
racism and anti semitism. So for those who found these

(01:58:49):
ideas initially like abhorrent, uh, it can be explained at
all this talk and simply edgy jokes in irony attempting
to trigger the enormies, which is a big part of
that type of propagation of this type of humor and
then politics masses humor on these sites and on these
like gaming chats. This isn't unique to fen Boys or
cathboys in any way. Right, the more people I interviewed

(01:59:12):
and the more kind of old forms that I read,
I started to actually see stuff that seemed much more familiar. Um.
And there's a lot of parallels between this far right
fenboy thing and the far right Fury phenomenon, which I
know Robert and the Worst Year Ever podcast put together
two episodes that do a great job kind of talking
about the far right episode of the Worst Year Ever

(01:59:34):
that we ever got to do. Yeah, yeah, it could
do because I guess just briefly kind of talk about
the furry the furry kind of thing and how that
because there's there's a lot of there's Even though these
cultures are different between fen boys and Furies, the tactics
that fascists used to get into these communities is exactly

(01:59:55):
the same. Um, and it kind of plays on the
same same tropes. Yeah, it's weird, so you've got I
think it kind of hearkens to the fact that like
whenever you have a fandom, no matter kind of what
the fandom is about or the message of the media
it's about, you're going to have like Nazis in it. Um.

(02:00:15):
And and that's obviously like Star Wars, right, where the
point of Star Wars is Empire, bad empire. Basically space
Nazis bad guys. And there's a whole bunch of people
who have just like made that into their life and
get tattoos of the imperial sigil or whatever on their
fucking chest. Or you've got like Disney movies where like
there's these there's weirdos who will take far right nationalist

(02:00:39):
messages at it, like every like everything everything has its Nazis.
The punk community, right, punk music is supposed to be
anti authoritarian um and kind of inherently left wing, but
there's Nazi punks, so like it's all like every community
has their Nazis, and the Furies are no different. One
of the things that does make the Furies different is,
I think because of how and this this is something

(02:01:03):
probably you're a little too young, and I guess a
lot of our audience may have missed out on aspects
of but like early on in the Internet, and I'm
talking like the first decade of actual Internet culture, from
like ninety six to two five or six, which is
really the first decade of like mass Internet culture. The
punching bag of the entire Internet was was furries. Like

(02:01:24):
they were the people that like it was the safest
to make fun of, um, jokes about like killing them,
all sorts of really fucked up shit. Um. And so
I think they developed kind of this um very strong
defensive impulse within the community. And so while every subculture
has their Nazis, the Furies have gone kind of the
furthest in documenting and um working to like ostracize those people.

(02:01:48):
And they've done. They're on the level with like punks
in terms of the degree to which they have Like
that has become kind of a guided principle for a
lot of Furies. Um. Yeah, is that kind of what
you're looking for? Yeah, because a big a big and
the thing you mentioned about like furries being such the
punching bag, that's something that's that's something that Nazis even

(02:02:09):
definitely kind of grasp onto as a way to do
grooming and recruitment. Right is if if if, if, if
fascists can present themselves as friends to these people who
are always punched down upon, then they can kind of
put them into their in groups, right, they can they
can support them, give them, give them a sense of validation.
And give them a sense of a community, tell them
like they they they belong. You're you're, you're you're always

(02:02:32):
going to be kicked out of like like real life
social groups. Right, you can only exist here with us.
We're gonna we understand you. Like right, they can. They
can kind of foster this thing, even though obviously it's
dealing with things that are not the most like not
the most like systems straight thing in terms of like
regular heterosexuality. Um like at a lot of a lot
of furries are straight, but like in terms of like

(02:02:53):
the way they approach that is is definitely different than
a lot of regular people. But they so white corom
of systs and different fascists can like grasp onto this
gr respond to this kind of disenfranchisement and offering this
sense of community. Um be you know, be very friendly initially,
be being very being very kind of open these people
and start and start you know the term would be

(02:03:15):
like red pilling them, right, um to talk about that
a lot of their social issues are actually you know
the fault of straws talking about these you know, all
of these Jewish bankers. You know, it can start, you
can start crafting the propaganda very carefully if you're friends
with them first and then only starts slowly introducing them
into your more extremist kind of view of politics. Yeah,
it's just no one's really surprised when an anime nerd

(02:03:39):
or like a capital G gamer starts spewing far right
talking points, but when a femboy does, that just seems
off because like, aren't they also a degenerate right like
like it's like what there is a bit of a
cognitive distance there um and like yes and no, Right,
you may be over estimating some people's commitment to the
fascist cause here because an occurring pattern I found, we're

(02:04:02):
talking to people with history in these communities, especially if
they're more of like the fem fashion variety, right, starting
up starting off with them boys headaches, then getting into
being racist and and and like like pretty racist and
then getting into fascism. Is that look looking back these
people and they say, like themselves and others, all of
their kind of parenting of racist and fascist talking points,

(02:04:24):
especially online, was like they claim much more due to
having to like fit in with these with these already
pretty reactionary online spaces um and make friends at seemingly
one of the few places that people with similar interests gather.
You know, some people deep down don't really care about
the political beliefs that much, and we're we're still looking
for a community. And it just so happened that back then,

(02:04:46):
in the early the places where these communities of outcast
found each other were also places that other outcasts used
racism as a lazy attention seeking shock comedy and like
the triggering of normies, which was basically like a sport
on these on on these forums. Now obviously this is
not excusing any horn behavior and or horrible things, but

(02:05:07):
that whole idea, plus the active like grooming and the
active recruitment from Nazis made the nerdy outcast to fascist
pipeline that we see today. That's really how it built
up and became such a powerful tool, you know, in
around um. But there is there is the other. All
of this just generally more applies to the people who

(02:05:28):
were into fen boys edicts and then got kind of
railroaded into into nationalism and too fascism. Right, it's because
they they're fem boys on these platforms. There's also racists
on these platforms, so these things start to kind of mix,
But there's still that other type of femboy nazi um,
the one who started off online with far right views
and then discovered fem boys and started to feel things

(02:05:51):
when we're starting by talking about them next on on
on part two. But I guess does anyone anyone have
any any questions at least to close off part one
about the more kind of fem fast variety of people
who are generally kind of more regular politically, um, but
are into into like femboy and cowboy kind of aesthetics
and then and then get put into into into more

(02:06:12):
reactionary ideas. Mm hmmm, uh stay off the internet. Yeah,
that's not a question, but yes, that is that is
a that is a good uh, there's a good mission statement.
But yeah, in terms of like, in terms of like
the you know, this topic can whenever whenever I bring
it up. I thought about this a lot when I've

(02:06:32):
tried to explain it to people, there's always a bit
of like that, how that doesn't make any sense? And
I'll be gett into some of the more kind of
semantics of it um in in part two, but at
least at least for like the initial initial kind of
dive into how the online community aspect is used as

(02:06:53):
such a powerful tool for people who are feeling so
alone that just the the idea of their being an
online unity, whether it be racist or not, can is
just super appealing. Because if if everyone thinks that you're
weird in an outcast, if these other people who are
also weird and outcasts start kind of trying to make

(02:07:13):
friends with you, then it can be a very powerful
like recruitment tool, um, which is then of course they'll
they'll they'll be people, they'll be people who eventually try
to like take them out of the whole femboy stetics
in a lot of in a lot of ways, um.
But a lot of fascists also get into the fen
boy stetic because of the because of the proximity issue, right,
because these things are so like next to each other.

