It Could Happen Here Weekly 37

All of this week's episodes of It Could Happen Here put together in one large file.

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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 compiletion 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 gonna be nothing new here for you, but you
can make your own decisions. Welcome to It could happen here,

(00:28):
the podcast where we spend all of our time talking
about skincare now personally and a lot of people say
this is a bad idea. I enjoy using concentrated chlorine
with a little bit of ammonia. Um, it just cleans
the pores, It cleans the grout, It gets all of
that pesky code out of your lungs. Um. You know.

(00:50):
An entire generation of British and German and French boys
all agree chlorine gas does the trick. How are we doing?
What's this episode about? Hi? Welcome Welcome to It could
happen here? A podcasting about things falling apart and how
we can maybe put them back together. I'm garrison, Um,

(01:10):
I'll be I'll be leading leading this swed um with
me is is is Chris? And uh this this random
person that we brought on from the street named Robert
Um and we'll be talking about some things that are
not great and kind of current problems. So I I

(01:31):
spent I spent a lot of my formative youth lurking,
studying and kind of documenting some of the some of
some of the bad places on the internet, you know,
Nazi chat rooms, chance sites, Facebook, hate group you know whatever,
all all of all the things, um. And you know,
growing up in Portland, Oregon in like the twenty teens,
this was this was something that felt kind of foisted

(01:53):
upon me as as a kid discovering my own queerness
and coming out of an extremely homophobic, like insular Christian community. Um.
Meanwhile in Portland having you know, self described fascist march
alongside gay hating Christians on my city streets, Nazis murdering
people on our public transit. You know that. Uh, that

(02:14):
that that that put a lot of fellow fellow scrawny
gay kids, uh to put on black black hoodies and
balla lavas to mason fight far right extremists that were
like two or three times their size. Um. But the
problem is, of course what what what one dred pound
Depressed teens aren't aren't necessarily the best brawlers, um under

(02:35):
under some circumstances, although they can handle uh the fire
extinguisher filled with paint pretty well. That's true. But a
lot of us also started doing like online research and
stuff um to find like the names and dresses of
like fascists and members of hate groups and all all
that kind of all that kind of stuff. I still
remember the kind of the the thrill and the buzz

(02:57):
of my first like big find as as a as
a baby online lurker. Um it was I think it was.
It was the leader of the hell shaking Street Preachers
who was living at the time, fucking prick that that was.
That was the first guy I did UM. And I
remember being very excited being because yeah he was he

(03:18):
was a massive asshole of so yeah, he's he's like
a you know, very extremely homophobics quote unquote street preacher,
just a big old show. Yeah. But a lot of
like this, like online research work wasn't wasn't just crush
referencing social media posts with the White Pages, property records
and voter registrations to send nice postcards to hate group members. UH.

(03:39):
Time was often spent tracking the use of like memes
and cataloging and sharing fascists plans for projects and events,
keeping keeping tabs on like their current propaganda trends that
online white supremacists were. We're trying to we're trying to
push and UM. One of one of the things that
I came across about about two years ago was called

(04:03):
Operation Pridefall. This was this is one of the one
of the one of one of these like. It was
an organized campaign ran by people on Fortune, Discord, and Telegram.
I I came across it a few a few days
after the the plans were published online. And if you
already know what Operation Pride Fall is or or heard
that term before, UH. And if you're you know, like me,

(04:26):
and we're on similar online spaces, you've you've probably found
the past few months of antiqueer propaganda. The massive increase
in the gay and transpeople are groomership and the shutters
can get pride discourse to be all very very predictable,
a strangely familiar, like the worst case of deja vu,
and in large part of the result of years of

(04:48):
work behind the scenes by social engineering online bigoted trolls
and self described fascists. So we're gonna we're gonna talk
today about kind of the overlap between this this thing
called Operation pridefall uh, the Groomer discourse and how that
kind of feeds into kink It Pride discourse. So three
things that are not great, that don't go great but

(05:11):
actually do kind of go great together. So a first,
first of all, a little a little background on the
whole recent Groomer thing, because we haven't actually discussed the
Groomer stuff in depth on the pod yet. Sure haven't
you know why we haven't. I'd be like, whenever like

(05:36):
horrible things happen in the news, I try to push
back on just releasing an episode immediately covering it in
case we have something like actually good to say. Um.
So we've kind of waited to talk about the group
of discourse stuff for a long time. UM, And I
think now is is totally is totally fine to do
so because we've had we've had months to let it

(05:57):
to let it simmer. Look at like the types of
things they're encouraging, look at all of like the physical
action they're trying to do, and with Pride Month approaching,
we're going to see a resurgence of it in the
next few weeks here. Um So, as mentioned in our
in our week long War on Transpeople episodes which was

(06:17):
released like right before the new wave of the groomer
ship accelerated, but in those episodes, we talked about the
long history of conservatives and evangelical organizations promoting the false
narrative targeted at parents and like concerned citizens that gay people,
especially gay men, are more likely to be child predators
than their heterosexual counterparts, along with the idea that queer

(06:41):
people are out to quote groom you're definitely on straight
child into being gay, right, uh so in insinuating that
that that they can then like have sex with them
or something. Um, it's but yeah, they're trying to scare
parents to be like gay people are out to get
your kids. Um So, the actual like idea of what

(07:03):
being a groomer means changes based on who you're talking to. Um.
In part two, I'm gonna going to quote a conservative
writer who like admits this as as such, but still
defends the use of the term um Because at the
very least, if they used grooming within the context of
turning your again absolutely completely heterosexual child um into a
gay person. Thus they would, you know, begin to hate

(07:25):
you and resent you as a parent for your godly
Christian values. They also consider that grooming. Um, it's not,
it's not, it's not. Actually, just as a general rule,
the attitude is if they do not turn out to
be the exact kind of weirdo Christian as their parents,
they were groomed by somebody, and it's merely a matter
of picking the topic of the person to blame. Yeah,

(07:46):
And all of that sort of rhetoric was extremely popular
through like the eighties and nineties and the early two thousand's. Um.
But then came the knots in the twenty teens and
this this this kind of had an attitude shift and
some of that started to go away. Got we got
a queer eye, we got ellen uh. The rate of
conversion therapy started to decline. It was getting banned in

(08:07):
more states. There was more queer acceptance in certain in
certain sects of the church. Even of course gay marriage
went national in and eventually being like aggressively homophobic became
like not a good look. It did. It was not
you were not able to do that anymore, um, and
still be able to have and and and and do

(08:28):
it as like nonchalantly as you were as you used
to be able to, whether that's in your like TV show,
or whether that's you as a corporation UM, or you know,
some random other sectors of public life. But then, of
course Trump got elected year after gay marriage went national,
and then there's this resurgence in far right extremism, and

(08:49):
the more commonly accepted kind of nonchalant gay bashing of
old gets passed down to the next freak down the line,
which is trans people. So with that, the the adage
of like the disgusting groomer freaks are going to turn
your kids gay turns into the gender ideology freaks are
going to turn your kids trans. It's all the same stuff,
just passed on to the next to the next thing, um.

(09:12):
And so we have that like anti trans and therefore
anti queer hate festering for a few years, And this
inevitably opens up the door just a revival of classic homophobia. Um.
Even even liberals like Front of the Pot at J. K.
Rowling um and lots of the original Turfs got to
apply the same homophobic rhetoric to trans people, um and

(09:33):
gender nonconforming folks, which then obviously results in that propaganda
and rhetoric being used to attack LGBTQ people on a
whole once again. So it's it's resurrecting these old homophobic
tropes and just applying it to a new generation of
queer people. Um and uh So for this next part,
we're gonna we're not gonna talk about lives of TikTok
because they did play a big, big part in what's

(09:56):
what's some current discourses today? And I promise we'll get
to operation I'd fall here shortly, just just hanging there
with me. But before we talk about again, other friend
of the pod, lives of TikTok Um, do you know
what else it wants to turn your kids gay? Oh?
Are you talking about the Washington State Highway Patrol? Because yes,

(10:17):
they absolutely do, Garrison. That's the one guarantee the Washington
State Highway Patrol makes. They'll make your kids gay. Okay,
Lives of TikTok joins the fight today, And I let's
just take a moment to acknowledge how fucking frustrating it
is that we have to discuss seriously TikTok that matters,

(10:39):
like the worst. It's terrible. It's terrible. People always criticize
the show for being like why do they talk about
all these dumb social media things? So like, yes, I
know that they're stupid, but the bad part is that
they actually matter. Yeah, I mean maybe, Yeah, we talk
about them because of the seventeen year old trans girl
in Texas who just got assaulted by like five dudes.

(11:00):
Is she was blamed on the shooting, and she was
blamed for the shooting because in part of a lot
of ship that Lives of TikTok helped to stir stir up,
but because they proved there was a market for it
that if you're like a right wing shit grifter, attacking
trans people is a great way to get an engagement anyway, Sorry, Garrison. Yeah, So,
Lives of TikTok is a social media account turned to

(11:21):
social media campaign started in April one by a Brooklyn
area real estate agent named Chaia Chickum, who, by the way,
attended the January six attempted fascist insurrection. Um when when
when violence broke out that day at the Capitol, she
actually tweeted a play by play on a previous Twitter
account of hers uh, posting videos from the crowd and

(11:44):
talking about tear gas and rubber bullets being like shot
right next to her um. And then after she left
the riot, she she tweeted on Twitter that that the
the event was peaceful compared to a BLM protest. So
that's yes, anyway, five five people died. You know, we
we've we've we've now reached the part of we're now

(12:06):
in tragedy of as farce of the thing that happens
in every single state that goes fascist, where all the
fascists trying to do a coup and it fails and
then nothing happens and then they take over the state.
Like seriously, our version of that instead of like, I
don't know, weird fascist yakuza guys, it's the libs of TikTok.
It is the limbs of TikTok. So the Limbs of
TikTok was around like the third attempt by right check

(12:30):
to start a vital social media account. Uh, you know,
the saying third times the charm, but in this case
it actually was. So the account's gimmick is reposting and
often grossly misrepresenting select clips from quote unquote libs on TikTok,
big big shocker, big big surprise. Uh, But more often

(12:52):
than not, that really just means posting videos of queer
kids and transpeople, uh, captioning it with something reactionary, and
then leading a targeted harassment campaign against those individuals. On
on May thirty one, so just about a year ago,
she made her first grooming related post, just tweeting stop

(13:13):
grooming kids and all caps. This is the first time
she tweeted anything related to grooming. Um. The day before that,
she tweeted a video of a transperson um alongside the
vomit emoji and a caption that just says men should
not wear dresses. You can't change my mind. Her first
super viral video related to LGBTQ people was later in

(13:35):
June next month during Pride, by posting a TikTok of
a kid explaining the concept of gender fluidity. Pretty pretty
basic concept, uh, but she lives lives a TikTok commented
this is so messed up in so many ways. Her
Her post racked up half a million views and indicated
to her that the way to grow her little social

(13:56):
media project into a right wing viral sensation was going
to be with homophobia and transphobia. Uh that this is
how she decided to continue her online career. Essentially, she
called the prominent lgbt Q youth suicide prevention group the
Trevor Project a grooming organization, and towards the end of

(14:18):
two she kept using that term grooming groomer uh at
a at an ever increasing rate. Right It's it starts
starts in like May and June, continues throughout the summer
and fall, and then in the fall and winter she
starts really kicking up all of the stuff around around
grooming and queer people. I mean, all of her posts
are already mostly about trans people and like trans people

(14:39):
at schools. Obviously she was a big part of like
the the whole school board thing from last year. So,
but towards the end one though, is when the groomer
thing started becoming more of a recurring trend. Quoting quoting
slate uh. Towards the end of one and into the
new year, right check found her rhythm with memes and

(14:59):
videos calling LGBTQ people and those who supported l g
b t Q youth quote unquote groomers. She has even
attempted to smear one of the most prominent gay men
in the country as a groomer. In a deleted tweet,
right checks account accused Transportation Secretary Secretary Pete Bud's husband Chastin,
of grooming kids for his work at at supporting lgbt

(15:22):
Q youth organizations. This isn't fair. But I hate that
his name is Chastin. I know, I don't like I
don't like that name. I don't like that name. I'm
not a big I'm not a Chaston's stand either, but
but but yeah, it's like finding the most prominent libby
gay men and being like, hey, these people probably groom kids,

(15:44):
and you know that that obviously riles up their base. Um.
She's she's called for any teacher who comes out as
gay to their students to be quote fired on the spot. Uh,
which actually has happened since then. Uh has has has
been multiple times since since since this account has been
has been launched. Um. The account's popularity grew alongside last

(16:07):
year's racist, homophobic, and transphobic attacks on school boards across
the country. She would often posting videos of queer teachers
and lying about them grooming kids into being gay or whatever.
She was promoting organized harassment campaigns against those teachers, uh,
interspersed with tweets and screenshots of news articles about teachers

(16:28):
who sexually assaulted students, importantly not posting the article, but
just like a screenshot of the headline, along with comments
like funny, how this keeps happening, which is like neglects
to mention that, like all these incidents are from heterosexual teachers, uh,
or like that one story from last year of a
cop and his wife who was a teacher working together

(16:49):
to sexually abuse children, Like none of them are actually
about gay people. It's all. I mean, I'm not certain
if a school resource officer has ever stopped a mass shooting,
but I know that something like fifty of them have
been fired from a lesting kids. Yeah. It's it's it's
it's really it's really insidious because she's she's posting all

(17:09):
the stuff about you know, teachers grooming kids, uh, you know,
and into being like queer teachers grooming kids, like alongside
headlines of teachers actually like sexually sexually assaulting kids. But
those headlines are all of stories about heterosexual teachers. Like
but you know, so she posts both of those things.

(17:29):
So it's like to like to have this correlation for
her audience, despite them not actually being related, because yeah,
Lips of TikTok shore ain't posting about how cops should
be kept away from kids for the safety of the children. Um,
they're they're they're They're never going to post about how
many people who grooping stuff have been arrested because like
several of the organizers of of of this whole like

(17:51):
gave people like grooming kids things like, have been arrested
for child abuse since this started. Which yeah, no it's not,
it's never it's ever gonna matter, but you know, posting
and lying about queer teachers grooming children next to headlines
about teachers sexually abusing kids to manufacture this correlation, which
is of course false, but it's still highly effective. Now.

(18:12):
Believe me, I would love to not talk about Twitter nonsense,
but unfortunately to Witter, accounts like Lips of TikTok actually
do play a massive role in shaping offline conservative politics.
Lips of TikTok was very soon being interviewed by New
York Post, being boosted by Joe Rogan going on Tucker Carlson.
Other Fox News hosts like Jesse Waters began featuring content
straight from the lips of TikTok twitter feed uh, and

(18:34):
Tucker encouraged his viewers to follow the account before it's
a band if you want to know quote what may
be happening in your child's school lass March, when Lives
of TikTok posted the video of a woman teaching sex
ed to kids in Kentucky like you know, preteens or whatever,
she called the woman a predator. In the next evening,

(18:55):
the same clip was featured on Laura Ingram's Fox News program,
with the host saying, when did our school, any of
any schools become essential become what are essentially grooming centers
for a gender identity radicals. Um so, yeah, this is
the content straight from Liza TikTok being put onto the
most watched news programs in the world. Um and as

(19:16):
we'll see, also being taken in by some of the
most powerful conservative politicians. Mainstream conservative politicians quickly joined in
in the tuting of the lips of TikTok grooming horn. Uh.
Obviously around as Santis is a big, big part of this.
Of one of Florida Governor Rhoda Santis's top aids and
press secretary is a huge fan of Lips of TikTok

(19:38):
Um and is in frequent communication with them. Quoting the
Washington Post quote by March two, lips of TikTok was
directly impacting legislation. Rhonda Santiss. Press Secretary Christina Pershaw credited
the account with quote opening her eyes and informing her
views on the state's restrictive legislation that bands discussion of
sexuality or gender identity in kindergarten through third grade. Referred

(20:01):
to critics as they don't say gay bill. The bill
has been unquote. So this bill has has already been
used to get middle school teachers fired for for for
saying that they are not straight. Um. And you'll notice
that middle school is not in kindergarten through third grade.
Uh So, remember when we were all saying, hey, the

(20:22):
actually it actually doesn't matter that the bill says it's
only up for kindergarten through third grade. It's just gonna
be applied for anyone. Yeah, it turns out we were right.
Uh So it's this. The bill has already been specifically
cited in the firing of multiple teachers from Florida for
for just not not you know, conforming to the heterosexual

(20:43):
Christian hegemonic worldview, and lips of TikTok is still currently
among the most prominent influencers, affecting actual material conditions and
shaping both the rhetoric and propaganda while impacting legislation. UM
friend of lips of tick talk and descentences, Press Secretary
Christina Preshaw has said, quote the bill that liberals inaccurately

(21:05):
called Don't Say Gay would be more accurately described as
an anti grooming bill. If you're against the anti grooming bill,
you probably are a groomer, or at least you don't
denounce the grooming of four to eight year old children.
Silence is complicncy. This is how it works, democrats. This
is how it works democrats. And I didn't make the rules.

(21:27):
So yeah, see you see how we have. See how
that works. You called you called the dope Say Gay
bill a anti grooming bill, so than everyone anyone who
criticizes it is now a groomer? Is it? Is it
that a fun way to play with words? Isn't that nice?
That is a fun way to play with words? Garrison
love it. So the past few months we've seen this.
You know, queer people are groomers meme reach seemingly never

(21:50):
never before seen heights, and uh at least is and
at the very least is the highest and most me
medic has ever been in the past two decades. You know,
It's it's really building off of all of the Killer
Local pedophile ship, right it sure is. It's it's the
Robert do you want to briefly, briefly talk about Killer Local.
I mean, it's a bunch of bumper stickers. It's a
slogan like I know dudes who are not at all

(22:12):
fascists and say that because they're like New Dad's and
they're horrified at the But like the whole, like the
core of it is this right wing and it kind
of started off in like the sort of libertarian gun
nut communities. But it's it's, it's it's really used a
lot as sort of it's a group that you can
talk about doing anything too. You can talk about killing,

(22:35):
you can like fetishize murdering um. And if you can
then like define other groups as inherently pedophilic, then you
can do anything to them, right Like, that's the basic
idea is if you can get people saying it's always
okay to use vigilante violence against this group. Um, and
obviously no one's gonna defend child molesters. But then you

(22:55):
start making the case that people who are not in
fact molesting children are somehow pedop files or you know,
or somehow related to pedophiles, and then suddenly it's okay
to kill them. It's okay to massive social groups like
all of gay and trans people. So if you conflate
these two things are able to make these things represent
the same thing in someone's mind that makes homophobia now

(23:16):
not a bad thing, but like a moral imperative, like
you have to be homophobic because these people are grooming children, yep,
And you can get you get this interesting thing to
which like there are people who are like not quite
as far in who will do who will say? I
see things a lot where it's like someone's like, oh, well,

(23:36):
I don't have a problem with gay people, but like
they shouldn't groom kids, And it's like this is that's
not what's happening, bro, Yeah no, do you know do
you know what else doesn't groom kids? I mean, the
Washington States definitely does. But let me tell you, if
you want somebody to groom your children, the Washington Highways

(24:00):
State Highway Patrol will do that. But you know what
they won't do is protect those children in the event
of danger because that might endanger them. So look, look,
sometimes sometimes right someone who's someone who's killing your kid
and you need to get pepper sprayed, and when that
time calls you, you will beg for the Washington Highway
State Patrol. Well, you'll beg for a different police department.

(24:23):
But when those police get in trouble because of their
failure to act, than the Washington State Highway Patrol will
show up to protect those cops. Anyway, here's here's the bads.
We're back. Um. So as the queer people are Groomer's
ship was reaching the most memetic and the highest rate
of of of trending that it's has had in decades

(24:43):
this past April, at the height of the recent increased
wave of antiqueer legislation and anti lgbt Q rhetoric. Um.
This this is when some terminally online teenagers tried to
start kin get pride discourse once again. And I do
not want to talk about this, but I've written stuff
about it, so I'm going to this Legitimately, what I

(25:06):
was like thinking about I realized I was gay, and
I was like, oh my god, I should come out.
And then I would like. One of the things that
I spent a long time thinking about was does this
mean I have to do can't get pride discourse? And
for a long time I would have said no, of
course not, I'm never going to do this. Well, but
here we are, so anyway, uh doing kick doing kink

(25:30):
get pride discourse? Uh? Then, and even still now, while
the antiqueer onslaught is accelerating at the highest pace it's
had in years, sure seems to be like dumping fuel
on the fire. Uh what's up with that? Kids? Why?
So anyway? Uh, the discourse itself revolves around whether kink
apparel or paraphernalia render the pride space unsafe for minors

(25:53):
or quote unquote non consensual observers. Uh heavy heavy quotation
marks there by the way. Uh. But also it is
heavily rooted in assimilationist and respectability politics and a push
for LGBTQ people to be seen as more acceptable or
more normal while still existing in a heteronormative society. Um.

(26:17):
And now, obviously I'm not a fan of this discourse
happening in the first place, especially now, like why are
you doing it now? During all the groomer stuff. Stop it,
that's stop it, don't do that, quit it? Why are
you doing this? Uh? But first of all, I also
want to point out how this entire discourse runs on
the same train of thought that fuels all of the
groomer stuff in their first place. It's it's it's picking

(26:40):
at the same part of human brains. So here's I'm
going to read this post that went super vital about
a month ago, that that's sparked, that sparked the new
wave of this uh much much frustrated discourse. Quote l
g B t Q, youth being uncomfortable with kinks at
Pride is not homophobia. Kin set Pride might have been

(27:02):
fine if this was still the nineteen hundreds or adults
were the only ones attending Pride, but it's not the
nineteen hundreds anymore, and now kids are way more involved
in celebrating our identities. The celebrating our identities part there
is really important, and we'll we'll talk about this more soon,
but look, largely in the past like twenty years, there's

(27:23):
been this shift with queerness and sexual orientation being less
about who you fuck and more like a personality aspect
or a social identity with a branded aesthetic. Um, it's
it's this, it's like it's it's which is in some
ways good, like in some ways good that people are
more able to express themselves however they want. But you know,

(27:44):
kids at school aren't getting bullied for being gay anymore,
which again is good, less than they were. They're they're
getting bullied less somewhat depending on where you live. But
it's also kind of it's made people forget the whole like, uh,
like gaze bash back or gaze don't bash back, but

(28:06):
shoot first. Like it's forgot, we don't have that. That's
not as a core component of queerness anymore because queerness
is now able to be kind of more safe and sanitized. Uh.
And it's it's a right, it's like it's and it's
it's it's a personal identity in a way that it's
not it's not just about who you fuck anymore. It's
like this like personal identity aspect um, which I'm not
saying is bad. It's just that there's this thing that's

(28:27):
happened that's changed the way we talk about sexual orientation. Hey,
quick pause, This is Garrison from the future here, just
popping in to clarify a bit on what I mean
regarding this note on identities and identifying as various shades
of queer. What I'm getting at is that when observing

(28:48):
some of the baby queers around my age or maybe
a bit younger, queerness is seen as a more available
option for young people when putting together their personality or
sense of self, and more separated from the nitty gritty
details of who you fuck. Now that queerness is generally
more tolerated. Now, don't get me wrong, I do like

(29:10):
the idea of being free to choose queerness. In many ways,
I consider myself as having chosen to be gay. The
thing about framing that as your quote unquote personal identity
as opposed to simply choosing to be what you are,
is that the former lets you wield that quote unquote
identity against other people or other queer people that disagree

(29:33):
with you. It's it's this thing where queerness is filtered
through the lens of brands and like brand recognition, which
is definitely made worse by social media, dating apps, personal profiles,
and personal bios. And it's part of this cultural push
to like have everyone create their own personal brand, and like,

(29:56):
I don't want to identify as gender queer, I just
am gender queer. I don't identify as gay. I just
like catboys. Therefore I am gay. It's a different ontological
framing and one that I think is less susceptible to
heteronormative assimilationist ideas, and like the capitalist marketing to queerness

(30:17):
as a brand or as a market demographic. If your
queerness is a personal identity that's more sanitized, more approachable
for a heateronormative society, then you get to use your
identity to attack gay people whose queerness is more based
in deviant sexuality and alternative communities. I'm gonna I'm gonna

(30:39):
read the the follow up tweet to this, to this
thing that sparked the new discourse quote. Not even all
lgbt Q adults are comfortable with seeing kings at Pride.
There's nothing from there's nothing stopping you guys from adjusting
or having after events strictly for adults when they're partaken
that y'all need to adjust that every lgbt Q person
feels comfortable attending. So let's let's just do some like

(31:03):
queer history here for a second. The first Pride was
a riot um on on on on that night in
June in the nineteen sixty nine nice Uh, the police
raided the Stonewall in, one of the largest private private
gate clubs in the US at the time. The patrons
of the bar, you know, trans women of color, homeless,
queer teens, drag queens, lesbians, and leather daddies fought back

(31:28):
lots of trans teenagers through bricks at cops and like
a fair number of those trans teenagers were also sex workers. Uh.
Kink including you know, like leather daddies, and lots of
aspects that are we now views as like kink or
b d s M has been a part of Pride
since it's literal inception, like way back in nineteen sixty nine.

(31:49):
Um And while like, while drag isn't considered king now
in two it still is considered it's actually deviant. But
back in like the twentieth century, uh in in nine,
you know, in nine, New York City still had laws
that prohibited cross dressing, So drag used to be way
more kinky than it is now. Uh. And like basically

(32:12):
all queer sex used to be unacceptable kink. It was
literally a crime. It was a crime in Texas until, like,
do you like? I think right around when I graduated
high school two thousand three was when the Supreme Court also,
it's no longer an enforceable laws and it's illegal. It's

(32:34):
still illegal to own more than five dildos. Yeah, I
think it's five, but it might be six. So, like
all queer sex used to be unacceptable, kink and many
logistical aspects of gay fucking used to happen in public.
I'm gonna I'm gonna quote an article from them dot
us quote. For some people, gay rights and gay liberation

(32:54):
do not hinge on particulars of sexual desire. For years,
I've heard that we aren't just our irotic identities, but
for many of us, it does begin there, and it
does revolve around the ways we organize our erotic choices.
Before lgbt Q plus people had pride parades, our community
spaces were not just bars, but cruising spots like bathhouses, dungeons,

(33:18):
and public restrooms. It should be no surprise that many
queer folks find their sex lives and their sense of
community to be intertwined. B D s M. Subversive sexuality
and leather culture have enjoyed a long history within the
lgbt Q rights movement. They are inherent expressions of queer
culture and sexuality. Being free to signal your sexuality out

(33:40):
in the open within a queer context is the entire
point of pride unquote. So, like all of this discourse
around pride and kink, it pride reflects a modern but
regressive idea that sexuality is inherently damaging to see, experience,
or think about in a public con text, especially if

(34:01):
that sexuality is inherently queer. And there's this other idea
that we see a lot of in this type of discourse,
and it's mirrored a little bit with like the groomer
stuff too, that if you see someone quote unquote engaging
in kink, and like in the case of pride, that's
like what wearing a collar, harness or a pop mask,
that just the act of observation is somehow a violation

(34:25):
of consent. And it's really frustrating because indication of sexuality
in a non vanilla sense while in public is not
a violation of consent. Like I didn't consent quote unquote
consent to see the rainbow cops, right, But public indication
of sexuality is not a consent of violation. And again,

(34:50):
indicating sexuality is like the entire point of pride. Weaponizing
quote unquote consent to call out people that we see
but don't interact with, who are quote unquote dressed too
sexual in our own mind is bad for multiple reasons.
It also potentially dilutes legitimate claims of non consent in

(35:11):
cases of actual sexual violence. And it's it's like this
thing like if you look at someone in a pup mask,
there is no consent violation there. That's a really weird
thing that people that people talk about, and it's not
It's not like I'm not trying to start fights on
the internet with like these tender queer children, um, because

(35:31):
like and I I don't want anyone to find like these,
like you know, months old posts and start harassing these people.
But that post has like over thirty thousand likes and
thousands and thousands and thousands of retweets, and it basically
just repeats like old queer bashing talking points that conflate
kink and queer visibility with public sex that endangerous children,
and like conflating gays being visible and semi clothed with

(35:56):
being like dangerous to children are the same talking points
that it gets you used for book bands conversion therapy,
and they don't say gay bills. Right. This idea that
if you look at a gay person shirtless that's dangerous
to a kid, that's the same, that's the same underlying
motivation that fuels all of the screwbery discourse. Uh, it's
it's it's the whole thing where it's like, I'm okay

(36:17):
with gay people, I just don't want to see it. Right,
It's like that that that that idea in and of
itself is like is still like exists on that you know,
I didn't consent to look at it type of thing.
You know. This This is other other tweet from somebody
being like forcing people to see kicky stuff without consent
is really weird. I'm sorry, but I don't want pop

(36:37):
masks at Pride events for families. I saw that ship
in real life and it made me uncomfortable. Don't involve
other people in their kinks. I if they don't consent,
and like looking at someone in a mask, it'sn't involving
you in any of these kinks. You're if you're looking
at someone in an other mask, Like, if that makes
you uncomfortable, that that's your problem. You don't have a
right to not be uncomfortable with how people look or

(36:58):
are in public. Look, every time I go out into
the world, I see something that makes me uncomfortable. Um,
I see a lot of people with children. Now do
I think it should be legal to have children? Now?
I do think that it should be. It should be illegal, exactly.
So I like, look, we all have to deal with
things that make us uncomfortable. Look like we have a
clear solution here. The way to deal with events not

(37:20):
being family friendly used to get rid of families. That's
it's exactly right. We have to eliminate the concept of
the family. Yeah, come on, come on, come, Communist manifesto?
What this is? One oh one ship people? You were
you were? You were quoting from the Communist manifesto. Okay,
that's interesting. That's that's not where I got it from.
But I I feel like I feel like a lot
of these people, many of them like young teens, who

(37:42):
are complaining about being forced to look at unquote inappropriate
things that pride. I've never actually been to a pride
because most of most of modern pride is like really
sanitized and chill like it's like it is. It is
overrun with corporate sponsors, politicians and cops Like you are
you you are way more likely to see armed police

(38:05):
at like a Pride march then you're then you'll be
likely to see like tits or like gags or whatever
like most It's funny to me because like I started
going to these and this is before the internet was
what it was or moral panics were what they were.
But like in Texas, I would go to these events
where there would be people of all ages and families.