(02:07:34):
Well the thing you're the kind of important broader realization there.
And this is something that a radicalization scholar named Scott
Atran has been talking about for ten years now. Probably
more is that people get radicalized in communities. People like
when we talk about radicalization, like why Like I guess
the other half of the explainer that I started this

(02:07:55):
with being like, you know, every subculture has their Nazis.
It's not because like the reason every subculture has their
Nazis is that subcultures are like people get radicalized as
part of communities, as part of subcultures. They don't get
radicalized as individuals, just like people don't aren't just walking
out in the world and decide to become a Nazi.

(02:08:16):
They become a Nazi because a Nazi reaches them in
something they're already into, right, Like that That's just the
way it happens. Yeah, there's definitely a large part of
this is like a group of like group dynamics, especially
in places like forums where you're you know, trying to
trying to get like this like a tension battle. Um
And I guess the other other big part of about

(02:08:37):
the femboy kind of idea, especially on image boards, is
like it is such an attention seeking, in validation seeking
place right you you want to you want to post
things that gets you a lot of comments, likes, upboats, whatever.
The kind of the metric is. Um, So people will
do things that get them visibility. Even if even if
half the people interacting with you are calling you a degenerate,

(02:08:58):
at least there's people still looking at you at least
you feel seen, um, and then the other half people
will be like, no, it's actually fine. You know. So
as long as there's that visibility, like that sense of community,
than a lot of the more cognitive cognitive dissonance aspects
can kind of be passed by. But we'll we'll we'll
get into more of that for for for for part two. Um. Anyway, Uh,

(02:09:20):
you can find us on Twitter and Instagram at to
Happen Here podon Coole Zone Media, you can find me
uh talking about catboys occasionally on Twitter at Hungry bow
Tie and about it. Well it's you know, I've I've
been I've been trying to edit down this episode because
the script was way too long. I be trying to
make it more siscinct the past few days. So my, my, my, my, my,

(02:09:46):
I have. I am pretty excited to be to to
to close this Google doc at the end of the day. Well,
congratulations on all your hard work, Garrison and listeners at home.
Go dress like a catboy. Yeah, and and don't be
a Nazi. Yeah, I mean that's also important. Recording in progress.

(02:10:24):
All right, Well that's my opening. Welcome to part two
of Why They're Nazi Cowboys. Um, what is this podcast, Garrison,
it could happen here talking about that together? The cowboys
have Nazis? Which did which did actually happen here? They're
actually we'll talk about how they actually happened. Um. But
before we before we get into the topic of fascists

(02:10:46):
becoming fem boys via exposure, because I do, We're gonna
start off by talking about kind of well generally the
book book the episodes can be talking about people who
are fascists who then get in defend boys toepics. Right,
last episode we talked about the fem fast, people who
are fem boys who they get fascism. Now we're talking
about the fascists who now getting defend boys. Um. But
before we get real into that, I think it's gonna

(02:11:07):
I think would be helpful to get a bit more
into what these online communities were like in the um Now,
all the infos like a combination of what I've gleaned
from interviews, UH, direct messages, my own pulling up of
old like four China Reddit threads. It may not necessarily
reflect you on experiences perfectly. What is the most in
depth I can do on an audio only medium? Um,

(02:11:28):
some won't be thrilled about this, but we do need
to discuss traps um at their place within the online
community at the time. UM which means we must divine,
which means before we first must to find another term
for the blissfully unaware. So really heartbreaking because when I
was a child, Garrison trap was was just a house

(02:11:48):
where you hit your drugs. It is it is not
a trap house. This is a different, different, different type
of track. This is, this is this is before trap
house turned into a PODCASTA and a bunch of people
didn't know what a trap house was. Heartbreaking the term,
but the term traps were using it here. UM, at
least on the Internet, originates in the in the early

(02:12:10):
two thousand's on image boards UM specifically for Juan UM,
and it got to be as as it got more
popular as a term got more kind of widely recognized
as a slur, specifically usually a slur against trans women
UM or a slur for like any like feminine presenting

(02:12:31):
person who was a signed mail at birth. So it's
it's it's use and origins at least when the Internet
comes from people posting pictures usually from anime very like
feminine looking boys UM alongside the meme of Admiral Akbar
saying it's a trap. Right, So this this is this
is how this idea of the trap kind of started,

(02:12:51):
at least online. I talked with some like other trans
friends of mine. They say that it definitely they in
their opinion, they remember it being a term even for
the two thousands on the internet, of being kind of
more of a slur towards trans women. Um. I can't
find any kind of stuff online about that specific angle,
but the term, the term may be older than that offline,

(02:13:12):
but at least the online use of it really comes
from the Admiral Actbar meme. Um. So, of course, the
it's a trap idea kind of implies some form of
deceptions at play, right with these drawings that are pure
feminine but may actually be depicting adolescent males or you
know worse trans sexuals right woo very scary. Um So
this this soon got transferred over from being applied to

(02:13:34):
anime drawings to being applied to pictures and then in
person encounters of real fem boys or trans people. Um.
So you know, it's as in like if you found
someone that looks female enough, as the meme would go, Um,
if to be attractive and later found out that they
were actually a boy or they were a trans woman.
The idea was that, like, you were deceived, Thus you

(02:13:56):
must be on the lookout for any kind of potential
attractiveness of fem boys trans women, or else you two
might be trapped. Um. So this again, this is it's
it's it's often it's a very transphobic and it's like
it's comparing fem boys to trans women because these are
not the same thing. Um. Obviously, there's is very very

(02:14:17):
hashtag problematic for a lot of reasons. Um. But there's
also the the the meme the of our traps gay,
which is referring to a kind of like satirical debate
around whether or not it's gay defined a femboy, a
male cross stresser, or even a trans woman attractive. Um.
Now the meme does riff on the whole like fellas

(02:14:39):
is it gay thing? Um? And gee whiz am I
glad the fellas meme has surpassed the R traps gay meme. Uh. Obviously. Obviously,
not only is the R traps gay thing pretty homophobic
and transphobic, Um, it's also tied to a lot of
like real world violence against trans women by men, all
of the trans panic defense, right, the whole the whole

(02:15:00):
trap idea kind of does tie you into the trans
panic defense. A lot of you know, men who claim
they simply had to attack or killed trans women once
they found out that that she had a dick, right,
or maybe used to have a dick, not even anymore, right,
it doesn't even matter more commonly or commonly called the
trans panic defense. Yeah, yeah, so, and like the mere
thought of that was so scary that they just they

(02:15:22):
use the trans panic defense in court when violence against
trans women is enacted. Now, obviously this is also much
more attacks against trans women in this vein are much
more common on trans women of color than than than
white trans woman. That's another that's another important thing to mention.
But circling back to fortune Nazis and fem boys in

(02:15:43):
the in the two thousands and tens, trap was almost
like a badge of honor and self descriptor for many
fem boys as well. Like being able to trap or
like you know, pass for a woman while having a
dick was like the highest level of femboy nous. It
was like it was like hop shelf fem boy was
being because was being able to to achieve this feat UM.