(38:26):
These are like little burning regionals. People would be like
at like on the big night when people are doing
like the fire shows and the firework stuff, people would
be like fucking and like manning flamethrowers, like while having sex.
There there were like there was a whole chunk of
it that was just like the kink row and you
could walk down and watch people get like whipped and
fuck a sibian and stuff. It was just like I

(38:47):
don't remember any of this fucking. Like the only discourse
was like, well, okay, we should probably like make sure
that people know where that kind of stuff mainly happens
so that like they don't have to walk around it
if they don't want to. But like it was, Yeah,
it's like this idea that like not even full nudity,
but like semi nudity within a queer context is inherently
more dangerous to children if it's if it's in a

(39:08):
queer context than a straight context. Right, we have all
of these even like queer kids can like complaining online
about being forced to see things at Pride just like
they would see way more skinned if they went to
like a beach in the summer. Like it's it's there's
it revolves on the same homeophoblic idea that like if
if you look at these things in a queer context

(39:28):
that is like more adult than it looking at it
within a straight context. Yes, Um, it's I don't know, frustrating,
it's frustrating and like another another reason why that I
think many of these like baby leftist tender queers are
who are who are crusading against kink at Pride and

(39:48):
complaining about like leather and or like sexy underwear. Um,
lots of them even uh, first of all, most of them,
I think lots of them haven't been to Pride because
there hasn't really been Pride for the past two years,
and lots of these people are like fifteen years old. Um,
but a lot of them also just like admit to
never be going to Pride because they're too terrified to

(40:09):
see a pop mask. Like they openly say, like I've
never been because I don't want to see these things.
Like sure, you're allowed to do that, but then don't
make don't like, don't campaign against King Pride, which will
result in your posts getting used by like homophobic trolls
and bigots. I don't because I don't want to see

(40:30):
a deep dish pizza, but I don't try to ban them,
like I understand that that's the thing you people, like,
Like the first time I saw pop mask was that
fucking Comic Con. Like it's like like like it's not
you don't see like band pup masks from comic con,
Like what Like these these people, like these kids are

(40:50):
are basing their fears off of like a few viral
photos that are often shared in a disingenuous context. Now, well,
we'll talk about these photos in a bit, but you know,
these these people are like fifteen years old, have never
been to Pride, and are just like simply terrified of
like actual sexuality, like they enjoy, they engage with queerness
is like a personal identity and stuff. But once they

(41:12):
get into like the nitty gritty of like sex, that
makes them really uncomfortable because their teens, because their kids
that that's okay. You can be uncomfortable with sex that
makes sense, that is that it's appropriate for your age.
But then don't make your entire online presence about trying
to shut down this massive aspect of queer history. Um
because like the kinky stuff that I've seen at Pride

(41:35):
is yeah, on par with what you see at Comic Con.
I often will see more more nudity at Portland's Comic
Con than I than I will at any of the
Pride events I've been to. Um, Like all of them
more like openly like fetish folks or kinky folks are
really responsible and act pretty appropriately at Pride, and and
the people who like say otherwise online generally just have

(41:57):
not actually been to Pride in their entire life. Um
because like this complaining about quote unquote like inappropriate fetishes
or like kinky conduct, it's basically code for I am
uncomfortable with you being positive about the way you view sex,
and I want you to not show it, and I
want you to not and I want you to not
talk about it, which is the same underlying thought process

(42:20):
that people use to be homophobic. It's the it's the
exact same thing. Um. Now, a lot of this discourse
oversimplifies kink and b D S M. Um. Right, queerness
can be about it can be about love, it can
be about it can be about sexual attraction um and
both uh or sometimes for like a sexual people in

(42:40):
lacking one or the other um or both uh. But
but by that same token, right, kink leatherin b D
S M aren't all exclusively about sex to a large extent,
they're also about community building. Um. And I just think
these these like earnest think of the youth arguments are
very silly because even when it comes to youth, because
if you're uncomfortable things, that's totally fine. But in a

(43:02):
lot of cases, like queer teenagers also have sex generally
with other career teenagers, sometimes even in a kinky context,
and that's okay. Pride is about celebrating everyone's individual ability
to do that. And I don't like it when when
people just rehash old home of public talking points to
to especially during during all of this, all of this

(43:25):
groomer discourse, because a key key part of key part
of kink, a key part of like queer sex, is consent.
And once you're start you start complaining what consent is
by saying that me looking at you wearing a collar
is a violation of consent. Once you start undermining what
consent actually means, that's like not a good thing. It's
actually not that is actually a bad thing, especially right

(43:47):
now during all of the during all of all of
all of the grimmer stuff. So that is we are
we've gone kind of over on on time here. Um,
but we're gonna make We're gonna make this a two parter.
In the next episode, we'll talk a bit more about
like tender queers and we'll actually get into the plans
of Operation Pride Fall and talk about how we kind

(44:07):
of got to this point because man, there's a lot
of kids sharing sharing pictures online and oh boy, do
those pictures originate in some dubious, dubious places. Um, So
that that that does it for us today. We will
we will see you tomorrow. Um, Pride is fun. We
should not police what other people do. So Yeah, anyway,

(44:32):
Bye bye, Welcome back to get Happen here. This is
part two of our discussion on Operation Pride Fall and

(44:55):
they kick Get Kick Get Pride discourse and the grimmer
stuff and how they all combine in the really horrifying,
really the way that I wish they didn't because it's
pretty frustrating. So, uh, last episode I talked towards the end,
I talked to a decent amount about tender queers um,
and I actually would like would like to define this

(45:16):
term here um and kind of get into why these
why these people are boosting these specific like talking points
that are just kind of regurgitate old types of homophobic stuff.
They claim it doesn't, but like it does. You're using
this exact same logic, you're just kind of reframing it.
So tender queers are this this the type of like

(45:38):
there's kind of like an in joke for like the
queer community of this personality type. Generally, the tender queers
are like a you know, typically a gen Z or
a millennial queer more likely to be like fem, whether
that be like a woman non binary or fem person lesbians, Uh,
you know, fem bisexuals, pan sexuals or like queer soft

(45:58):
boys kind of they feature this like combination of personality
designation an aesthetic, and they're known for being especially adapt
at using like watery language of therapy as a means
to like get out of most things. Um Ever, everything's
about like holding space and healing and intimacy, and it's
like it's wrapped up in this like jovial pastel bubbly package. Right.

(46:23):
If you throw in some astrology, some like corturoy overalls,
shaved heads and round glasses, and you've got yourself like
a basic tender queer. And a little quote here from
an author named Daisy Jones from an article that they
made quote just like the straight soft boy who uses
performative sensitivity to get away with being a little shit,

(46:43):
sometimes so does the tender queer. Tender queer generally refers
to a trope in the queer community of a queer
person who presents themselves as being sensitive, hyper vocal of
their feelings, sometimes thought of as prioritizing feelings and hyper
intentional language over their own harm and privilege. So they
kind of use like identity politics to avoid accountability. There's

(47:07):
like this um competitive oppression and self victimization. They center
themselves and their feelings in social or political movements that
aren't necessarily about them. They kind of they prioritize in
effective methods of self care. They utilize like gaslighting and
dumping the emotional labor of dealing with your own self
onto onto others, like to Tender queers are kind of

(47:30):
they're they're known to like mask toxicity and manipulativeness in
the performative language and aesthetics of social justice. They have
this like performative soft hypersensitivity and use identity politics to
kind of call out or avoid things that make them
uncomfortable and will like and will publicly declare those things
as problematic and in an attempt to force others to

(47:53):
conform with their own will. So that's why I describe
a lot of these like younger younger teens um who
who use these talking points against against quote unquote kink
at pride as tender queers, because like, they're the people
who are really sensitive about what makes them comfortable, and
they avoid any they try to avoid or campaign against

(48:16):
anything that makes them uncomfortable, and they use all these
like performative turns of phrase and talking points to to
avoid having actual discussions about it. It's just like weaponization
of their marginalized identity as a shield to avoid accountability
or to deflect against people challenging them for abusive behavior
or in in the in the in like the Pride case,

(48:37):
this like internalized homophobia. Uh there's there's the these little
little tweet exchange for some from some people on the
superviral kick a Pride post from a month ago. Um,
I'm fourteen and I don't want to see a half
naked person in leather straps and a gag and an event.
I take my family too. And someone replied, like, try

(48:58):
glancing Eddie Marty Gros or even a public beach before
you apply homophobic double standards. And then they the poster replied,
you think I'm homophobic, I'm literally a trans non binary lesbian.
So again this is this is this is this is
what I mean when I when when I when I
talk about title queers. Right, there's someone's calling them out

(49:20):
for applying this homophobic double standard on how they view
like public semi unity, right, not even like full nunity,
just like how they view public semi nudity like a
bikini or something right, and then they respond by saying,
I'm literally a trans done binary lesbian um and then
went out to say also, people at those don't wear kinkshit,

(49:40):
and that's why I don't go to Marty Gras or
large public beaches. It makes me uncomfortable seeing a bunch
of adults and kinkshit being sexual just physically makes me ill.
People at Marty Garras and public beaches don't act sexual
or wear kinkshit, And so like, I feel like you
haven't been to Marty girls like you will see way

(50:03):
more skinned at a public beach. Most kicks should require,
like requires covering your body and a lot of extra stuff,
Like if you're wearing a harness or like a latex
full leather outfit, you're like showing way less skin than
someone wearing a spido or a bikini. So maybe you're
just uncomfortable with people expressing their sexuality, which, in case,

(50:24):
don't go to Pride, because that's what Pride is all about.
That's the entire poot. But yeah, little the whole, Like
I'm literally a trans non binary lesbian. Like that's like
such a perfect encapsulation of what the tender queer kind
of trope is um and like not not not not
Many people like self self identify as as Tinder queer
as it's kind of this joke that the more kind

(50:45):
of punky queer community has kind of it's like an
we're putting a label on this, this behavioral trend that
we've observed, and it's it's kind of a joke, Right,
I'm not trying to call out specific people. I'm not.
If you're soft and emotional sensitive, cool, whatever, do whatever
you want. I'm fine, Just don't don't use these things

(51:06):
as a shield to justify forcing your will onto other people.
It's cool to not It's totally fine to like not
like people being publicly affectionate or like doing public like
It's perfectly fine to be uncomfortable with that. It's perfectly like.
That doesn't mean anything bad. It doesn't mean you're a prude,
it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you. But like,

(51:27):
there's nothing wrong with people wanting to be public with
that at a public event, celebrating the fact that it's
they are now less oppressed for doing that thing, like yeah,
or a beach or Mardi Gras, and like, make sure
you're cognizant if you're engaging in any kind of like
socially normalized ideas of like straight stuff is inherently less

(51:50):
sexual than gay stuff, right I always, I mean, I
advocate people being able to like get into their own
head and figure out why they think certain things like this.
It's it's this idea of uh meta thought, trying trying
to think about why you think about things. Um So,
if you if you're if you're more uncomfortable with two
men kissing then you are with than one man and

(52:12):
a woman kissing, you should think about that. You should
be like even even as like even as a trans
non buyinary lesbian, if you if you if if you're
more if you're more uncomfortable looking at two men kiss
you should think about why, why, what social conditioning has
caused this to happen, Because that's something that people have
been pushing for a long time, is that, yeah, gay
stuff is like more adult or more mature than queer stuff.

(52:34):
I think that's a big part of of of these
types of things being at prized like pushing back on
that idea. Um So, like I think and the reason
why we see more of these now is like there
are these baby tender queers who grew up in a
world where you were less likely to get fucking assaulted
for being gay, while also growing up on the Internet
in the age of Tumbler and Instagram. Right, these kids

(52:57):
were able to construct their own comfortable, safe bubble the
versions of reality online, only being exposed to what they
want when they want, right they get they get to
only view it things that they find esthetically pleasing, and
the pandemic certainly heightened this right with people being forced
to solely exist in their self catered online worlds. So
now with the outside world opening up, some of these

(53:18):
soft baby tender queers are going through puberty and are
dealing with their quote unquote uncomfy feelings um and the
added notion of being exposed to things that you have
specifically not sought out like that that causes them to
be uncomfortable. Right, if if you're if you're if you're
a FEMI person who has just attracted to other FEMI people,
having to having to look at dudes be affection. It

(53:41):
may not be your cup of tea, but and you
may not like enjoy it, but that's like it's just
as queer as you are. So if you shouldn't you
can't prioritize your queerness over somebody else's. Um it's it's
it's it's it's It's like there's this collection of baby

(54:01):
gates that gets uncomfortable being reminded that people, like especially
people whom they are not personally attracted to, have sex.
It's like if they're reminded that this happens and they
don't like it, Um, it's like it feels like they
have this sort of like anxiety just about about just
looking at something that they perceive as sexual in nature. Right,
and for this for them, this includes other but two

(54:24):
differently queer people wearing leather or being semi nude, like
dudes being shirtless or women being shirtless, for like think
that that's a whole other double standard that should be
uh pushed back upon. Um. But like, again, it's pride.
It's not any more naked than people at the beach. Uh,
So you're not, it's not. Actually if they're very selective

(54:46):
in the types of things that they that they will
they that they will focus on, and it plays into
this notion that's used by all like anti gay legislation,
that gayness is inherently more sexual than being straight, Right,
it's it's it's it's more sexual, it's more mature, it's
more adult. Uh because for a long time, being gay
was exclusively seen as like a hyper sexual dving act um.

(55:09):
And now, especially among gen Z baby queers, being queer
is now less tied to specifically the act of sex. Right.
Queerness is much more of an like an overarching personal
identity now, especially as like as an intersex with like
gender and stuff, right, you know, whether that being on
binary or this other stuff like pan sexual, bisexual, what
have you. But to kind of circle back to the

(55:31):
Kinker Pride stuff, people want us dead for being queer. Uh,
it doesn't him mad if someone's parading around in a collar.
If you're uncomfortable, you should maybe learned to fight, actually
fight back into people who actually want to kill you.
Like Pride was a riot, you should you should sort
out your uncomfy feelings elsewhere or director or director uncomfy
feelings that the people attacking us. So maybe maybe don't

(55:54):
prop up can get pride discourse When accusations of queer
people being all groomers is that is that an all
time high and there's fascists organizing to like shoot us
at Pride marches, So maybe consider that before you do
discourse on Twitter dot com. I'm I'm gonna do one
little quote and then we will have an ad break.
Just gonna end this section with a quote from them

(56:14):
dot com again quote. Kinks, sex and protests are all
inherent parts of Pride. One of the core tenets of
Pride is liberation and working against cultural shaming. Calling to
quote not perform your kinks and fetishes at Pride because
some miners are there and King can quote sexualize the
event unquote uh implies that celebrating sexuality and kink is

(56:36):
openly bad, and normalizing these things should be a goal
of Pride. B D s M subversus sexuality and leather
culture have enjoyed a long history within the lgbt Q
rights movement, and such public space of sexuality are driven
by much more than libido or countercultural impulses. They're an
inherent expression of queer culture and queer sexuality, and as
such deserve a place at Pride as much as anything else. Okay,

(56:59):
and now it's time to actually get into what the
title of these episodes is about. Uh, the Operation Pride
Fell stuff. We're gonna talk about this thing that sucks. Um. So,
whether you're looking at the conservative groomer discourse or the
tender queer kink it Pride discourse, you'll see a lot
of the same logic as well as a lot of
the same photos. We've We've talked a lot about memes

(57:23):
on the show, and I'm not gonna get I'm not
gonna get into like the powder memes very much right now,
but suffice to say that like a picture can stick
in your head a lot easier than a bunch of
words can. Um And throughout the Groomer and kick It
Pride shit, there are a few select photos that people
use to demonstrate their opinions on how gay people are

(57:44):
a threat to children. Um. Either either there's just pictures
of adults and like kink associated garb, usually like full
latex body suits or pop masks UM or uh. And
there's the specifically like uh. There's these two specific pictures
of kids just like standing next to adults who are
wearing pop masks that get used a lot. There's also

(58:05):
there's also a lot of pictures of like drag queen
story time and whenever, whenever I see any of these
very specific pictures, I flashed back to when I first
came across the original Operation Pride Fall four chune thread
back in because these are actually all of all of
the exact same pictures. Um so. Operation Pride Fall was
a cyber harassment campaign started on Fortune, targeting the degeneracy

(58:29):
of the LGBTQ community by attempting to sway public opinion
against queer people by linking being gay to grooming and pedophilia.
So checking back in two oh boy, Oh boy, has
has things happened? So? Initially organized on Fortune, Discord and
Telegram right before Pride Month, the campaign set out targets

(58:51):
and methods to flood the social media platforms of gay venues,
Pride sponsors, and LGBTQ people or supporters with spam and
t game memes and media, usually photos intended to imply
a link between being openly queer and the grooming of children,
uh and operating online under the banner of Operation Pride Fall.
The campaign started on May tense, when an anonymous four

(59:14):
chan poster posted a thread on poll outlining Operation Pride Fall,
which was pitching it as a crowdsourced campaign aimed at
damaging the LGBTQ community during the month of June. The
plans centered around quote unquote red pilling users in the
commons sections of companies that support l lgbt Q causes

(59:37):
on social media. The four Chan post read quote. Every June,
hundreds of massive corporations banned together to smother social media
in posts in flavor of Pride Month, a code word
for the degeneracy that is lgbt activism. Many of these
accounts are rather small and get very little engagement, yet
they continue to post without backlashed beginning on June first.

(01:00:00):
The goal of Operation Pride Fall is to get on Twitter, Instagram, etcetera,
and drop a ship ton of disturbing red pills on
homosexuality on the comments of the lesser known pages. The
bigger pages are okay targets, but posts tend to get
unnoticed in the sea of other comments. Commenting on smaller
pages once with less than one hundred likes and so

(01:00:21):
means anyone who've used it will see the posts and
companies will reconsider their pro pride posts afterwards. Unquote. So
if you scroll through the archived initial like Pride Fall thread,
you'll see a crowdsourced collection of pictures that they intended
to flood the internet with under in the comments section

(01:00:42):
of posts discussing pride or discussing LGBTQ activism or whatever.
Um So in this, in this like crowdsourced collection of photos,
we see a lot of drag queen storytime stuff. But
many of these pictures and memes are now the same
ones used both in the recent Groomer thing and in
the past two years of kin get Pride discourse. It's

(01:01:03):
it's the exact it's the exact same photos. Um It's
there's like, there's there's hundreds of them. There's hundreds of
of photos of like you know, people in pop masks whatever,
like waving waving pride flags. It's it's just there's a lot.
There's a lot of them, and the specific ones get
used for so much of the Groomer ship. Uh. And

(01:01:24):
they really started to gain much more visibility during after
the Opertion Pride Fall thing got launched. The Opertion Pride
Fall four Times thread also instructed users and how to
set up fake phone numbers to make burner accounts to
to comment on these on these social media pages. Um
There's another really interesting part that the Oppertion Pride Fall

(01:01:45):
planning stuff detailed was on on on discord on the
Opertion Pridefall servers and channels. The users were planning to
repurpose cringe e TikTok videos while relabeling them with anti
lgbt Q captions and hashtags. Uh, here's a here's a
quote from there. From there, from their planning planning discord,

(01:02:09):
an additional idea, we can read pool zoomers on TikTok
and literally build a fucking puppet army to funk the
ship out of millennials. We should expand this operation to
as many social media outlets as possible in order to
maximize effort. Let's operate like this on TikTok, convince any
gen z sibling or relatives to do some kind of
shitty jester charade slash horror dance, and then add lgbt

(01:02:32):
Q critical captions on top of it and reposted under
trending hashtags. So you see elements of this exact strategy
mirrored one year later in lives of TikTok by getting
videos of people being I don't know kids and like
kind of cringe e because kids are kind of cringe E.
But videos of kids on TikTok and mischaracterizing you know,

(01:02:55):
TikTok videos and adding adding lgbt Q talking points on
top of them. Uh, just sway the public opinion of
queer people. It's the it's the exact same strategy as
as a similar idea. It was also implemented alongside setting
up fake dating apt profiles do not only spread their
anti gay kind of grooming memes, but also to form
vital content by catfishing gay people and getting them to

(01:03:15):
like be an embarrassing interactions. Uh. Another quote on Tinder,
Bumble and Grinder set up freak profiles with legit convincing
images and descriptions that criticized lgbt So it's this, it's
trying to catfish queer people and like, then I guess
span them with pictures of these like grooming memes, um

(01:03:36):
and see what their reaction is then post it. Right.
It's so the whole operation private file strategy might appear
pretty simple. Right, it's like basically glorified ship posting, setting
up a bunch of fake accounts and demonizing queer people
in the comment section of small corporations and influencers. There
definitely is a lot more to it. Than that, right,
there was there was this element of like planned escalation,

(01:03:57):
starting off first as like appearing as a reasonable comments, right,
acting in very good faith, just as somebody concerned by
kids being exposed to to sexual materials would, whether that
be you know, people in drag at a library reading
books or people at a Pride parade. Right, So instead
of immediately going on like full gay bashing, uh, saying

(01:04:20):
that we should you know, kill all deviant trans people,
which a lot of conservative common hitters just say now
like Alijah Schaeffer who just posts memes about wanting to
kill trans kids. Um, these these these board fascists on
Fortune try to coordinate a slow, more insidious approach which
they would hope would just gradually turn the tide of

(01:04:41):
public opinion against queer people. Here's a here's the snippet
from one of the Pride Fault organizing chats. Quote keep
it normi, palatable and friendly. This means no Nazi or
Hitler ship. The goal is to make them question whether
what they're supporting is really the right thing. So as
as as Pride progressed the the the Pride Fall participants

(01:05:03):
coordinated on four Chune Discord and Telegram to slowly increase
the frequency and intensity of the campaign. Another quote from
the organizing chat quote, think about it as waves day
one is simply questioning homosexuality, and then as the days
goes on, it will get worse and worse until the
end of Pride Month. So uh. In terms of physical

(01:05:24):
things that actually had uh, I believe opportion. Pride Fall
resulted in a few gay events getting shut down. There
was like this event and I think it was it
was like a like at a queer nightclub in the
UK that that got shut down. There was a few
other like like obviously like material results that that they
had by doing this harassment campaign against venues and corporations.

(01:05:45):
But I think there's they were more successful in first
of all, spreading specific memetic images that are now commonly
used in their grooming stuff and in the kink of
Pride stuff some some of which these images were not
really used in discourse before but now are common place.
I think that's really where more of this idea succeeded.
So over the course of the month, they will want

(01:06:06):
to get more regular people to start associating members of
the LGBTQ community with pedophilia and in order to do that.
The way they see it is by just gradually shifting
this discussion. Uh, and then as public opinion alters, they
hope that brands will distance themselves from the LGBTQ community
and stop doing more more pride shit. Um right, It's

(01:06:27):
like that was that was another big part of what
their intention was. And they may not have done all
that stuff immediately, like they may not may not have
succeeded in that, but they definitely did succeed in the
prevalence of the images that they were trying to intentionally spread,
because that absolutely has happened. Do you know who else

(01:06:47):
loves implanting ideas into your brain? That's that's that's right.
The products and services that sponsored this podcast, go go buy,
go buy their product or get a job at one
of the you know, you know that what I'm talking about. Anyway,
here's here's the ads and we are we are back.

(01:07:08):
Wasn't wasn't it fun reading about Operation Pride Fall? Didn't
that just bring bring joy to your ears? Me too? Yeah? So,
as we mentioned, a big part of their attempts to
sway public opinion, it's by spamming photos and memes that
attempt to showcase just how dangerous gay people are to children,

(01:07:30):
whether that be drag queens doing story time at the library,
photos of gay people doing quote unquote can get Pride um.
You know, basically basically they're trying to say, how could
any reasonable person or corporation support pride. It's essentially a
grooming parade, right that that's the that's the thing that
they were trying to implant. And one of the things
that Operation Pride Fell was successful in was popularizing a

(01:07:52):
few of these can get Pride photos, many of which
were then subsequently used last year during can Get Pride
discourse um, and used this year as well. Uh, most
mostly by some some like anti sex people on the left, um,
and some of these young tender queers. Uh. And you
know that this this the same photos are used in
grooming stuff and in Pride Fall stuff and and can't

(01:08:15):
Get Pride stuff, because it's the same based psychology at play, right,
the idea that sexuality in a queer sense is dangerous
and way more deviant than sexuality in a heterosexual context. Right,
Like straight people kissing is rated, gay gay people kissing
is rated PG or PG thirteen. Uh, it's it's it's
that idea but accelerated. Another correlation between the openly homophobic

(01:08:39):
groomer talking points and like the tender queer stuff is
this is this idea that I'm only comfortable seeing expressions
of sexuality that I can relate to or also find attractive.
And another interesting thing about a lot of these photos
is that a lot of these photos that they use
aren't actually photos of Pride. A lot of a lot

(01:09:00):
of the photos that they use are actually from the
Fulsome Street Fair, which is like a kink festival. It
takes place in San Francisco every year. Hard to exaggerate
how horny the Fulsome Street fat. So it's very horny.
But also, obviously because gay people have sex, gay people
also exist at the Fulsome Street Fair. Um. They may

(01:09:22):
even wave a Pride flag shocking. Um. So a lot
of these photos that that that they use in the
grooming stuff and the kink it Pride stuff are actually
from the Fulsome Street Fair. There are actually photos of
Pride parades, of it's and it's it's and of course
anyone who's been to Pride we kind of know that

(01:09:43):
because Pride is not like the Fulsome Street Fair, they
are very different to vents. And that's another an indicator
of how a lot of these people who prop up
this discourse online have never been to Pride either, because
they're sharing photos at the Fulsome Street Fair and saying
it's Pride. Um. Obviously, lots of these Nazis on fourtune,
I've never been to the Fulsome Street Fair or Pride. Uh.

(01:10:06):
But they they also share these same photos because hey,
it's it's people who look gay doing sexual things in public.
That means it's at Pride and it's a danger to children,
even though a lot of them are actually at the
Fulsome Street Fair. Um. So if then, if if you're
a queer person and you're reposting these fulsome Street Fair
pictures and claiming to be from and claiming that they're

(01:10:28):
from a Pride parade, uh to bash like kink it
Pride stuff? Uh, reconsider that because you're basically just doing
the work that neo Nazis wants to do. Uh. Just
you're just doing it on your own time, right Like
it's you're repurposing the exact same photos that they were
that they were putting out there within this context and
just not even not even knowing where these where. These

(01:10:50):
where these pictures are from. Um so stop stop that
I can consider not if if you have to, like
if you're gonna go to all of this work to
denounce queer people for like existing, maybe you should consider
why you're doing that, because wow, that's that sucks. Because

(01:11:11):
calling the fulsome street Fair a pride parade and then
demonizing it because then then and then and then demonizing
pride because there's people who act like pretty kinky is
not not great because that's not what anything is happening.
You're none of none, none of that is accurate. So
that's it's really frustrating to look at to look at

(01:11:33):
all of all of the ways these things, these things combined,
because you get you get intender queers sharing fulsome street
Fair pictures, you get conservative politicians sharing them all calling
them pride stuff. To begin, like a lot of the
stuff you see there isn't even like a lot of
them isn't like a lot of pictures don't even have
like full nudity. Um so that's not necessarily like's not

(01:11:56):
it's not even super important, but it's you're conflating these
these things in a really disingenuous way, and you're just
repeating the exact same things that Nazis have been trying
to get you to repeat for years, and you should
consider why that happens. So all of the grimming stuff
obviously has gotten has gotten worse in the in the
past few months. Uh definitely definitely ballooned around the around

(01:12:20):
the don't say gay bill, and this got tied into
a whole bunch of stuff happening in Florida with the
Disney Corporation, and a lot of the grimming stuff got
tied to conservatives attacking Disney now um and calling Disney
a grooming organization. We've had We've had far right candidates
show up in front of in front of Disney World

(01:12:41):
to do protests. We've had Nazis show up in front
of Disney World to do protests. You've seen a lot
of mega people show up at Disney World to do protests, UM,
all against Disney's grooming of children by including anything not
street in any of their materials, which has already like
so little um, which is also just extremely funny. I

(01:13:03):
like imagining you bring Walt Disney, Disney come on, like
it's all on the same side here, Like yeah, and
like I don't know like do you I don't know
if I really actually think that, like do you do
all these all these people actually think that millions of teachers, democrats,

(01:13:26):
corporate entertainment creators are all complicit and it's in a
long term planning of like to to sexually groom miners.
Some some might believe that, right, that that kind of
that kind of overlaps with some to and on stuff
in the paranoia around like child trafficking. But I think
others understand that they're kind of being hyperbolic and they're

(01:13:47):
being inflammatory to get people angry and to get people
like very very like active in their in their hatred
of gay people. Right. They needs to old school homophobia
kind of became a bad look. They need to find
a new way to rebrand it. And now it's with
this groomer stuff and like a gay teachers, trans teachers, right,
gender identity stuff, right, a lot of it is now

(01:14:09):
wrapped up in like trans issues. Um, But I I
want to read this quote by a right wing writer
named Rod Dreer. It was it was, it was. It
was cited in the Atlantic, and I think it's actually
a really good look at how the people who are
smart on the right, Um, how that they are intentionally

(01:14:30):
using this grooming label. Quote about the term groomers, it's
usually used to describe pedophiles who are preparing innocent kids
for sexual exploitation. I think it is coming to have
a somewhat broader meaning an adult who wants to separate
children from a normative sexual and gender identity, to inspire

(01:14:51):
confusion in them and to turn them against their parents
and all the normative traditions and institutions in society. It
may not be specifically to groom them for sexual activity,
but it is certainly to groom them to take them
on a sexual slash gender identity at odds with the
norm which really I think that that quote, that quote

(01:15:13):
really showcases what's going on in their brains there. Yeah, well,
and this is something I think like Drere, like Rob
Drear in particular, doing this, I think it's a really
bad sign because there's people who don't know who Rob
Drere is. He's like a weirdo Catholic guy. He's been
like a right wing like Catholic. I think he's a
roving Catholic calumnist for a long time. And like, you know,

(01:15:34):
if you go back to like two seventeen. His big
thing was his whope was a thing called the Benedict option,
which was basically like, okay, so like secular society has
become corrupted, like Christians should just pull out of it,
right and go live with their own communities that can
be sort of like like you know, we we like
we we we we've we've lost this world. We have
to like create a new world which we can live

(01:15:54):
around and sort of like Christian truth or whatever. And
he he was in this long running kind of like
battle with a sort of like I guess like openly
philangious kind of like openly fascists, I mean, not quite
openly fascist, but like people people who are reading uh,

(01:16:14):
like what's his name, people who are reading Schmidt, and
like the Nazi lawyers who were like, okay, well we
you know, instead of as opposed to this thing of
like word Catholics, we're going to pull back from the world,
their thing was we're going to use We're going to
use like the states to enforce Christian doctrine. And Drere
had sort of like fought that. And the fact that

(01:16:35):
Drere is now just full on in this grooming ship,
right that is really bad. Yep. And and looking again,
you know if even if you want to go back
into his history, right, like, this is this is the
kind of flip that happened that brought the evangelicals into
the political scene, right, Like, you have this flip from
like people being like while the raptures coming insidees and
peers who are not gonna become be politically engaged too.

(01:16:56):
Oh hey, look we can use the state to just
like destroyer, pull lenemies and create the kingdom of Heaven
on earth. And yeah, this is this is not good.
This is yeah. But I think specifically that quotes a
really good insight the smart conservatives who know what they're doing,
Like they know it's not actual grooming, but it's if

(01:17:18):
they can if they can use that word within the
context to being like it's about getting it's about getting
kids to adopt a non normative sexual identity. Again, it's
like non normative, right, It's it's confusion in them turning
them against the institutions in society. Right, all of all
of these things that is that is mirrored across lots

(01:17:39):
of the groom discourse, the Kinker pride discourse, all this
kind of stuff it's it's it's the same, it's the
same thing. It's like a non normative sexuality is more
sexual than a normative sexuality. It's this whole idea, man,
And it's not great because it's not going to stop
with kids either. Uh, it's not gonna we we I
talked about talk with this a lot. How how once

(01:18:02):
they ban you know, trans health care for miners, they're
gonna bump it up to then they're gonna bump it
up to no one has it at all. And I have,
I got, I got an update on that front. Um. So,
first of all, for a recent legislation, there's the Alabama
Felony Healthcare Band for Trans Youth, which forcibly detransitions teams

(01:18:22):
across the state. UM. That that that that that that's
gonna enacted. And in Missouri there's a similar bill in
the works, officially titled the Save Adolescents from Experimentation Act um.
And it applies to into individuals younger than nineteen years old. UM.
And it would it would inhibit Missouri UH physicians and

(01:18:42):
healthcare providers and prevent them from providing gender affirming healthcare
to patients. And it turns out Missouri la Is lawmakers
a few weeks ago, we're debating the bill seeking to
restrict access to gender firm and care for miners and
and they also suggested that access to medical interventions like

(01:19:03):
hormones be withheld from transgender and non binary individuals until
at least their twenty fifth birthday. During public in Missouri's
for House Bill to six four nine, Lorie Haynes, a psychologist,
testified that she believes young adults under the age of
twenty five are unable to fully comprehend the dramatic and
drastic and irreparable changes their body will go under if

(01:19:26):
they receive gender affirming medical treatments like commaunity blockers or
hormone therapies. Hayes also said that she's supported getting conversion
therapy for trans kids. Yeah, I'll bet she thinks that
eighteen year old should be able to buy join the military,
join the So it's already happening. We already have lawmakers

(01:19:48):
and we have psychologists being brought in to testify that
this is the case. People they want that this is
there going to be the next thing. They want this
to happen. Um, now I'm just gonna say, obviously, uh,
recent started You, published in the Journal of America in
the Journal of the American Medical Association found that receiving
gender affirm and care including beauty blockers and hormones between

(01:20:08):
the ages thirteen and twenty associated with six lower odds
of moderate or severe depression and seventy lower are odds
of suicidality. Another study published late last year by the
Trevor Project found that among transgender and non binary miners,
hormone therapy was associated with nearly lower odds of recent
depression or a suicide attempt over the last year, and

(01:20:29):
a lot of the effects of permitty blockers and even
hormonal placement therapy actually are reversible and are not damaging.
Um So, I mean, but we we all know that
there's that horrible uh Matt Walsh trans documentary coming out soon. Yeah,

(01:20:49):
and you definitely I know. In the trailer he says that, uh,
one of the drugs used to give puberty blockers to
miners is also used as a chemical cast racian for
sexual assault perpetrators, UH, which is kind of true. But
it's castration in the sense that you need to take

(01:21:09):
the drug always for its to work. It's like it's
a hormone blocker. It's tops the sausterone from from being produced.
If you go off of it, it's gonna happen again.
It's not a permanent castration. It's gonna suppress testosterone. You know,
a popular medication for people with heart problems is also
a highly explosive compound. Oh no, can be used in

(01:21:32):
different ways. It's yeah, like like cancer victims are found
with dihydrogen monooxide in their system. Like so, but yeah, anyway,
we're gonna see a lot of We're gonna see a
lot of lives about HRT coming up soon because that
this Matt Walsh talking about is going to be stupid.
But again he doesn't understand the science. Obviously, he's a propagandist. Um.
But the last thing I want to talk about, here's

(01:21:56):
what's gonna be happening in cord Aline Idaho. Um So,
taking taking their cue from the I'm gonna be I'm quoting,
I'm going to quote an article here by by Daily Costs. Uh.
They did a really a really really good write up.
David new Wars wrote it. David David NewART for the record,

(01:22:19):
Like the thing that he has been this beat that
that we're in like writing about these people. David's been
doing it for like thirty years. He's he's amazing, He's incredible.
So I'm gonna I'm gonna qute from him here. This
is the last thing we'll We'll close with UM taking
a queue from the incoming tide of far right fearmongering
about grooming and an lgbt Q agenda in schools and libraries.