(02:16:05):
Usually this was you know, for the purposes of taking
like loot pictures of yourself and then having them be
you know, well liked or spread across online forums. UM.
In my interviews with people from these online spaces longer
than I've been around, UM, it was it was like
described to me by them that being like fem boys
are just trying to look feminine, whereas traps are really

(02:16:26):
trying to look like girls. And that is kind of
like the distinction in these in these places at the time, UM. Now,
you know, all while calling yourself trans was heavily discouraged
and ridiculed. UM in two thousand and eleven, you know,
four chun it was it was, it was. It was
hard to be it was hard to even be openly gay, like,
let alone transgender. So but being self described as the

(02:16:47):
trap was much more accepted. So a lot of people
would actually self describe as this or want to be
self described as this, like want to be at the
point where they feel like they could say this, UM.
And it's it's interesting. It's like a lot of a
lot of the attraction to traps UM was in a
lot of ways genuine, but also all wrapped in this

(02:17:08):
like joking, ironic kind of exterior being like, oh, it's
all like it, it's all like a bit that we're
that we're all in on the joke for right. That
that's kind of how this was explained away. Another quote
from the interviews is like quote, if you actually admitted
to being actually actually romantically attracted to traps or femboys,
you would be heavily ostracized. People would say things like,

(02:17:29):
oh my god, you actually did it, like you actually
did the thing, um because it is it is. It
was like wrapped in this sense of of of of
like irony and and and any hint of sincere attraction
was masked in this like ironic joke like facade. So
at this point four chan is basically an amateur porn
filled suesspool of anime h gaming, edgy jokes, and increasingly

(02:17:52):
bad politics, with pole really taking the shape of like
the Nazi machine that it is today. So close proximity
and probability is all it's necessary to make these racist
and fen boys have this you know, uncomfortable awakening once
they start seeing a whole bunch of pictures with people's
dicks wearing like made outfits. Um So, with with all

(02:18:12):
these like edgy, ironic and not so ironic jokes, the
racists populating these chans forums, online spaces, it's only a
matter of time before they get exposed to boys posing
in Japanese tennis skirts and pink wigs, which helps create
this infinity loop idea of like fen boys to get
into racism and then fascism, and then and fascists who

(02:18:34):
discover they like dick girls and when boys were addresses,
and then it's it's because they're because these things are
happening right next to each other. It's this whole phenomenon
of self contradiction that just keeps itself going. So we
were now we were now done this section, thankfully, um
I did not want to get into having to talk
about all that stuff because I know it's not people
don't like talking about it. It's pretty, it's pretty. It

(02:18:56):
plays on a whole bunch of extremely like transphobic like tropes,
but it is it is a big part of this,
this this kind of phenomenon. Um So, now we're going
to the next part, which is in cells, gamer gait
and anti feminism. So I I'm I'm not going to
focus a lot on the idea of repressed queerness here, right,

(02:19:20):
the idea of like raging homophobes being secretly gay, because
I think that idea gets a little too much attention
when we talked about this sort of thing. Now, don't
get me wrong, this absolutely does happen, but I generally
view sexuality, gender identity, and gender expression as much more
fluid attributes, even among people who consider themselves as systems straight.
So I I don't like defaulting to this like explainer

(02:19:41):
of being like, oh, they're homophobic, that means they're secretly gay,
and like that's I think that's kind of lazy and stupid.
But when when, when we're talking about the curious case
of Nazi cowboys, most individuals involved not only identify as
straight and sis gender, but are also very homophobic and
very transphobic despite their overly like queer behavior here because
it is it is like queer and like the original

(02:20:02):
sense of the word um, And I think I think
there's much more interesting ways to analyze this beyond the
repressed gay trope we've already we've already already are talked
about some femboys and femboy appreciators adopting reactionary and conservative
social beliefs to fit into the larger culture around four
Chune and parts of the online gaming community to find
this sense of belonging and you know, shared shared community

(02:20:24):
among other people. But in order for the fascist femboy
to be such a lasting meme and trope in and
of itself, in my mind, there needs to be a
bit of a stronger justification for the inherent contradictions beyond
just finding community itself. And we will we'll talk about
that when we come back from from from our break.
Here's here's some ads that that are hopefully about how

(02:20:47):
you two can go on Amazon dot com and buy
a made outfit and we're back. Okay, we're going to
talk about in cells. What of one of my yeah,
uh um in cells or like can voluntarily celibrate people whatever.

(02:21:07):
I assume people who are listening to this know what
in cells are. Um. But the in cel movement gained
traction in the mid twenty teens alongside gamer Gate and
the growing kind of anti feminist and alongside of mass
shooting there was there was there was also the Toronto
attack when the in cell round over people in that

(02:21:29):
van there's been multiple mass acts of islands tied to
the in cell idea, and how they A lot of
us just call them horny Isis I've never heard anyone
call them that before. Well they are, I mean immediately.
Also this is This is also the same period where
just isis is on Twitter so cold they share where

(02:21:51):
I really want Isis to chime in on the Will
Smith to face No you don't. I would love that here. No,
I'm waiting for the Taliban's take, no no, no no,
no violence against his violence, Comedians is violenc comedians justified.
The Taliban weighs in at six Taliban are you could

(02:22:14):
get the Taliban arguing with isis K. By god, it
could be done. What a what a what a better world? That?
Especially if Trump was still on Twitter and conmdiate. Oh god,
that would have been so funny. If Trump had been
around on Twitter too. It's the only time I've missed him,

(02:22:35):
just like, oh yeah, yeah, that would have been that,
That would have been the good ship anyway. Um yeah,
in cells there it's a pretty obstensibly violent movement because
it's it's all about making young men disenfranchised about their future, right,
It's this fatalistic idea that they were promised things and

(02:22:55):
now those promises are no longer being kept by society,
so you are kind of doomed to live a pathetic
life forever. Right, So it is a very fatalist idea
that really kind of encourages acts of violence. Um But
the in the moment was gaining traction around this whole time,
right right beside gammer Gate and the growing antifeminist movement.
And I think the key to putting this puzzle together

(02:23:16):
is in the hatred and resentment of women itself, um
as like a thing. I think think this is actually
a key part of why the femboy and femboy fascist
thing kind of caught on. Most of the loose organizing
of these movements were happening on four Chan and Reddit
right eventually eventually discord as well. These were the same
places that were home to the anime posting femboy amateur

(02:23:38):
porn community, and one of the most common viewpoints at
the time was that feminism is ruining women, right, that's
it's it's disrupting the natural patriarchal order that many boys
were taught existed, you know, with promises of girlfriends and
wives that are like, rightfully, there's as some kind of
like obligation. Yeah, I mean this is when we talked
about like promise people being men being promised. Men were

(02:24:00):
generally talking about like the way in which fiction kind
of complicitly promises women as as a reward for heroics,
org just being good. It's like it's it's just specifically
like a cultural idea. That is probably the best example
of this Star Wars, Luke Skywalker becomes a hero and
gets to gets to kiss his sister, you know, yes,

(02:24:22):
which is just the which is the driving driving motivation
of many many in cells said they took in one
day because their sister. Thank thank you Robert for that
for that stinct analysis. I used to I used to
be a film's reviewer, Garrison. So like if you're taught
and raised like thinking that something like this exists, right

(02:24:45):
like this this this this correct patriarchal order, like it's
like it's it's it's almost it's almost like this like
righteous truth. Um and you if you then discovery like
that's kind of a lie, and that like women are
actually individuals with value not tied to the ownership by
man um. Some men have a very very unhealthy, often
violatile reaction to this realization or confrontation. So some people

(02:25:09):
then decide to do mass shootings. Some people, uh, kill people,
some people just do you know, some people might just
do you know, like um, intimate partner violence, right, say
that they do get a partner at some point and
it's not going the way they want and they just
become abusive. Right. So there's a whole bunch of ways
this this type of thing can manifest. Um. So, faced

(02:25:30):
with the work of like not being a dick and
trying to combat this ingrained misogyny and then having to
like actually put effort into being attractive and desired, a
lot of men instead opt to either like attack outwards
or withdrawal inwards, and sometimes the mix of both. So
with the with the fascist from boy thing, a lot
of this is like withdrawing in words, right. A lot

(02:25:51):
of these people are too introverted and to kind of
cowardly to actually do like a mass shooting, which is
like that's that's that's that's probably good. Um. But then
them and drawing in words, we're gonna it's kind of
manifest in this in this in this different way. So
when dealing with this almost like misogynistic nihilism. A lot
of dudes really lost hope in the prospect of a

(02:26:11):
future romance with women. So instead of putting in effort
to adjust their personality, adjust their behavior, change the partrict,
change their patriarchal outlook, and improve their physical appearance, many
guys insaide will retreat to their online communities full of
other guys facing similar issues. All Right, it's easier to
live in front of a screen and not have to
face other humans in person. These these people don't really

(02:26:32):
have much substantial experience in real life interacting with the
opposite gender. Um. So these perhaps, you know, these these
so called straight guys that were drawn to fend boys
also may have had just had like bad experiences with women.
They may have faced rejection, and that rejection may have
really brought them down. Um, and then they assume that
they're always going to be rejected by women because of

(02:26:54):
like a few bad experiences and the kind of guys
who are on these chans forums and at it online
gaming they tend to be generally more socially outcast people
who aren't necessarily super physically naturally like attractive and masculine. Right,
you have to like people. Everyone, almost everyone can be attractive.
You just have to like put in work if you
if you just never do that, Like a lot a

(02:27:14):
lot of boys are never taught how to actually make
themselves look good, so they're just kind of like just like,
like attractive isn't much like they if you go on
these in cell forms, they'll focus a lot on like,
well I have you know, there's these folds in the
creases of my eyes, or like the way that my
nose is very physically impossible for a woman to be

(02:27:36):
into me. And it's like no, like more than people
Like there's all sorts of different preferences people have for
physical things, but overall, like the number one thing you
can do to be attractive is to be a person
that people like be confident their life if you have
like have like a good personality, like learn how to
do a variety of things and just like have have

(02:27:58):
a life. Lot of the all these people like that
seems neat They think that they can achieve, you know,
they think that women should flock to them even if
they put in like new effort at all, right, if
they just do what they're doing, they feel like, why
is this not working, or the effort they put in.
It's like Ellie again, Eliot Rogers the perfect example of
these kind of people. Like the effort that he put
in was he like made his dad buy him a

(02:28:19):
really nice car, and he dressed in expensive clothing. And
it's like, well, that's actually very few people are attracted
to that. And yes, the people who are attracted solely
to someone having a nice car and clothing probably have
really weird, specific like physical things. They're also only looking for, um,
But that's because you were like like that, that's not

(02:28:40):
making yourself attractive as opposed to I don't know, learning
how to cook or or learning you know, a foreign language,
or you know, being an emotionally available person who's not
purely viewing relationships into transactional nature where you're you're paying
for sex by being friendly. You know. But you know,

(02:29:01):
you know what, but you know what's easier than doing
all that is just hating women. That is, that's a
much easier thing for these for these people to do
default to this. So the Internet taught me one thing.
It's that it's quite easy to hate women. So while
these like all right, hell holes like four chune um
and you know, read it online gaming, right, online gaming

(02:29:22):
is full of misogyny. Um, all these all these places
like really hate like actual women. It's they still heavily
fetish size femininity, right, it's still viewed as this like glorious,
like like thing that's put put put put put put
on a pedestal, even though they hate like actual women themselves.
So feminine dudes can be fem boys or cause play

(02:29:44):
anime to garner attention or social praise, you know, amidst
some you know standard you know, like people like oh
your faguetes, you're disgusting comments, But you can then they
can still like cause play and dress up and post
pictures without being totally shunned by their fellow edgy writers
because it's kind of funny and some of them may
actually find it cute, even even though they may not

(02:30:06):
admit it. Uh. Fem boys often do have you know,
I generally think cute and effeminate features they can in
For these people, a big part of the goal is
to like trick the brain into thinking that you're just
looking at a girl, um that might just so happen
to have a penis. So therefore, when like viewing these pictures,
these guys are also like getting a sense of familiarity

(02:30:27):
with girl like imagery, um while thinking that like they
also might have a shot and with interacting with this
individual because they don't have a vagina, so that makes
it makes interacting with them like easier because there's like
more things to relate to. I guess, um, you would
see a lot of like role playing and like role
playing of sexting and like role playing of dating girls

(02:30:48):
through this femboy framework just actually a really common occurrence
as like and it was it was explained as like
it's like a sort of practice for imagining their future
of dating women. It was like it was like they're
doing this to like practice interacting with women. Um, so
they're just gonna be role playing dating fem boys while
being Nazis. But they're doing it so that it's like

(02:31:11):
a practice so that they will be better at dating
women in the future. It's like so that that's that's
actually a really common thing um or like yeah, like
sexting as as as like yeah, I'm just doing this
for practice, Like I'm not doing this so that I
will be good at sexting in the future, just doing
it with these fem boys on you know, discord on
for chat whatever. Um, because like all of like the

(02:31:34):
whole femboy thing is still dealing with the patriarchal views
of beauty. Right. It's it's femininity as this sort of
performance put on for the enjoyment of others. And because
it's about that, like appreciating femininity itself, it's seen as
a lot safer than full on homosexual attraction, right because
it's it's allowed if if you're if you can appreciate