(01:22:43):
A group of Idaho biker militiamen are planning to show
up to confront people celebrating pride at an event in
downtown Quarta Lane, Idaho, and in a public park next month.
Two men from the leadership of Panhandle Patriots, a militia
oriented bikers club but east to northern Idaho. Justin Allen,
the group's vice president, and Jeff White, it's sergeant at arms,

(01:23:06):
told a recent gathering at a church hosted by Republican
state house member Heather Scott that they plan to have
a gun driven event next month in Courtly in Idaho,
the same day as this city's pride celebration at a
park less than a mile away, and they planned a confrontation. UM.
I'm going to play a clip of them announcing this,

(01:23:28):
uh and yeah, give it a listen. These parades or
government funded many of them. You aren't aware. Right now,
in court Alayne, on the tenth of June, there is
Family Day, and in Family Day they are promoting family values,
activities and everything. The very following day they're having Gay

(01:23:49):
Pride Day in the very same park the very next day,
where they will be allowed to parade through all of
Court Alaine, drag, queen dancers, education, our making all this
material available for all the kids in a park that
is designed for kids. We are having an event the

(01:24:11):
very same day, that very same day, we actually intend
to go head to head with these people. A line
must be drawn in the sand. Good people need to
stand up. As she was talking about the repercussions, we say,
damn the repercussions. Stand up, take it to the head,

(01:24:33):
Go to the fight if you can possibly. We know
a lot of you are monitored. We live in Bonter County.
We are fighting in multiple counties. We are asking for
all of you to come stand with us. Our event
is advertised as gun to Lane because it's an anniversary
of when we stood to protect our community. We're standing

(01:24:54):
again to protect our community. We shifted our date to
be available to go head to head with these people.
They are trying to take your children. This fight is
not just paper, it's not just words, it's not just politicians.
They have to see people standing in there facing no more. So. Wow,

(01:25:16):
that sucked, uh and is entirely entirely expected. Um so.
The the meeting at this at this church, read by
a Republican House member, was titled the Game Plan to
Remove Inappropriate Materials in our Schools and Libraries. It was
It was held at a Calvary chapel in a small

(01:25:40):
town north of Sandpoint, Idaho. Scott is a long history
associations and identifications with the far right patriot movement, specifically
in Idaho. And it was bad. Um. Heather Scott, the
Republican state house member. About an hour into the night, Uh,
Scott invited the tumblsh of dudes up to the podium

(01:26:00):
to speak and they said that so yeah, it's in.
In a flyer posted by the Panhandle Patriots advertising their
planned conversation at at at at Pride at at a
flyer that they made shows shows a drag queen reading
at a public library and urges people to join in
and standing up against the indoctrination and grooming of our children.

(01:26:23):
And if you don't protect children, you are part of
the problem. So yeah, they're planning to take a hole
bunch of guns the same day as a Pride parade,
and we'll see what happens. Um. I love that. That's that.
We're just going to see what happens. And I genuine
very incredibly deeply hope we're not reporting on the result

(01:26:44):
of that because yep, ye. So anyway, before you share
king at Pride discourse, I think this is what happens.
This is what happens when you engage this in this
type of rhetoric, that career sexuality is inherently more dangerous
to kids. Because anyway, I'm sad. Now, yeah, this isn't

(01:27:05):
really an upper of an episode. Um, you don't say,
but it's it is important to talk about. Um. So
if you're going to Pride this year, please be careful
because there's a lot of a lot of worsening attacks
on queer people. Bring an iffac. You shouldn't have to

(01:27:26):
you shouldn't have to do this, but this is anyway,
well that doesn't for us today. It could happen here.
Hopefully it doesn't happen here. Um, but it could. Welcome

(01:27:55):
to to make it happen here a podcast about something
that did happen that sucked enormously. Um. I'm Christopher Wall
I'm the host. Also with me is Garrison and Sophie. Hello,
were just in the morning, just really starting off positive
there it's look, it's it's this episode in the next episode.

(01:28:20):
I mean, I guess this episode kind of ends in
a high note. But that's great to hear. I'm so happy.
I totally believe you. It kind of does, all right. Yeah,
Sharene is also here. Hello, Hi, Sorry my fault. Keep going.
So this is this is the thirty third anniversary of

(01:28:41):
the Caamon Square massacre. UM. Tomorrow's episode, I think we'll
actually be going out on I guess the day that
it started kind of starts like the night of like
June three. Um, and okay, I'm curious what you twoose
like I don't know, like received like cultural memory of
Channeman is because I don't know. I think I got

(01:29:04):
a kind of weird one, like being from a Chinese family,
but as a white Canadian, I have zero amount of
my knowledge about the tam Tannaman Square massacre not really
about Tanneman. Uh, it's just yeah, that is something I
never never have really learned about. Yeah, I know that

(01:29:24):
it happened in that's that's the American Uh lesson we
got on the history of that massacre, that it happened
in nineteen really mediocre. Yeah, Okay, Well today and tomorrow

(01:29:45):
we're gonna we're gonna go, well, we're gonna talk. I
think less about what happens there specifically and more about
the sort of broad at history that's in. But I
guess I'll start out so in sometimes there's there's really
three Channeman's. Um, there's there's the student protests that's inside
Tianamon Square itself. There's this part of Beijing like around

(01:30:08):
the squares, like a bunch of blocks are taken over
by workers. And then there's a bunch of protests in
other cities. And unfortunately we're not gonna be talking about
the Protestant the other cities because like basically nothing is
known about them other than that like they happened, but
the people who would know aren't talking so for some

(01:30:28):
somewhat obvious reasons. Um, yeah, and the students themselves, I think,
like the normal version of tianament is is like these
there's the students and they're like protomocracy protesters, right, but
they're way weirder than that. There's there's like this weird
ideological grab bag thing going on. Um, they're they're they're

(01:30:52):
basically what they're piste off about is that this thing
is called the perform and opening like isn't going fast enough?
We should talk about what that sort of is. So
performing opening is it's this period in China and sort
of the eighties and songs of the nineties. Um. And
on the one hand, you have these sort of steps
to like ease restrictions on speech and like rehability to

(01:31:15):
intellectuals and like allow for a broader public discourse. But
the other half of it is that like they're they're
being they're basically they're bringing markets back to China, right,
And this this is a ship show in a lot
of ways. If you want to hear about like the
CCP reinventing debt ponage in about five years, um, go
listen to my Baschard's episode and the poison Milk scandal.

(01:31:35):
It's a it's a trip. But on the other hand,
you have you know, so you have kind of like
opening up, right, you you have just more discourse. You're
they're not persecuting intellectuals again, sort of that there, they're
they're they're de persecuting the intellectuals that they had persecuted. Um.
But on the other hand, you get this absolutely draconian
sort of like a set of crackdowns on the social sphere.

(01:31:57):
You have the one child policy, you have this like
really powerful tightening of one man rule in the factory,
and you have the sort of the destruction of these
for what we'll get into this more later, but like
the the sort of limited decision making capacity that workers
have had in the factories, um, just is sort of dismantled.

(01:32:17):
And so you see these sort of gaps beginning to
form here, right, Like, on the one hand, you have
these students who want market reforms to go faster, and
they want more freedom of speech, They like kind of
want democracy, but like mostly what they want is to
be in charge of the party so they can crush
the sort of like bureaucracy they see as holding market
reforms back. And it's worth noting that like a lot
of these students are involved in what becomes known as

(01:32:39):
neo authoritarianism, which is the sort of ideology that holds
that like the strong central party should take full control
of society and destroy the factions in the bureaucracy and
so you know, and then that that's how you can
lead development and this stuff like that stuff like ne
authoritarianism survives the protests and goes on to become like
a pretty major faction in the CCP itself, and then
now US in two thousands, and you know, this is

(01:33:02):
this is where things just get weird, right, Um, the
student movement itself is very hierarchical, and it gets to
the point where like but by by by the end
of the student movement, there these the student leaders are
like kidnapping each other over like who has control of
the microphones and like the stages in the square it is.

(01:33:25):
It is extremely bizarre. And you know, and in terms
of like the protests actually like if what their torches
are trying to do is you're trying to influence this
factional fight inside the CCP over like the speed at
which reformers are going to go, and this it doesn't work.
It's like stunningly ineffectual. The guy they're trying to defend,

(01:33:47):
like winds up getting outed and put in her house
to the rest of the rest of his life. So
because so those are the student protesters. But the part
and that that's the student protesters are the part of
this that like everyone knows, partly because some of those
people escape to Hong Kong and you know that they're
very influential sort of shaping the memory there. But there's
also the workers that I mentioned earlier, and the students

(01:34:10):
basically like hate the workers, um for for for most
of the time this protest is going on, and this
is the this is months, right. They literally will they
will not let any of the workers go into the
into tenement square like that they have. They have this
whole system and like in order to get into like
increasing like like closer to the center of the square,
you have to be a student and then you need
to get to the senator of the squere you have
to be like a member of the leadership. It's very weird,

(01:34:33):
and you know, and like one of the things that
workers are trying to do is they want to carry
out a general strike and the students are like, no,
absolutely not, do not do a general strike because largely
because okay, so if these people start doing a general strike,
like that's not something that's not under our control, and
you know, okay, So this raises the question like if
the relationship between the students who are at tenement and
the workers at Genemen are this bad, like why are

(01:34:53):
the workers even there? Um? And And there's a few
answers to this question that the sort of the simplest
and most immediate one is that like the workers are
initially they come out because they're pissed. They see how
badly like the cops in sort of like the party
is is treating the students in the square, so they
get mad. But but but there's there's other stuff going

(01:35:14):
on to the late eighties is the ladies in China
is sort of a mess economically that there's rampant inflation
and the sort of rapid increase in prices is a
threat to you know, the sort of like cheap supply grain,
which is like the sort of main subsidy that if
you're an urban worker that you get. And meanwhile, you know,

(01:35:34):
you have marketization happening, so at the same time that
every prices are increasing for everyone and they can't get
access the stuff that they need. You have just like
CCP princelings like racing down the street and imputed sports
cars and like these are like the only these are
the only cars, right like people people I don't know,
like like people are starting to get bicycles and mass
sort of in this period. But then you know, I

(01:35:54):
was like, hey, here's here's this like party boss guy
who was a sports car. They're like spending years salaries
like umbling at race tracks and people just get piste off.
So they they start organizing. And I'm going to read
from a section of a piece by JOHANNS Jong about
what what they were doing. Um During the struggle to

(01:36:15):
obstruct the military, workers started to realize the power of
their spontaneous organization and action. This was self liberation on
an unprecedented level. A huge wave of self organization ensued
the Beijing Works Autonomous Federations. Membership grew exponentially in other
workers organizations both within and across workplaces mushrooms. The development
of organizations led to a radicalization of action. Workers started

(01:36:38):
organizing self armed quasi militias such as picket cores and
dat or Die brigades to monitor and broadcast the military's whereabouts.
These quasi militias were also responsible for maintaining public order
so as not to provide any pretext for military intervention.
In a sense, Beijing became a city self managed by workers.
It was reminiscent of petrograds self farmed workers organized in

(01:36:58):
the Soviets in the months but beween Russia's February and
October revolutions. At the same time, Beijian workers built many
more barricades and fortifications and on the street in many
factories that organized strikes and slowdowns. A possible general strike
was put on the table as well. Many workers started
to build connections between factories prepare for a general strike.

(01:37:19):
And yeah, like this is the part of it that
like people don't talk about because it wasn't in the square.
And I mean the other part of the other faction,
like the fact that that's going on here is that
like so the press Corps is like sitting in the square,
and this is why Channa ministers this sort like this
is massive spectacle, right because all of this, everything that's
happening here inside the square was happening like in front
of the entire Western Press Court and like people are like,

(01:37:39):
you know, like people are just like pointing cameras at
their window, right, and you know, but on the other hand,
the people outside of the square, like the workers outside
of the square are the workers are getting more organized
and this is like, this is absolutely unacceptable to the party.
And so yeah, on on on night of June three,

(01:38:00):
the army just starts killing them. Um they There have
been a couple of attempts earlier to clear to to
to clear the sort of fortifications, and it hadn't really worked.
But this time, like they they they're they're able to
bring in builtering units that aren't from Beijing or like
aren't from around the area, and they kill an enormous

(01:38:21):
number of people. Um yeah, And and I think it's
I think it's important to note that, like both in
terms of the killings that happened immediately and the political
persecution like after that, it's it's mostly the workers bearing this,
especially in the initial massacre. Most of the killing happens
as the armies like fighting its way into the square.

(01:38:42):
And you know, I mean they kill people in the
square too, but you know, and eventually they get into
the square, and this is where you get like tank
man and like the sort of the famous account of
the massacre. But like but that, but it's basically over right,
because one of the other things has happened is that
over the course of this protest, a lot of the
students have left because they sort of they sort of
gave up after the like factional conflict like stopped. But

(01:39:06):
so so most of the people like who are there,
are are are on the outs, are like other workers
on the outside of this car, trying to defend it.
And when those people get killed and the art the
army gets the build the square, it's it's the whole
things are ready over and you know, these protests get
crushed and you know, but before the last bullet has

(01:39:27):
been fired, everyone everyone left standing is trying to create
their own narratives. But what just happened? Um, the most
common one is that Chinaman is this like clash between
democracy and authoritarianism, and like, okay, to some extent, that's
not wrong, although I mean, you know, we've already mentioned
that there are a lot of new authoritarian students there.