(02:31:56):
the femininity, then that's allowed to propagate despite also kind
being degenerate because the person generally fem boys usually self
ideas male. But because it's wrapped in this feminine package,
it's allowed to be appreciated. Um. And for the people
that did eventually come to terms with their queerness, the
four Chan femboy thing allowed them to safely dip their

(02:32:17):
toes into exploring how like exploring homosexuality, bisexuality, exploring like
gender bending without like abandoning the typical masculine feminine rules
that were kind of raised to be comfortable with. Right.
It's still in the regular masculine feminine like rule sets,
but it's approachable because it's allowed to be done through

(02:32:37):
this both both this like ironic joke, but then also
it's still it's still based off these patriarchal views of
feminine beauty. So it's it's it's it's a weird thing. Um,
it's it's that's a that's the other part of it
that I like to explain to people because you're like, oh,
that is like trying to picture fascists fake dating each

(02:32:58):
other online so that will be better at dating women
in the future. It's just a very absurd idea. It's
I it's fair. I'm actually fine with this, but like
it makes like it makes sense, like it like it,
like I understand it, and you can like, yeah, I
get it. Um. And it did help a lot of
people eventually realize maybe I'm not the straightest stick in

(02:33:20):
the shed, or maybe not the straightest stick in the fascies. Yeah.
I mean everyone needs a safe space to figure out
what they are, and I guess that even includes fascists,
maybe because like not because I want fascists to be fascists,
but because maybe some of them, through this weird role

(02:33:43):
playing role, will like get over some stuff absolutely recognize
that like oh maybe maybe I'm just like gay and
I need to like work on myself, like I'm I'm
maybe I've been barking up the wrong tree with all
this Nazi stuff. Yeah, because like amidst like the gamer

(02:34:03):
Gate and the height of the insult era, these guys
felt more comfortable exploring their burgeoning sexuality in these male
dominated online spaces right there. It's easier to relate to
other males when they're when they're all like growing up
coming of age, dealing with dealing with these like feelings
of it like abandonment, loneliness. Right, they do this in
these male spaces, they feel lot safer to express themselves, um,

(02:34:24):
you know what, whether or not they're full of fascists
or like other people who are like very like reactionary,
because at least they can understand male desire um and
that's they can relate to that and internact with people
who are you know, they can eat in act easier
with people with dicks while wrapped in this feminine package,
which is so much easier than the much more scary

(02:34:46):
and much more elusive of like females out there. Right
It's it's that that's kind of the framework that this
was propagated through. It's it's it's really interesting that it's
like you have these people who like they're they're like
they're they're they're transmisogyny is such that like they they've
escalated to a point where it circles back around. Yes,

(02:35:08):
it is so intense. It is such a it's there's
so much going on. Yeah, yeah, it's like it's like
it becomes this like like I don't know, it becomes
like the fact that it's like conceptually impossible for them

(02:35:31):
for just like a woman to have a dick like
that has like circled back around and just completely come
to define how they have gender in such a way
that someone who is like just is performing gender like
as a woman, like to the extent that like they're
trying to like they're they're trying to have people use
like to transcellors against them. Yeah, there's it's it's an

(02:35:55):
interesting there's there's there's so much going on because yeah,
it's routed in a whole bunch of it's people exploring
gender in this weird way while also like relying on
heavily like misogynistic, trans misogynistic, homophobic kind of ideas. But
it's it's also it's like it's very queer in this
and like the way in the way they're going about it,

(02:36:16):
because it's a whole bunch of like self it's a
whole bunch of like self justification. It's a it's a
whole bunch of like stuff around like what they view
as feminine, what they've us masculine, what what they view
like being a woman means, um it is it is
it is. Uh, it's it's a lot yeah, like as
as like a more as like a gender queer, transperson.
I like, I like look at them go through all

(02:36:37):
this work and like, wow, they could have bypassed a
whole bunch of bullshit if they just like less of
a like, if they're just less of if they work
as horrible people, they could have experienced these same things.
But again, like they were, they're in their own isolated communities,
They're they're dealing with the same ingredients just from this
weird backwards way. So like it's it's obviously very transphoblic

(02:36:57):
and in a lot of senses, but a lot of
a lot of these pop will eventually realized, oh, maybe
I've actually trends. So it's this it's like I don't know,
it's obviously not great in a lot of ways, But
I don't know how to discuss it when saying like, yes,
it's obviously not great for how like trans misogynistic it is,
but they're all working through some stuff. Yeah, well you know,

(02:37:19):
I don't want The one thing I will say about
this is like, yeah, like if kids were actually allowed
to be queer normally, like this ship mostly would not happen,
Like you, you wouldn't get so many people who get
locked in these like who are queer, who get locked
into these spaces. But then also like the only way
that they could express themselves in these like narrow, isolated
waping spaces is to like this ship or they're into

(02:37:40):
the like just let people express themselves normally, and this
this you can deny the fascist recruiting ground, Like yeah,
I mean it's it's interesting, Like it's like when all
all these people are looking at interacting with them boys,
I think a lot of those is why they they
were able to play with these ingredients is that they
did not experience the same like anxiety or like heightened

(02:38:02):
stakes or neative or like negative connotations in their mind
that that they normally do when thinking about women, because
women are just so other so especially like if you
can rationalize this this attraction defend boys as simply a
prelude to dating like quote like real women in whatever
like fantasy cottage core future they might imagine, then this

(02:38:22):
idea is a way more approachable. You're gonna need to
explain cottage core for the I am not. I already
have we have we were having an add break I
still in brief it is this like return to tradition obsession.
You see among like chunks of the far right who
were obsessed with the idea that if they if culture
was the way it was in the fifties or in

(02:38:44):
like the they would live on They would live on
a small farm with their wife and children who would
be utterly submissive to them, and everything would be perfect.
But like, the only thing in between them and happiness
is that they're not able to live in a in
a in a small all like farm with a woman
who they essentially own. That the gist, I will say

(02:39:05):
a lot of college course are also used by liberals
and people on the left as well. Just as like
an aesthetic thing, we all want to live on a
small farm in the world. That makes it the cottage
core that we're talking about is specifically the idea of
I want to own a woman and and own my
children and have like no no power capable of like
stopping me from yeah whatever, because like cottage cottage, corn

(02:39:27):
TikTok is pretty sanitized and pretty much like more of
an aesthetic thing, less tied to those patriarchal structures. But anyway,
like everything we're talking about, there's the version that's Nazis,
and there's the version that's, like, boy, it sucks living
in a four thousand dollar a month apartment in New
York City that I share with nine people. I sure
would like to live on a cottage in the woods. Anyway,

(02:39:49):
speaking of living in college in these woods, Um, if
you buy these products, it'll get you closer to your
college core lifestyle. So give it away. Sponsored entirely by
the concept big cottage, big cottage, the cottage industrial complex. Alright,
we are back, and now we're talking about the point
of the Nazi cat boy debate that everyone I think

(02:40:12):
who is familiar with the topic knew was coming. No,
no breakdown of Nazi cat boys and the Nazi catboy
phenomenon is complete without talking about Nick Flintez and Catboy Cammy.
So Nick Flintes, Yeah, this is uh, this is this
is part of the part of the show that ever
that everyone's been waiting for. Um. I don't know that
most people would know to be waiting for this, but

(02:40:35):
broadly recognized by our audience. So in short, if George
Lincoln Rockwell has the permanent body of a seventeen year
old boy, um, that that's Nick Flintest as many if
you know, Nick Flintes is a white nationalist livestreamer political
activists that runs the Fascist America First organization. Uh. He's

(02:40:57):
known for fostering a farther right conservative base than say
and Shapiro or Turning Point USA. Um, and has pulled
stunts like sending his fans called gropers to Turning Point
USA events to take over the Q and A sections
and basically asked Charlie Kirk why he isn't more fascist? Um. Yeah,
And so he runs this whole organization mostly known by

(02:41:18):
doing his Daily Lives streams. He's been doing this since
he's like sixteen or seventeen years old. Fucking nonsense. Um.
And it's kind of a running joke or widely acknowledged
secret that Nick is kind of gay. Um. Based on
the way he talks about women, and based on what
he said about his own dating history and snide comments

(02:41:39):
from fellow home Homo Nazi friends has led a lot,
has led a lot of people to to this conclusion
that Nick may not be again the straightest stick in
the fascists. UM, thank you, thank you, thank you one.
And as as a significant contributing factor to this like question,
the nixt sexuality um is due to his catboy arc. Um.

(02:42:07):
So so this this arc begins in January, UM, finally
giving our audience the important important news. This is what
you need to know people. That month, Nick created a
catboy themed channel in his own America first Discord server

(02:42:29):
with Nick, with Nick messaging post catboys in here, please
with with weird capitalizations throughout the throughout the thing. So
Nick cheered on along with other people, posting pictures of
various cat boys from pop culture and cat boy edits
of Nick Fintez himself. UM. One America First Server user

(02:42:55):
posted cat boys are trad and which means like traditional
list in kind of the sense that like Nazis are traditionalist.
That's that's what that person is saying. He also posted
very funny. He also posted cat boys were like cath boys.

(02:43:15):
Oh god, so like again Yeah, yeah, so that's that's
that's the that's the joke. I'm you're, you're, you're out
of control right now. This is it is so I've
I've looked through this discord. He's arguing, this isn't very funny.

(02:43:36):
I've looked through this discord server multiple times for the
for the screenshots when you have the cathboy channel, and
it always makes me happy. It is. It's one of
the most funny things I've ever seen. Yeah, as as
your friend, I'm always warring between wanting you to be
happy and worried that this is a cry for help,
but please continue. Eventually, Nick faced some pushback from inside

(02:44:00):
the server for fostering degeneracy um with with others with
with others defending the Catboy channel by saying, brother, we
love is Christian amazing and standing see this is this
is this is exactly, this is the good ship. This
is what we've been building towards as a civilization, right there, baby.

(02:44:24):
Other people other people defended the Catboy channel by saying,
women don't respect Christianity. Your tribes thoughttery always leaks out eventually.
Good God, yes, that's that's that's the good stuff I got.
I got no comment, just just perfect thank you. But
but because Nick is fundamentally a coward, he did cave

(02:44:47):
under pressure and deleted the catboy channel. Um, we we lost.
I think the American First movement today could be so
different if he kept this is this is why the
cause of Americanism is doomed, this kind of cowardice. But
but but as as we will see from Nick, oh
absolutely this this whole, this whole sections about Nick Fintest

(02:45:10):
being thoroughly cocked. But as as we will see, Nick
continued to use um the exact rhetoric I laid out
in my in Sales gammer Gate and antifeminist section while
defending what he calls attraction to traps um and we can,
of course, we can apply this this defense broadly to

(02:45:31):
catboys and from boys, as Nick does. Um, I'm going
to try to I'm going to try to play a
video of about about Nick fuentas um our traps gay? Yeah,
traps are gay. I've always maintained traps are gay. Of
course you have sex with the man, it's gay. There's
no getting around now. Now, that's said. That's said, Look,

(02:45:54):
it's gay. I get it. I agree. Now that's said,
it's you know, we're in times where the women are
not really meeting their obligations. So I'm not saying you're not. Look,
if you have sex with the trap, you're game, no
doubt about that, and you should be ready killed, you
should be made fun of. But it's a little bit
different than if you did it like twenty years ago.
That's all I'm saying. If you in the nineteen sixties,

(02:46:15):
in the nineteen sixties were banging a trap, I would
say what's wrong with you? Like I would say that now.
I would say that now, I would say, well, you're
some kind of sick freak. We have all these beautiful
girls and they're normal, you know, and you have sex
with a trap. What's wrong with you? But in nineteen
it's like, well, it's it's different. It's a different circumstance,
different options. There're still disavowed, I disavow, it's condemned, it's gay,

(02:46:38):
it's all that. But you know, it's just different. I
think everybody understands that. But I'm still listen to half
a little just have to have a little nuance all right,
it's just a little nuance different times to different times.
It's I maintain strong disavowal, strong disavowal, do not do

(02:46:58):
not do that. It's gay, it's immoral. You're going to hell,
and it's weird and it's gross. Oh my god, what's
wrong with you? Yeah, I haven't heard that one in
a minute, person, I'm upset. That was horrible. You don't
heard femoids since the David Sereni days, which looks at

(02:47:21):
home if you don't, if you if you missed David Serene,
you missed the one brief moment where the far right
was purely funny. That was bad. So so being the worst.
So yes, being being attracted to traps makes makes it gay,
according to him, But not really, because the female race
isn't carrying their burden like it once did back in

(02:47:43):
the sixties. It's like back in back in back in
the old days of the nineteen sixties. It's it's like
they've almost gotten back to the like the I mean,
I guess it probably still sor but like the thing
you got with that just sometimes where they were like, yeah,
like I fucked, but I'm a top. So it's not gay.

(02:48:04):
It's like like so close there, They're so close, and
it's like it's not like Roy Cone kind of yeah. Yeah,
it's like I think I think like I think once
we get like just slightly like maybe like twenty more
years out from like the evangelical evangelicalism as I don't know,

(02:48:26):
I mean maybe maybe maybe it's resurgen is gonna be
like a big enough heyday thing. But it's like I think,
if you had like twenty years with the right wasn't
completely dominated by a certain evangelical homophobia, like I think
you would just get back there and well, we're already
on that way. And it's but the Nick Funt has
kept by saga, let's not stop here. No no, no, no, no,

(02:48:49):
no I am It is funny, maybe the wrong word,
but fascinating that we are heading inevitably barreling towards this
future where simultane neviously homophobia is still a massive part
of conservative politics and conservatives are gay as hell. Like
that's that's absolutely something where we are speeding towards like

(02:49:12):
a drunken family on the back of a four wheeler
about to break all of their necks at once and
crash in the woods. So Nick Fuentes love tweeting about
cat boys. He didn't a lot, And for a while,
Nick's cat boy jokes and like a memory was tolerated
under his banner of like irony poisoned reactionary comedy. But

(02:49:34):
every ironic joke has a stipping point that makes that
makes enough people wonder is this actually ironic? Uh? And
for Fuentes, that moment came when he live streamed a
ten hour date with a fellow fascist live streamer who
went by the name cat Boy Cammy. Now, first let's
let me explain who cat Boy Cammy wasn't at the time.