(01:39:49):
I but like, you know, okay, this is this is
kind of a fair interpretation of what's going on. Like
there's a lot of other protomocracy movements in this period,
like the region, most famously there's Tawan and Korean Um.
But the actual question of what's happening here is is
really a question of what kind of democracy there's You

(01:40:13):
know that that these people are fighting for the students
at Tianamens. You know to the extent that their democratic
principles are sincere and not a cover for a sort
of like deeply authoritarian version of liberalism that's you know,
demanded by like in the sort of new class of
intellectual so evercing market reforms to the extent that they like,
they actually believe in this right. They believe in a

(01:40:33):
very narrow conception of political democracy. And you know this
this democracy is sort of political democracy operates the level
of the state. Right, It's based on free citizens who
are equal before the law, participating in elections. The chief representatives,
you like, past laws and you know, oversee and manages
state bureaucracy. But you know that this model of political democracy,
which is this is the one that we live under, right,

(01:40:55):
It really gets the workplace to a a separate economic
sphere into which democracy doesn't extend. The capitalist firm or
its state owned equivalent remains the absolute dictatorship of capitalists
and the banagerial flunkeys, and even even the sort of
progressive wings of the pro democracy movement in like Taiwuana,
South Korea, like maintain this private, this private dictatorships. You know,

(01:41:18):
if if, if, if you're a worker in one of
these states, right, you get rights, you get you know,
you get the ability to form unions, you get access
to the welfare state, you get these sort of limited
protections from the worst like physical and psychological abuses that
your bosses can inflict. But no, no matter how progressive
the pro democracy movements actually are the legitimate Jesus sorry,

(01:41:41):
the legitimacy of the dictatorship of the bosses, which was
not up for dispute, you know, to to to to
these sort of protmocracy movements, right, like democracy means a
democratic state and not a democratic workplace. And this is
this is the huge divide between what's happening at Tianeman
and what's happening like everywhere else in the world. The

(01:42:03):
workers a Tienemen are the only people left in this
entire sort of like run of protmocracy movements that disagree.
They are standing against not only that like every there's
stending not only against their own governments against a lot
of the students who are who are also like at
these protests, they are standing against literally the entire type

(01:42:24):
of history itself bye bye bye, you know, by by
applying the principles of the protomocracy movements like their own concerns, right,
which is skyrocketing inflation, mounting debts like rampant corruption to
government officials like spy, rocketing and spiraling inequality and petty
bureaucratic oppression. Beijing's working class had reinvented a old and

(01:42:44):
now like largely forgotten tradition of democracy and the factory
that I'm gonna I'm calling it democratic worker self management
because there's no good name for it, and they're all
kind of clunky. Fair. I mean, this is based on
who these people were at the tide of the because
said all of their names for things were pretty clinky. Yeah. Well,
the thing is that they don't name like like this.
And this is one of the things about Okay. One

(01:43:07):
of the real problems with studying chairman, right, is that like, Okay,
so we have really good accounts from the students, right,
because some of the students flee and they're able to
make it out. We have like jack shit basically from
the workers we have. But what we do have is
we have some of the we have some of the
documents they produced, and we have a lot of interviews
that we're done with with people there, and they I

(01:43:31):
don't know that they have very very idiosyncratic ways of
expressing what they believe, and so you know, you'll get
things where like Okay, they're like, okay, wait, we we
believe in the rule of law, right, and then the
next sentence will be like, uh, we we we have
calculated the exact amount of surplus value that has been
distracted from us according to marks. And it's like what

(01:43:52):
because Yeah, the thing that they're doing is like that
they're they're they're synchronizing this new they're synchronizing sort of
like a political tendency that's trying to address the sort
of duel to Kadiships are dealing with right like there,
because they're they're dealing at the same time with like
this political to Katishi at the party has and also
the fact that their bosses now like completely control everything

(01:44:13):
that they do. And because of this, they you know,
they they wind up being like the last or I
guess technically second to last because Argentina happens, although that
that's sort of convoluted method itself. But they're they're in
the twentieth century, like they are the last people who
are fighting for democracy in the factory. And this, like

(01:44:36):
to a large state, is what Tiannem is actually about.
It's it's the culmination of a century and a half
long war between the democratic wing of the classical workers
upment and like every single other ideology that exists, and
these guys over over that century and a half long span,
they're going to fight communists, are going to fight capitalistic,
going to fight liberals and fascists and monarchies and republics
and social democracies and theocracies, and at Tieneman are going

(01:45:00):
to lose one more time. And that defeat, the fact
that they lose here, the fact that these people get slaughtered,
the fact that like their crushed so effectively that no
one even remembers what they were, don't even remembers they
exist or like much less like what they were fighting for.
This defeat is the origin of the modern world. That
one man ruling the factory, like the the individual single

(01:45:20):
boss who has total control and power over you, is
in in its sort of thousand forms is the author
of the hell that is twenty one century. And when
we come back from this commercial break, we are going
to look at the international part of the struggle that
Chanaman is sort of like the conclusion of. So here's
some ads. Maybe here the job working at their distribution

(01:45:43):
center paying gig, and we're back to look at why
you two also must live in the the the absolutely
one man dictatorship in the factory. So it's it's not
not not not not as much on man, it's the
one algorithm you have to you have to listen to

(01:46:03):
what your iPad tells you when you're walking through the
Amazon distribution center. That's true. Yeah, they have. It is
funny because it's like they've somehow made a worse version
of it. It was like okay, yeah, it's like it's
it's yeah, it's like okay, now, now now you were
ruled by a computer whose whose job it is to
make one person an extremely large amount of money. It's

(01:46:23):
even for further like depersonalized and further disjointed from actually
being a human. Yeah, it's it's I don't know that
there's there's there's some metaphor here which if I wasn't
like sick out of my mind about how like power depersonalizes,
the dehumanizes you until the point where you replaced with

(01:46:45):
the machine that you can make here. But I I
don't know one in one in every two days the
room or randomly starts binding on me. So yeah, I
can't actually't do that. The lesson here, The lesson here
is is that when you're thinking about factories and how
bosses suck and how it's not great to work at

(01:47:06):
a factory, just have a boss that tells you what
to do. The lesson is that it can always get
worse because it could always be a computer. Yeah, anyway, continue,
So okay, So to get a sense of like what
this fight is and like how how we got to Tiana, men,
we need to go back to the Revolutions of eight,

(01:47:28):
which is at first glance not like not an incredibly
obvious place to start. Um. Okay, if if you want
like a really detailed, like blow for blow account of
the Revolutions of eight, go listen to the Revolutions podcast.
It it's good. I am not gonna do it here
because oh my god, there's so much stuff. But the

(01:47:50):
very short version is that so in Atean forty eight.
Across Europe, there's a bunch of revolutions that are collectively
known while sometimes known as like the Springtime of the
People's and this is this is the first revolence. This
is the first wave revolutions where socialists are like a
real thing. Um like Frederick angles, like if that angles

(01:48:10):
like the marks and angles Angles is like on a
barricade with a rifle. Fighting in Prussia, there's like, yeah,
I'm not gonna sadly, I can't get into Augusva willage here,
but like go go, go go google Augustva Village's he's wild.
There's a huge revolution in France where they like that
they finally deposed the king and you know this, there's

(01:48:30):
this question here and as these revolutions look like they're winning,
there's this question of how far democracy is going to
go and what it's going to mean? Um, and yeah,
you have a large thing you have in this This
is in a lot of voice, very similar to what
you're dealing with with in in China. In the nine
Inside of France, you have to split, right, you have

(01:48:50):
the split between you know, like the people who are
like who are like French radicals, but in the sense
of like the original French Revolution, who are you know, Okay,
they want like they want an elected democracy. They absolutely
do not want to like deal with the fact that
that the workplace is not a democracy. And then you know,

(01:49:10):
and you have you have a bunch of socialists, and
the socialists are like, hey, can we do something about
like property relations and like the fact that there's a
bunch of poor people with no jobs, and you know,
and the socialists gets slaughtered, but you know, they don't die.
I mean, okay, you just said they Okay, so a

(01:49:35):
lot of these people get horribly slaughtered, but a lot
of them escape and like and and a lot of
the lead well, I mean there's an interesting story here,
Like a lot of the leaders like live on. A
lot of these people, like, for example, a bunch of
people flee to the US and they wind up being
like the like a lot of the officer core of
the Union Army and in the Civil War is made
up by these by these socialists who like had to

(01:49:56):
flee after the revolutions failed and like Prussia and stuff.
But yeah, so but many of them do in fact
die die. Yeah, it doesn't go great for them. And
and you know, and you get to see one of
the other things that's going to happen a lot, which
is that. Okay, so like the the sort of like
the French like like the French radicals who are like

(01:50:20):
pro capitalism but also pro democracy, like allied with the
conservative factions. And then they also all get killed when Napoleon,
Napoleon the Third takes power. But man, it's it's really
it's really it's really hard to root for someone here
and that yeah, I know, it's those it's like and
then this is really like like the revolution produces his
own grave diggers ship, Like, oh, hey, what did you

(01:50:42):
expect was going to happen when you allied with like
the Landlord's end I Napoleon English, this good thing, this
mistake will never made again. No good good thing. Yeah yeah,
pay no mind to the rest of the episode anyway. Continue. So, yeah,

(01:51:03):
you have the split between people who want electoral democracy
but you know, doctorships in the workplace and these people
who want like democracy in the workplace. And this also
prefigures to split inside of socialism itself, um for for
you know, for for for the and this isn't even
I I like in my script, I say, like for
for for the most radical factions of socialism, you know,

(01:51:24):
like in control over the means of production, which is
like the thing that you want. Means that like production
is controlled either by like free associations and workers like
you know, direct democratic unions. This is later called syndicalism
or like workers councils, and that that's you know, I say,
it's the most radical faction like that. That's a very
popular conception of like what this is going to be.
Like if you read marks like Mars is like, oh yeah,

(01:51:46):
free associations a workers. Sure. But you know, as as
the sort of like eighteen footies roll into the eighteen
sixties and the eighteen seventies, there's this faction of the
movement that becomes just like obsessed with with the bureaucratic
technologies of the states, and you know, like they they
they they watch the state really get involved in the
economy in a way that it like kind of hasn't before.

(01:52:08):
Then they they over the course of sort of industrialization,
they watch with like incredible envy as they see like
these incredibly elaborate like planning schemes. They see the state
building roads and canals and railroads and then entire cities
with these like complex electrical grids and like gas lions
and plumbing systems, and especially trains, like specifically trains. This
drives them all completely insane, and they become they begin

(01:52:32):
to believe that like a single centralized planning body, like
non amercrat association of workers, like a single centralized state
planning body can like you know, bring about the long
saw after like cooperative commonwealth of socialism, and all all
these people get they get obsessed with like such a
planning right, and this becomes this starts to sort of
like consume more and more of the left um in Germany,

(01:52:54):
which is home to like the powerful German Social Democratic Party,
which is like probably the most powerful socialist part in
the world. This point, the socialists become divided into two camps.
There there's the revisionists led by Edward Bernstein, who like
he like renounces Marxism and revolution and like entirely in
favor of performing capitalism in the state from like within.
And then you know, you have these orthodox Marxists that
are like led by Kola Kotski, whose whole thing is

(01:53:16):
that he hates Bernstein and like the only thing that
these two people, that these two groups agree on is that,
I the only thing they agree on is the bureaucratic
state planning is the thing you're supposed to be fighting
for and not like democratic workplaces. And this leads the
STP to like they they do a lot of things
that are like disastrous. Um, one of the things that

(01:53:37):
they wind up doing a lot is like actively working
with the bosses to like destroy the like workplace autonomy
for their own unions. So like they'll there'll be things
where it's like like there's like there's a famous examples,
Like there's like a like a I think they're like
an they're on beta workers and I think they make
knives or something. And they have a lot of control
of the production process, right, they can control like how
much life gets produced the process like how it works,

(01:53:58):
like what they're actually doing. And the STP is like, no,
this is bad because it's inefficient, and so they like
basically crush their own union and this this goes in
really disastrous directions. But we're still the single person who
becomes like the most obsessed with like the potential of
bureautic state planning is uh one, very very very obscure

(01:54:20):
guy named Vladimir Elias Lenin, who I don't expect anyone
to have heard of front of the Pod. I just
had len Oh, that's funny. Yeah. So, as David Gravord
points out, Lennon's obsession with like the German postal Service

(01:54:40):
is such that like, okay, so he writes a very
famous book about like what a future social state is
going to be, called State and Revolution, and like almost
all of it is a lie. But he also says
this in it Um. A witty German social democrat of
the eighteen seventies called the postal service an example of
the socialist economic system. This is very true. At present.
The postal service is a business organized along the lines

(01:55:02):
of a state capitalist monopoly. Bab the imperially, this is
the whole thing about imperialism is making everything off of this.
But so to organize the whole national economy on the
lines of the postal service, so that the technicians, foreim
and bookkeepers, as well as all officials that received no
salaries higher than a workman's wage, all under the control

(01:55:24):
and leadership of the armed proletariat. This is our immediate aim.
And if you think about what this means for about
five seconds, right, what he's saying is that socialism is
the entire economy being planned by a bureacratic state. And
you know this this like this sits off this like

(01:55:46):
massive series of confrontations with the part of the workers
movement who you know, like what to control the work
that they do, and you know, like like make I'm
like you know that the people who like who think
that like the revolution means that they're actually going to
be able to make decision over their work and not
you know, just like work for like a slightly different
set of bureaucrats. And this struggle between you know this

(01:56:07):
the sort of like new socialist bureaucrats and like democracy
and the workers movement is you know, it's it's it's
an enormous part of the struggle that happens here. And
there's there's like another version of it happening between the
workers movement itself and the capitalist state like in the
eighteen eighties, um, the workers movements in like in Italy
and Germany and like Frances that's the extent that they have.

(01:56:30):
These they form these parties that are called like states
within a state, and you know, these things are these
massive networks of these workers institutions. They have like free schools,
they have workers associations, they have like friendly societies, they
have libraries, they have theaters, they have like unions, have
co ops, they have like neighborhood associations, they have tenant unions,
initial aids societies, and you know, and these things are

(01:56:51):
all run democratically by like by by the workers who
formed the associations, and you know, and like the people
who are doing this are like you know, the hope
is that like this is going to be the basis
for the new social society. Right, It's like, okay, we
we can just come together and like do this stuff.
We can do it democratically, and we can administer this
stuff ourselves and the and these things are enormously popular. Um,

(01:57:15):
and you know, and this like terrifies the sort of
old ruling class. Um. And Otto von Bismarck, who's the
guy basically running the German state in this period, like
his solution to this is to create like bureaucratic state
run versions of like all of these things. So he
creates like state run library, state run theaters, like state
run welfare services, and he's using these as as like

(01:57:37):
a replacement to the sort of workers institutions. And he
has this great line where he tells an American observer quote,
my idea was to bribe the working classes, or shall
I say, to win them over, to regard the state
as a social institution existing for their own sake and
invested in and interested in their welfare. And like this works.
This is this is an enormous success. This is one

(01:57:58):
of the greatest propagandic ures ever because like it's it's
so successful in convincing people that the thing that they're
fighting for is like the state bureacratic version of this thing,
and not the version where they do it themselves. That
like when when the socialists like take power, they confuse Bismarcks,
like literally the welfare state bribe thing that he liked
made to buy off the movements, Like they confused that

(01:58:18):
with socialism itself. And like to this day everyone believes this.
It's like it's it's I don't know, I lose my
mind constantly over this because all of these things that
bisinbarg developed like specifically to destroy the socialist movement. Everyone
was like, oh my god, this is socialism. It's like no, no,
please stop. And you know, and this is really effective,

(01:58:42):
particularly on the leadership of the movement. But like the
actual like people in these parties, like in these movements,
don't forget it. And and as as the sort of
like twenty cent drawstore closed and you get like the
so as as the nineteenth century draws too closed, and
you get like the twentieth century. The workers who are
like doing the uprisings are are not sort of like

(01:59:03):
like the you know, the workers who are doing the
uprisings haven't like drinking the kool aid. And the thing
that they do immediately when they start doing uprisings is
they start building these democratic institutions, but particularly workers councils
um the most famous of these are like other workers
councils that form sort of spontaneously in the Russian revolutions
of nineteen seventeen. These are like this is actually like

(01:59:24):
this is what like the they're called soviets because soviet
is just like the word for council in Russian. And
these things are originally these like ad hoc strike committees,
and then they eventually become these like formalized elect like
elected bodies of representatives from like the various factories who
are like coordinating a strike and okay, so not you know,
five they lose and they all die, but inteventeen, uh,

(01:59:46):
they do this again and they form the Soviets again,
and this time the councils start to take like a
larger role in coordinating production directly and you know, coordinating
between different factories and industries, and they they turn into
this sort of like counterpower thing to the new government.
And this kicks off this open period of warfare that

(02:00:07):
stretches like literally from Italy to Argentina between the different
socialist factions who like people like the different factions of
this movement who want democracy in the factory. And this
like a lot newly formed like anti democratic alliance of
like social Democrats, Bolsheviks and capitalists who like you know,
are like okay, well some of them are in favor
of like you can have Okay, there's a whole range

(02:00:29):
of this thing, right, Like. The thing that unites all
of these movements, the social Democrats, that Bolsheviks, the capitalists
and later the fascist is that they like emphatically like
do not want democracy in the factory, and they're willing
to put aside their differences to make sure it doesn't happen,
but you know, there's still there's still a huge fight
that happens to between between nineteen y you get works

(02:00:49):
councils in we get workers councils in Germany, Poland, Austria, Ukraine,
Ireland and Ireland. There's there's these like two giant revolts
by synthicalist workers unions in Brazilian Argentina, and these all
get crushed um in Italy. Italy has like one of
the most intense conflicts between these like a lot of
cynicalis in the Italian state, and they have this this

(02:01:10):
really famous like set of factory occupations where instead of
like so like before those people would go on strike, right,
you go on strike and you leave your factory. And
in Italy they were like, okay, well what if we
just stayed in the factory and took it over so
that they couldn't like just like a restarted production with scabs,
and we now control the factory. And there's this huge
wave of it in in Italy in the late nineteen