(02:49:56):
Then we'll get into the date that that we'll get
into Nick went as his brief altright cancelation, so Tour
Brooks a k a. Cowboy Cammy, formerly going under the
user name lolly Socks. So that's fun. Um is an
Australian fascist live streamer who first came to prominence by
uploading clips of himself harassing users on the popular video

(02:50:18):
chatting site Oh mowgli Ogilby. I ever know how to
say this? One mogul little emogli people here, people, people
will know what I'm talking about. It's this it's this
randomized chatting app that does video chatting with the randomized users.
Oh yeah, it's O M E G L E. I

(02:50:41):
never know how to say it, but it's this. He
would he would upload himself videos of him harassing people
via via this chatting app. UM. In one of them,
he dressed his up in black face and while brandishing
guns and trying to he was trying to find like
black black kids to taunt on this platform. Another one
he dressed up as a policeman UM and kneels and

(02:51:02):
an effigy he made likeness of George Floyd. Um, he
it's it's he is, he is. He is pretty gross. Uh,
he's he's he's he's a pretty horrible person. But for
a long time, his bit was dressing up in anime
costumes and dressing up as a catboy. Uh to then
talk about like neo Nazi rhetoric. Well, dressed as a
catboy and this this was his funny bit that he

(02:51:24):
would do. UM. At one point he was streaming like
twenty four hours a day, uh, for ten days, for
like for the for the days and days on end
um and he was earning thousands of followers from places
like US and Russia. Uh and he became the seventh
highest earning streamer on d live and d live was
a popular live streaming platform used by fascists um in

(02:51:44):
and so in late twenty nineteen was when Cowboy Cammy
popped up like in America, initially catching the attention of
Nick Fuentez. Over over the course of a few months.
UH he kind of made friends with various people in
the American far right internet sphere, like Milo Richard Spencer
Baked Alaska, but but Nick Fuentes was his original kind

(02:52:06):
of entry point into this. Nick saw Nick saw his
videos online and was interested in like what he was doing. Uh.
Nick said that he had a good sense of humor,
and he's good looking, and demonstrated and demonstrated his repeatability
that he's able to achieve viral moments and retain a
streaming audience. So Nick became friends with him because he
thought Cowboy Camy would be like a growing internet presence.

(02:52:29):
I wanted to kind of move his his type of
like his type of pretty like racist and horrible like
joke pranks, and tried to give them more, give them
more of a platform to kind of frontline reactionary ideologies. Um.
So when when Nick was getting familiar with Kawboy Cammy
Cammy on online activities were mainly consisting of dressing up

(02:52:49):
as an ANIMI cowboy to do random like political debates
or live streams or show it like anime conventions to
harass people, um and doing like various gags and pranks.
One of the most infamous incidents was when he was
deep throating a massive horse cock dildo hooked up to
a bucket of fake semen. Um good, okay, yeah, so

(02:53:11):
in December, in December, Catboy Cammy flew from Australia to
go visiton No, the semen was fake? It was? It
was Oh okay, gotcha it was. It was a massive
horse cock dildoo hooked up to a bucket of like
fake semen. Right, okay, so just like corn starch and
I'm happy. Yeah, if we want to go of a

(02:53:33):
recipe's later, I'm sure we could make that a whole episode.
But now I know how to make fake come. In December,
Catboy Cavy flew from Australia to go visit Nick Fuentez
and then just proceeded to live stream the ten hour
totally straight hangout session with Catboy Camy dressed up as

(02:53:53):
a cowboy the entire time. I mean, this does sound
very straight to me. They go to they go to
an arcade, they play games together, they get food and milkshakes.
They go clothing shopping and try on matching outfits, um,
all while laughing and giggling the entire time. Um well,
while uh well, uh while driving and listening to extremely

(02:54:15):
gay pop music. Catboy Cammy says to Nick that he
reminds them of an X. It's great and by the
end of the ten hour stream, it's implied that they
it's it's the end of stream. It's implied that they
share a room for the night. Um. Sure they did.
And it's ten hours of pure horrible Nazi flirting and

(02:54:37):
it's it's pretty. It's it's a thing. It exists. Um
But as so as news and details of the live
stream uh started to circulate, a wave of a wave
of infighting among the alt right and the gropers spawned
some amazing articles and headlines from neo Nazi news sites. Uh.
There's a headline from the Daily Stormer called the Rowing

(02:55:00):
for a Revolution is canceled after Nick Fuentes reveals to
be a catboy and gay Fayett. It's just pretty pretty astonishing. Yeah,
that sounds that sounds about right. And other other great headlines.
We have a Fuentes disavows catboy after a pressure from
trad news. If you're if you're sitting down and for

(02:55:25):
your movement that you want to take over the government
typing down Fuentes disavows cat boy. Perhaps you need to
think about some things. We got another headline as catboy
Candy versus Richard Spencer because Richard Spencer trying to cancel
Nick for this because Nick was getting more popular than him. Um.

(02:55:46):
And we have then another great headline just a Nick
Fuentes catboy BFF is a mockery to his sexuality anyway,
it's uh, it's pretty good. There's this this great this
is this this great? Um. A bit from one of
these articles, which which which which which I'll quote. So
it starts to start off by saying, is Nick Fuente

(02:56:08):
is attracted to women? If you trusted the plan, you
wouldn't ask such questions. I will say that I don't
think the ten hour live stream helps King Nick of
the Grappers. At the moment he had a good thing
going by trying to promote a more Christian and normal
presenting nationalist movement and was getting a lot of traction
until he ruined his image by associating it with this.

(02:56:28):
None of his various enemies did this to him either.
He did it entirely to himself. So yeah, um but like, obviously,
like the point of this is not to like, not
to like put Nick Fuentez's sexuality on blast, like I do,
do not care one way or the other. Um, it's

(02:56:48):
not a problem. The problem isn't is that. The problem
isn't that Nick may find cat boys incredibly hot. Uh.
But the problem is that he's like a Nazi and
stuff and calls for the extermination of gay people while
also doing all of this ship um and you know Nick,
Nick still maintains that he isn't gay and gay people
should be exiled from society and he would never associate

(02:57:11):
with homosexuals blah blah blah blah blah, um, all while
doing all this incredibly straight behavior. Um. Uh. For update
on Catboy Cammy. Later, Catboy Cammy made multiple appearances That's
Trump rallies and various other political events, going viral multiple
times for screaming incredibly racist, anti Semitic and openly fascist rants. Um.