(02:01:32):
writeen like teens and twenties, and you know, it looks
like for a little for like a bit like it
really looks like they're going to bring down the government,
but the factory occupations get crushed. But they don't. They
don't get crushed by the government. They get crushed by
the Italian Socialist Party and like their union, the General
Confederation of Labor, and like this is how fascistm wins

(02:01:53):
in Italy, like to a large extent. It's that like
when when like you know, and it happens in Germany too,
It's like when and when when the sort of the
social democrats and the capitalists are faced with this possibility
that like workers could take over the factories, the social
Democrats turn on them and just kill them all. And
the problem with that is that like okay, well who
who who who do you do the killing with the

(02:02:14):
answer is the fascists, and then the social Democrats like
themselves all get exterminated by the fascist It's it's just
like you know, it is it is a is A
is a terrible cycle that we're going to see like
literally over and over and over again. Um yeah it's bad.
Um that sounds not great? Yeah yeah, do do do

(02:02:36):
you know who else will slaughter your your factory council? Oh? Oh,
I actually know this one. M alright, Carrison, go, we
have a few options here. There is are our good
friends at the Washington State Patrol. Um, if you're trying
to set up a highway business next to the highway
and run run video workers, cancel State Patrol come up,

(02:02:57):
be like not on this highway. You're done. Um probably
also like Amazon or something, who knows, and we're back
to see you know, okay, okay, well we are back
to see like the worst defeats that they're going to have,
that that like the people who want like a factory

(02:03:18):
council are going to have in this period, which for
once actually has nothing to do with Amazon or the
capitalists whatsoever, which is that like the worst balling they're
gonna get is from Lenin and the Bolsheviks, who I
don't know how many people sort of like know the
history of Russian Revolution, but like the factory councils are
the people who like basically put the Bolsheviks in power

(02:03:39):
in the first place, like to a large extents, like
they're there's a there are the people who like were
the shock troops of this and like literally the moment
Lendin takes power, she starts under buying the Soviets. Um
he publishes this thing like like like three or four
days after that trial revolution, he publishes this thing called
the draft to cree on workers control, which is like,

(02:04:00):
you know, he he basically is like he's he's trying
to like shift power from these councils to the bullshit
party in the state. And this doesn't really work initially
because these groups are like pretty powerful. But in you know,
he publicly Lenin's like, no, we draw drive power from
the Soviets, like where where where the people who support

(02:04:20):
these councils, But then like Lennon's, he's like shipping away
from them. And then in en he writes this thing.
He writes this this this paragraph from the Immediate Task
the Soviet Government, which is like one of the wildest
things I've ever read in my life. I was just
saying a lot, it's it's wild, it is She's okay.

(02:04:42):
Unquestioning submission to a single will is absolutely necessary for
the success of labor processes that are based on large
scale machine industry. Today, the revolution demands and the interests
of socialism that the masses, unquestioning lee obey the single
will of the leaders of the labor process, which is
like what what how how about you explain to our

(02:05:07):
good viewers why that is so bonkers, Like okay, some
of them might just hear that and be like, oh
leftist words cool, moving on, even just the first two
words unquestioning, Yeah, makes me like that, but like a
questioning submission. The whole thing about like the masses must
unquestionably obey the will of the single leader. Like what
this is like, like what is happening? This is you know,

(02:05:31):
and the thing that's happening here is that Lennon. Lennon
is being really candid about what it means for there
to be a boss, Like what it means for there
to be someone who's position is above you that can
order you to do literally whatever they want, and if
you don't obey them, like bad things happen and you
start or get shot. Yeah, she's she's she's incredible candid

(02:05:53):
about this, right like this, this, this, this is what
like having a boss means. It means like questioning submission
to the single will of the leader. This, which is
like this, this is how I talked about Sophie all
the time. Yeah, well, shaking her head, I'm with you,
Sophie campaign scare that Yeah, You're welcome, whatever you say, Sophie.

(02:06:15):
Thanks scare God. I'm thinking about this. There's this line, um,
it's sort of sent actually related to the story I
read this thing once about so the workers who took
over the surban actually think it was the students shore
of a bunch of students like take over this uh,
like like the like the like the big academy in

(02:06:37):
in Paris, and they send this like I think it's
a telegram to like the Chinese embassy, and like the
end of it is I think if I'm remembering the
exact words correctly, it's uh, the revolution will not be
complete until the revolution will not be complete until the
last capitalist is hung with the entrails of the last

(02:06:57):
bureaucrat predibly hot yet was wild. That's that's the thing
this brought to mind for some reason. But you know,
I mean going back to sort of Lenin and his
like unquestioning like submission to the single word, like he's
more candid about what like one man rule in the
factory or like having a boss you have to obey

(02:07:20):
like means, but the system is describing like isn't different
than any other political system, like Bolshevik rule in the
factory like isn't really different than capital, social democratic or
fascist rule. And you know, the movement for democracy and
the factory as you know, as as as these people
are crossed, especially in Cross the Nation twenty one, like

(02:07:41):
from for Democracy in the Factory is faced by four
implacable enemies who are willing to put aside all those
their ideological differences to ensure that like no one ever
like gets to control their workplace. And you know, and
as as the twenties blend into early nine thirties, like
the movement seemed to have disappeared, but they didn't. They
absolutely didn't even know even though they got murdered by

(02:08:01):
the fascist, the communist, social democrats and the capitalists, they're
gonna be back next episode to do like twelve more
revolutions and yeah that that that's that that that that
that come come come back tomorrow for us talking about
like why these revolutions happens, what the ruling class did
to stop them. And then yeah, the lead up to
Tianamen Square to see the sort of like the the

(02:08:23):
final standard of Chinese working class and yeah, like get
to what Tianeman actually was. What a Cliff Sanker pod cast. Yeah,

(02:08:50):
that that counts as an intro. Look, yes, we've we've
we've now started the podcast. The podcast that we are
starting is it could happen here. And I it's me
because for long I'm I'm doing I'm doing the host thing,
and I have a bunch of other people with me
who do a lot of things. I have Garrison, Yes,

(02:09:12):
I have suren Yes, and I have Sophie, our lovely boss.
Sophie lictor bed all phrase on high your words, not mine,
so weird. I did not enjoy that at all my takeover.

(02:09:37):
So so Sophie unfortunately, fortunately, unfortunately lacks to sheer ruthlessness
to crush the workers movement. Well we will see. Yeah
that relates to be determined. I don't buy it, so Sophie,

(02:10:01):
Sophie is very sad. I'm sorry, Sophie. Um So, when
when we last left off Lennon, Lennon has, like in theory,
crushed last sort of remaining factions of like the workers
but who want democracy the factories. But unfortunately for the
Leninist like literally no many how no matter how many
workers they kill, and they are going to kill enormous
numbers of workers. The demand for democracy and the factory

(02:10:22):
like just refuses to die. But for over a hundred years,
the development of the sort of mass factory system and
logistical infrastructure that you need to support it, maybe most
importantly coal mines and railroads that use the transport stuff
generate this incredibly militant working class that sees you know,
democratic control over the workplaces like the fundamental aspect of
its liberation. Um. Ideologically, this is you know, this is

(02:10:45):
this is manifested in like a series of interlocking beliefs
about like the nature of the working class and like
what class society is um, all of which are sort
of necessary components of this. Like it becomes this like
incredibly like this like instinctive formation of workers council at
the moment like an uprising happens. And this is something

(02:11:06):
that that's very interesting about about the twentieth century. Is it,
Like yeah, like what when whenever there's like a crisis,
someone someone like like everyone in the factory is like, okay,
we're we we've taken control of the factory now like
we we were forming a council, were forming a giant assembly,
and like we don't do this anymore, and we're gonna
come back to like why we don't do this anymore?
But like this hasn't happened, Like the last time it

(02:11:28):
happened was like in Argentine and two dozen't one and
I don't even know if Garrison Garrison might have been
alive for that, thanks, But like it's well, I will say.
The other time it does happen is when after after
a recording session, when our boss Sophie leaves me, me
and Chris will stay on the line to talk, usually

(02:11:49):
about Star Wars, and that in a way kind of
is a workers council just for the factory of podcasting. Yeah,
we talked about Star Wars in front of me. I
feel so bad for next next next time, puppy face,
it's okay, featuring your petite borshebat tactics won't work on me.

(02:12:16):
Oh god, we all all the people on the separddit
who think that we hate Sophie or going to just
have a field day with this episode. Concy is my
favorite recurring conspiracy. That's a real conspiracy. O. Man, wow,
I have a lot of cutry up on to you.
You do not know, you do not because it's not true.

(02:12:39):
Run away. So meanwhile, meanwhile, so in the period when
people actually like did this seriously, you know, there's a
lot of sort of ideological things that come together to
make it so that when people like you know, like
when when bread prices increased too much, this is what
people do. Um. And a lot of this has to

(02:13:01):
do with the physical experience of what being a worker
is in like you know, the centuries, like you have
these like these these these these incredibly rapid like technological expansions,
and you know, the people who are who are doing
this stuff like see themselves as the creators of the
new world, right like. And this is like literally this

(02:13:22):
is sounding like these are the people who are literally
like they are building the cities, right like, all all
of the sort of the infrastructure of the modern world
is physically being created by them. And this creates this
you know, like if you're the person who is like
who has transformed like this fishing village into this giant
industrial city, right um, you know you you you see

(02:13:43):
yourselves as the creator, like literally physically the creator of
this new world is being developed. And then the second
belief that that it produces that drives this movement is
that the people who produce this world should be as
inheritors and so and this this, this sort of this
is what drives the workers movement in this period, which
is that like, okay, so if if you if you
are literally physically creating the new world, and you think

(02:14:05):
that because you have created it, it should be yours. Uh,
the next that the thing that you do because it's
not yours, right, like you don't like yeah, you know,
like the people who build cities are not the people
who owned the cities. And you know if you see this, yeah,
like yeah, okay, like in the city is actually owned
by like three real estate speculators and like a bunch

(02:14:28):
of cops, and more applicable examples like the people who
build the cup podcast is not own the podcast. Yeah no,
we don't own the podcast. Like we we are exactly
a plicable result that you know, that kind of you know,
everyone understands that example. Yeah, every we I actually don't
think the people understand that we don't own the podcast.
It's actually unclear to be I. I people people have
weird things about how podcasting works. But yeah, we don't

(02:14:51):
own the podcast. We just create it and we do
all the work. And then Sophie sits in her leather
chair looking to out at the leather chair chair over.
I think it's all my podcast creations I have created
and then usually so bad. How could you think I

(02:15:14):
could sit here on an eight five degree day in
a leather chair going to sulpie. At least get your
facts right, my word a chair? Continue, Chris. Okay, So
for the people who are like actually watching their boss,

(02:15:34):
like sitting around smoking a giant cigar in a factory
while they pound like hammers, or like work at a
hospital and get a watch like just started a massive
cigar and a comically large to give to prop. But

(02:15:56):
because for the record, whenever I do hang out with
my other boss, Robert, he often does in some chair
smoking a cigar, and I do think it is in
fact leather. Okay, So we're describing Robert before me, the
slave away in my laptop writing scripts and yeah, work
in the podcast minds. Yeah, it's it's it is. It

(02:16:17):
is really hard out there and continue. So okay, So,
like the belief that you produced the world and that
if you produce you should own it is like this
This is not unique to the part of the workers
movement that like, you know, thinks that also you should
like have a democracy and the factory and like you
should have the autonomy to decide how you do your
work and what needs to be done. Uh that those

(02:16:39):
beliefs like broadly comprise the ideology of like the entire
workers movement, and by you know, by by the century,
the workers movement is really really broad, right, I mean
it stretches from sort of like really mild social democratic
trade unionists to like the intellectual heads of these like
Leninist vanguard parties. But what makes the democratic wing unique
is that the r concern is the fundamental alienation of

(02:17:02):
factory life. And and this this is I mean, originally
like it is very much factory life, but like this
this gets expanded out as this goes on into sort
of the like the fundamental alienation of labor itself, which
is just this condition of being reduced to an object
by bosses who use you as a tool to do something.
And you know, and this this is a concern for

(02:17:23):
everyone in some sense, but but for the Lenins and
social democrats, alienation is just like a product of ownership
or distribution. Right. So you know, if if that's what
you believe, the way you defeat alienation is through the
working class of productive capacity, not in it, not in
sort of like any kind of like innate human like
humanity or creativity. Like all you have to do is like, well, okay,
you flip a switch, right, and the factory is now

(02:17:46):
owned by the state instead of being owned by like
JP Morgan or something like, Now your alienation is gone.
That's how it works. Yeah, Or and and your social democracy.
It's like, well, okay, so you you you, you flip
a whitch and taxes get higher, and now you have
a union, but you're still working for gold You're still
working for the Goldman Sachs. But you know, but for

(02:18:09):
for for for for the wing of the workers movements
that you know actually cares about democracy. This doesn't solve anything, right, Like,
as long as the fundamental relation of being the like
of being an object rights. As long as like you,
fundamentally the worker are not are not a human being
who has agency and control and autonomy over their life.

(02:18:31):
As long as you're just an object that you know,
like you're you're like you, you you're a living human
tool that the one man ruler of the factory can
like you know, can can wield around to do whatever
they want. As as long as that persists, changes in
ownership structure and need like health benefits missed the entire point.
And this kind of the degradation that comes from just

(02:18:51):
being a tool can only be solved by returning agency
and autonomy to the working class. And that means like
actually giving the class control over the production process. And
you know, in in in notty six and Spain, workers
are like funk this and decided to take the entire
thing into their own hands. And they do this by
just seizing their workplaces and mass and this becomes known

(02:19:11):
as a Spanish revolution um and it is one of
the most extensive sort of experiments. And like workers democratic
self managements or like whatever whatever you want to call
people making their own decisions in the workplace like that
has ever happened, like especially in the modern era. Like
everything from like public utilities to like bakeries to hospitals
to shoe factories like falls under the direct control of

(02:19:33):
these like democratic unions. And once their bosses have been
like you know, chased from the premises and like flee
and terror uh, these workers set about like transforming the
entirety of Spanish society along democratic lines. Like they pulled
their resources together collectively and they allocate them democratically for
the benefit of like siety as a whole, and for
a brief moment this works. They have this incredible, like

(02:19:54):
this triumphant experiment democratic self managements, and output increases dramatically
and social services are expanded, and like in in In
in the span of two years in the middle of
a civil war, like the workers of Spain are able
to create a universal health care system that expands karento
like like rural areas of Spain where like you couldn't
get it before. But you know, the problem is once

(02:20:16):
again is that this is happening to the civil war
and and a lot like you know, and using sort
of like nominally anti fascism like as as they're sort
of like you know, they're using the threat of the
NIED too post fascism as as a sort of front
like a French for what they're actually doing. You get
this alliance of liberals, liberal socialists and Stalinists who just

(02:20:36):
like brutally stamp out any attempt that you democratic self
management and like you have like Soviet cadreastion like NKVD,
like Soviet secret police guys like literally leading armies into
into these cities and like like killing like killing the
workers and then physically like taking control of these factories
that people had sees and giving them back to the bosses,
which is you know, this is this is great. This

(02:20:58):
is a great communist stuff. And yeah, the you know,
and this this this ends exactly how you would expect
it to end with. Yeah, like this this the Stalinists
get everything they want. They murder all of the people
who want like a factory council, and then they all
get killed by Franco. But you know, undeterred by sort
of the casualty tolls of these like massacres by people

(02:21:20):
who want bosses. Uh, this just keeps happening, and you know,
by the time you get to the sties, like all
this stuff is back. Like there there's there's factory councils
again in Hungary, you get them, in Italy and France
and the Chichoslovakia N eight there's like like they're there there. There,
there's councils being like there, there's there's communes being formed
in like Vietnam. There's like they're that We've talked about

(02:21:41):
the cordonation UH in Chile on this show before like
these things are happening everywhere, and I think Hungary in
particular is a really interesting one because so there's a
revolution in Hungary against sort of the Soviets in six
that's it gets a lot of the same liberal mythologizing

(02:22:02):
that you get with Tenemen, but like kind of more
egregious here. So I don't know, I think, like I
I got taught this revolution in schools is like one
of the few ones that we actually get and they
taught it as this like this is like the Hungarian
revolution was just like kind of nationalists, like liberal democratic
revolution for people who wanted like democracy and freedom and