(02:57:34):
You probably saw footage of catboy Cammy in Um. He
was just just, he was just he was just dressed
as like a regular person. But he there was a
few clips of him at Trump rallies that went very
very viral. Um and Nick even u disowned disavowed catboy
camy for bad optics. Uh. During during during these incredibly

(02:57:55):
racist rants, he would he would go on at at
at Trump rallies. Um. And then of course we have
a mayor America First and uh and and Nick Fuentez
then being you know, an escalating part of the protests
in d C leading to January six. Um, we have
the person alleged to have stolen Nancy Polosi's laptop being

(02:58:16):
in those America First discord servers and uh and grooming
young boys by dressing up as a cat girl. Um
So all part of all, part of this will get
talked about later in like these articles and stuff. This
has not been talked about. Some people already know about it.
But but yes, um, so it's all part of this

(02:58:37):
same like Nick Fuentez catboy sect of things of these
these like people who who call themselves tread cats who
then do all this weird cat boy shit. And yes,
the the person who stole people laptop who was like
an open Nazi, UM was was grooming like miners on
on discord by dressing up this cat girl, by by
dressing up with a cat girl. Um. Yeah, so there's

(02:59:00):
a whole buch of this, this whole sphere of stuff.
You can find some incredibly dark dark corners. Um. But nowadays, uh,
in the Year of Our Lord, UH, fem boys are
way more of like it's like generally acknowledged to be
like a kind of like a leftist like communist thing
almost um like and and I think the reason why

(02:59:21):
this debate got so I think the reason why the
fascist like the fascist femboy debate got so kind of
heightened in the past few years, like ever since, like
tumbler band porn, Uh, there's been a migration of tumbloy
users onto Twitter, and a part of part a part
of this migration is not sake for work users and
content um, including fem boys and people who fetishize fem
boys and even fetishized racist fem boys moving moving on

(02:59:45):
to Twitter, right, Twitter has become the new has become
the new de facto tumbler in a lot of senses.
So the past three years, more and more normalies have
been exposed to these types of like off the cuff people. Um. Then,
of course TikTok has sent fem boys into the mainstream
because TikTok is also it's not an image ward, but
it is a visual medium right where you're posting small
videos of yourselves. So a lot of a lot of
cat boy and fenboy content on TikTok. There's even this

(03:00:07):
horrible article from two from August by Vice called introducing
fem boys the most wholesome trend on TikTok, as if
fenb boys were invented in mind boggling article of But yeah,
fenboys are now much more. If you take the Vice
article as an example, fen boys are now fully mainstreamed. Right.

(03:00:27):
Fenboys used to be a small subculture, but among gen
Z kind of culture as a whole. Now fen boys
are very popular. They are they are kind of they
are one of one of like one of like the
hot new pokemons to collect um And I'm going to
har that's cultural appropriation from millennials. You're not allowed to
talk about pokemons. I don't I don't care. We we

(03:00:49):
own those. I just just to talk about like scale
of memes here. I have some Google have some like
Google trends, um on like Nazi cat boys and not
see fem boys. Uh, and we see the mass The biggest,
biggest spike in Nazi femboy is January of one, which

(03:01:11):
makes sense that that's when I started writing this this script. Actually, um,
you say yeah for for Google trends, we got a
massive spike in January one, and it's kind of been
decreasing since then, but still still like it was. It
was like you would see blips every once in a while,
like there's a small blip of Nazi fem boys in
a small blip in and then a small blip at

(03:01:33):
the start of the pandemic in March because people are
alone and isolated so they're doing this instead. Um. And
then yeah, January one, massive massive spike. UM the same
thing with a very similar to racist fem Boy. It's
basically the same exact trajectory. We do get a pretty
big spike and racist fem boy in June of um

(03:01:55):
and then another big spike of actually of November one
is the highest. The highest searches for racist FM boy.
So it's still very much an ongoing meme of like
a thing I'll being like, yeah, femboys are pretty racist.
It's still completely completely ongoing. Oh thank god, Yeah it is.
It's don't worries, it's not. It's not a closed case.
And that's good. Garrison. I was really worried for a second.

(03:02:17):
No people, people, and this, Like I think, I think
if you're not extremely online, you probably even like you
might not know about this, Like this is like this
is an actual discourse on Twitter, like like this there
will be like a week We're the only thing people
argue about is whether fem boys are inherently racist, which
obviously they're not. Like it's it's so. And the last

(03:02:40):
thing I'm gonna mention here is enemy is in the
Is it the unicorn riot discord leaks? When they leaked
a whole bunch of information from lots of different fascist chattels.
We have over a thousand mentions of cat boys inside
that you know, couldn't riot fascist discord leaks? Garrison. I
have a question for you, Yes, do you think God

(03:03:02):
stays in heaven because he too lives in fear of
what he's created here on Earth. So if you want
to have a fun time, you can go to Discord,
Leaks dot Unicorn, Riot dot Ninja, um slash Discord slash search,
then put in, put in catboy and scrolls skulls scrolls
through thousands of posts from these Nazi channels, not mend

(03:03:26):
cat for here we got stuff from like sar god
of a cod the We have the Discord channel, Domestic
Terrorism Planning, Discord Catboy channel, we of course have we
of course have Nick Fuentez. We got every whatever you
would look for, you can find it here. Um. And
that is that is the curious case of Nazi catboys.

(03:03:47):
So there there you go. Any any questions, Class Garrison,
why why did you do this to us? Because I
thought it would be funny? It is on the on
the inside, it's funny anyway, happy Well that is uh
so yeah, Now I hope, I hope you all have

(03:04:09):
a better look into why the fascist femboy meme exists
and how people can have the cognitive distance in their
own heads in terms of you know, fetishing, fetishizing feminine
attributes while still hating women and then leading into the
Nick Fuentez catboy craze that has swept the nation as
a whole. So just okay, just just just be queer

(03:04:31):
and a leftist. You don't have to do the ship.
You do not have to wrap your brain in fucking
seventeen layers of bullshit of like weird misogyny. You can
just just be gay and a leftist and as as
we as we showed you can, you can. You can
be a leftist. You can love Stalin and be a catboy.
It's totally fine. I think you can be anything and

(03:04:54):
be a catboy. That's that's the main message of the
twenty one century. Vladimir Putin is going to come out
as a catboy when he releases his next unhinged rant
and support of J. K Rowling. That's that's that's where
the discourse is headed. It's inevitable, it can't be stopped.
I wanted to be Nick Fintes and Vladimir Putin holds

(03:05:18):
cans being a cat boy. All right, Well that's where
we're going. That doesn't for us today, everybody. If you
wanna follow the show, you can follow us on Twitter
and Instagram, at happen here pod and cool Zone Media.
You can follow my catboy posting at Hungry bow tie. Um, yeah, yeah,
yeah Hey. We'll be back Monday with more episodes every

(03:05:46):
week from now until the heat death of the Universe.
It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool zone media dot com, or check us out on
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
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Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone media dot com
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