(02:22:22):
like free markets. And then like you know, if you
go read about what the people were at but people
actually doing the revolution we're saying, you get quotes like this,
this is a direct quote from a member of one
of the Hungarian workers councils. The time when the boss
is decided, our fate is over, and it's like these
these guys, these guys do not seem like I don't know,

(02:22:45):
these guys don't seem like liberal democrats. Something weird is
happening here. That's something that's actually happening, is that like
Hungarian workers like sees control of their factories and like
the workplaces, and they formed workers councils the overs of
the government, and then the Russian slaughter them all. But
you know, like this is not liberal democratic revolution at all,
that this is a revolt against the tatorship in the workplace,
and there's an identical revolts breakout across both the capitalist

(02:23:07):
world and the communist world, and in the newly de
colonized society start seeing them too, and you know, and
to the sort of like dismay of both the communists
and the capitalists who are both like, oh my god,
why is and we keep holming workers councils like this
solution to alienation, Like it's not like an ideological thing, right,
Like it's it's not that there's like a group of

(02:23:29):
people who are like secretly infiltrating these countries and being like, okay,
you needful workers councils. This this is this stuff is
happening in places where there's just like none of that.
So like one of one of the sort of like
movements that that does stuff like this is is the
revolution in Algeria. Um, you know, and they're like they're
they're there are like Algeria like does have a pretty

(02:23:49):
high level of political education, but the political education they're
getting is from like it's it's from the National Liberation Front,
which is like asofar As, it's any one thing. It's
like it's a nationalist vankard this movements, which is you
know that they're the people who like fight the French
colonizers and beat them and their ideology like asofar As,
you can describe one out the Allo egion. Like the
thing that they want is like the state having this

(02:24:10):
decisive role of national development. But you know, immediately it's
taking power off. And BenBella, who's Algeria's first president, like
discovers that, you know, he's not actually going to be
the one like making the decision about what the country's
economic structure is going to be because he takes power
and a whole bunch of like French people who lived
in Algeria of flee, and basically what happens immediately after

(02:24:34):
is that all of like all of these this property
that have been originally like held by by by French
sort of like colonists, like it gets immediately seized by
the Algerian working class and you know, they build their
own workers councils, and you know, BenBella is like, Okay,
I guess I guess we have like workers councils now,
like I guess I guess we have sort of like

(02:24:56):
autonomous democratic production and BenBella is like kind of trying
to undermine them. But he doesn't really get a chance
to because once again there's a military coup and Bembella
like he I think he escapes and doesn't die. But
like the fact that the council's all sort of get
dismantled again. But like the number of times this has

(02:25:17):
happened is getting just like completely out of hand, and
it's like yeah, okay, the it's like yeah, okay, so
every time this happens, they murder everyone. But like you know,
the revolutions keep happening, and they keep happening, and they
keep happening, and you know, even even as late as
like the late seventies, like it's not clear that that
that like it's it's not clear that the people who

(02:25:39):
want one man role in the factory are gonna win.
Like there's this moment in Italy nineteen seventy seven where
it's like this just like giant student student and worker
coalition almost takes power. Um, Like in Spain even after
like fifty years of of like Franco and like the
fascist octatorship, like the c n T, which is the
anarchist union that had done the revolution like reappears in

(02:26:00):
the seventies again even though everyone thought it was gone,
and like, you know, this is a real this is
a real source of strife for especially the sort of
capitalist managerial elite. Who are you know they this stuff
keeps happening. It's like okay, like it is an unacceptable

(02:26:20):
risk that one of the one day one of these
groups is going to win. And so they start looking
for a way to like dismantle this sort of like
systemic things that like create that that caused people to
do this. But you know, but they're but they're trying
to do it in a way that doesn't involve the
giving up their power. Um. So Yeah, as Vicky austen

(02:26:41):
Whild points out, this sort of like this like instinctive
embrace of like democracy in the factory, like as a
political program, it's only possible as long as factories, as
long as like the factory functions is the point of
encounter her. I think it was her term for was
She calls it a darker Gora, which is like, so
Gore is like like the sort of like the Greek
marketplace in the center of town. Everyone goes there and

(02:27:02):
you like talk about things, right, and the factory serves
as this kind of like it's this sort of like
dark version of it. Were Like, on the one hand,
you know, it facilitates these interactions that allow people to
sort of like identify with each other and like you know,
create collective meaning by like interacting with each other. But
on the other hand, it exists to exploit you, and

(02:27:22):
it's like terrible and you're just getting you know, you're
getting physically and socially destroyed like every moment you're in it.
But you know it's it's still is a place where
you can like assemble an identity as like like you
and a bunch of the people around you can go like, hey,
like we are workers, right, like we are the working class,
and this this is like a shared political identity that
you have that allows you to do things. And so

(02:27:44):
the thrust of sort of the attack against this takes
the form of this attack on like the shop floor
as like a side of like formation of identities that
that can allow you to mobilize stuff. And so this
takes like a number of forms. Um most famously, there's
there's it's the industrialization and this sort of like spatial
relocation of factories. So like like part of what's going
on right is that you have a you have a

(02:28:06):
bunch of people who work in a factory, and then
they live like around like right around the factories. Right
were they work in a coal mine and everyone lives
in a town around the coal mine. And this means
that everyone sees each other constantly, and they're like constantly
like running into each other and like physically talking to
each other. And you know, this is a really good
way to create radical politics. So what what happens is

(02:28:29):
you these factories get sent out to the suburbs, and
this allows you to to create places where you know,
workers are isolated from each other and you know, and
the other thing you can do is you turn workers
into homeowners and you sort of like buy them off
with this combination of like cheap credit and this promise
that like their houses would not be a financial asset.
And so as the sort of eighties rolls on, the

(02:28:51):
sort of the the like the herald of democratization of
finance or places democratization, and the factory is sort of
the capitalist class. Like the other thing they do that's
like really insidious. They they tied like the remaining union
pensions into the stock market. This is stuff like you
see today with like four o one case, and it
means that like if you want to like have a retirement,

(02:29:12):
you are like physically literally invested in the stock market,
which ties you know, which ties everyone sort of like
into the system. And corporations start to turn workplaces into
these like enormous propaganda apparatus. Is you get like like
Walmart in particular, has these like like these vast ideological
like programming things that they run that are designed to
sort of like get you to identify with the corporation

(02:29:34):
itself and not with like the other people you're you know,
like the other people you're within the class as a whole,
and you know, and like the other thing that they're
able to do is the fact that capital is mobile
and workers like aren't allows you know, combined with logistics advances,
and it means that like if workers ever start getting
in upper hands somewhere, capitalist can just leave and the
process that you see, is that as the sort of

(02:29:55):
the total number of people working in the like in
industrial work keeps decreasing, as a center of the population
that keeps decreasing. And as this happens, capitalists are just like, okay, skirt,
we're gon, we're gonna, we're gonna pick up our tools
and leave. And this spits out like enormous populations who
are just like kicked out of atitional workforce entirely. And
these developments, this is what actually like eventually destroys the

(02:30:19):
classical workers t mouvement is the abilability to leave from
the sort of destruction of the factory is like a
site of stuff. But in order for this to work,
the one thing they need is a place to move
to write. They need somewhere with this large exploitable labor
supply that has been like crushed enough that it won't
revolt against them. And the capitalist class finds that in

(02:30:40):
our products and services, and we're we're we're back, We're
we're back, and we're we're back to China. And Okay,
so I've been talking about the way this sort of
like this this whole system, like this whole factory system
mass production stuff like develops. But China is weird because
this is the one place where the fact your system
works like really differently than everywhere else. Um, there's a

(02:31:04):
lot of reasons for this, one of which is it
like so change like stayed on firms. It's like almost
impossible for them to fire someone because I mean there's
a lot of reasons for this, and one of them
is that like people's entire sort of social sphere is
built around their work unit. And like their work unit
is like it is the is the company you work for,
and there's this whole sort of like legal apparatus built
around it, and its like you know, and like this

(02:31:25):
like unit gives you everything from like your retirement, like
it like feeds you, like there's often entertainment stuff like
tied into it, Like you get healthcare, you get like
childcare from it. And the CP also gets rid of
the peace rate system, which is just like this is
this thing that like I mean, it's so there's a
lot of capitalist places to work with this word's like okay,
so the peace rate system is you pay people for

(02:31:45):
like every unit of something they produce, so like you
get paid by like I don't know like how many
like how many pounds of like cherities you can pick.
And so the USSR brings this back because the USSR
and the US are really not that different. But China
is like, nah, this like sucks. This is capitalism and
you know, okay, like I'm not gonna say the Chinese

(02:32:07):
factory system is great, but like because they don't have
the peace ray system is because they can't fire people.
You get this very you get this weird thing where
it's like the people who run the factories like don't
have very good ways to force people to work. And
because of this, they like they sort of like have

(02:32:28):
to allow this degree of participation in the worker process,
like in the labor process that like you don't really
see most of the places and the everything they have
that I luckily Garrison and I also have this is
we have the ability to criticize our bosses. Although we
we have more of this these guys. But one day ahead,

(02:32:52):
one one okay, we we we've got it. We don't,
we don't. We don't have our big character poster yet,
but like one day Garrison and I are going to
show up to the office with like giant big character
post with your faces on it. They like have specifically,
Roberts are gonna have a list of crimes on it.
My favorite part of like big labor protests when they
make those giant like puppets. If we just make a

(02:33:12):
giant's tech puppet version of Robert and Sophie that we
just prayed around the office, that's long as mind's bigger
than Robert's, that's fine, we can do that, right, full support.
So we were got to do this in China, It's
it's weird, like you have the ability to do this,

(02:33:33):
but like it's like run to the party and so
if someone gets unpopular enough, like the party will like
start a campaign about how bad like that one boss is,
and then you can show up to like the meeting
and go like, hey, I hate my boss. This guy sucks.
But they're just replacing with like another boss, right, So
it's not like it's not actually a democratic system really,

(02:33:56):
but the way that it works ensures that like the
people who are managed years are like pretty popular at
least to some extents, like are popular and people don't
like really hate them. And this means that, you know,
because there's all of this stuff that makes the Chinese
factories different from like the other systems, and also because
of like structural stuff in Maoism that I mean, I

(02:34:19):
could talk about that, but I don't like talking about Maoism.
But basically the product of this is that like you
have in China during this period, a lot of demands
for democracy, but they're really they're not they're not tied
to the workplace at all. They're they're they're mostly like
political demands for like democracy in the party or stuff
like that. And that means, like you know, at least

(02:34:41):
in the cities, this system like kind of works okayish
until the Cultural Revolution where everything falls apart. And this
means that it is at long last time for me
to do the cultural revolution rant, which is something I
have been planning for, Like, yeah, I excited about this.
I've been waiting for an excuse and I finally have one. Okay,

(02:35:04):
So the cultural revolution rant is that everyone gets the
cultural revolution completely wrong, Like everyone every like it's like
it's it's one of the rare events where like it's
misinterpreted in like exactly the same way by both people
who support it and the people who oppose it. Um
And Okay, the first thing to understand about this, right
is like Okay, So the the initial the very very

(02:35:28):
beginning of the culture revolution, like it's basically a bunch
of like teenagers kind of like it's like middle schoolers essentially,
and they're attacking these they're attacking like other kids at
their school. And these kids are kids who have what's
called a black blood background, like black blood, which means

(02:35:50):
that like they're they're the children of people who were
from like quote unquote bad class backgrounds. And this is
really weird for a number of reasons. One because you
have you have a sort of like a pseudo class
system based on like who your parents were, right, you
have people who have red blood who had like good
class backgrounds, like your parents are workers, or your parents
worked with the Party or something. And then you have

(02:36:11):
people who are from like bad class backgrounds quote unquote,
who like are persecuted and like, okay, like I don't
really care that much if you're like persecuting like a
Shanghai oligarch who like collaborated with the French and Japanese
imperialists or whatever. But like a this extends to like
the children of these people, and a lot of the
children these people weren't even alive when their parents were
like you know, like doing stuff that was bad. And

(02:36:34):
the other thing is that like the term bad class
background this is really loose. Like I I know people
whose families were declared like declared like black class backgrounds,
who have black blood and like you know, they're they
weren't allowed to hold in the government position. And the
reason that this happened to them was that her dad
had made bird feeders before the revolution and they considered
that like petite bourgeois. And it's like this is like

(02:36:55):
this is like like what, like what what are you doing?
Like you you you reproduced, like you've turned class into
like a pseudo race thing that's like her like you
like inherit from your parents, even though like their parents
don't own property anymore. Because it's it's really bizarre and
and and what's what's happening here is the kids from
the red class backgrounds are are are you know, they're

(02:37:16):
they're the kids of the new of the new Chinese elite,
and they're just like picking on attacking the kids who
are like now this this sort of like like my
minority class. And so what it amounts to at the
beginning of this is a bunch of privileged rich kids
who are like attacking the bunch of kids who are
being persecuted for stuff. It's like not their fault at all.
And you know, part and the other, the other part

(02:37:38):
of this, like this is the part of the people.
I think. Yeah, it's like Mao is trying to like
play power game inside the party blah blah blah blah blah.
But you know, things get more and more chaotic, and
you get you get circuiting his attacks on like CCP,
bereaucrats and cadres and stuff, because ma was trying to
like male was trying to solidify his place in the
party and he's blah blah blah. There's other stuff that's happening.
Um but then it gets really interesting. Um. So, so

(02:38:00):
this starts in six right, and at the very beginning
of six seven, there's something there's something called the January Storm,
which is where a bunch of rebel workers just seize
control of Shanghai and like they run the party out,
they run the other they run I think they run
the army out too, and you know, and now like
they they control the city of Shanghai. And this is

(02:38:21):
like an oh funk moment from Mao because you know,
now he has to like deal with this city that
has been taking over by its own working class. And
I found this this incredible line from Joe and Lai
who's having a meeting with Mao and they're trying to
figure out what to do about the fact that like this, this, this,
like that Shanghai has been seized by by these workers
and I'm just gonna read this. When asked whether the

(02:38:44):
new leadership should be elected from the bottom up, Joel
replied bluntly that quote, anarchism is bound to develop if
we immediately implement direct elections of the Paris Commune type.
And I think this is like this is this really incredible,
like like the thing you can find right, because it's like, okay, well,
there's two things that can happen here. One is either like, okay,

(02:39:08):
you you you you give these people democracy and the
ability to vote, right, and Joe and Lyon Matt look
at this, and you're like, that would be anarchist if
we can't do that. And the second thing is you
don't do that, and you oppressed them, and they take
the second line, and you know, okay, like it takes
them a bit to get this ramped up, right, It
takes them a bit to get the sort of kind
of revolution thing they're doing to like stop all of

(02:39:30):
this rebel stuff that they've they've started to to get
it takes them about a year. But but by the
students and the workers who had like you know, done
done this sort of uprising stuff so are getting slaughtered,
like just mastered, killed on an unimaginable scale. Uh. This

(02:39:50):
is this is where everyone gets the Culture Revolution completely wrong,
because everyone the entire memory of the Cultural Revolution is
from basically the first two years of it, right, which
is like all the stuff about like like you know,
like professors being marched out onto the street and dunce
caps and like students like humiliating the professors and like
like party officials being like marched around with like placards
on them, and like people like that's something like the

(02:40:12):
chaos of the revolution. Like that's that's stuff everyone remembers.
That's the first two years of this. There's still like
I mean, you can are like there's there's there's the
short the short quote unquote short culture Revolution, which is
like the high point of the activity goes from nineteen
six nine, and then there's like a longer one that
goes to like the death of Mao, depending on how
you want to count it. But almost all of the

(02:40:36):
actual violence in this period happens in this in in
in the third phase, which is the so the first
phase of the Didicial uprising, and then the rebel groups
start fighting each other. But then phase three is when
the state like cracks down on like start starts like
starts trying to crush this like rebel student factions. And
I'm going to read from Walder who did ah, so

(02:40:59):
is the guy in Walder who who went to He
did a bunch of work in the Chinese archives, which
he like went and like found the death tolls. And
I'm gonna read like he like he go hells a
bunch of archives. He goes to a bunch of state archives,
and he like like tracks down the death certificates and
tracks down like who died where? And this this is
what he wrote about it. More than three four of

(02:41:19):
all documented deaths and local animals are due to the
actions of authorities in the in this third phase, and
then more than of those persecuted for alleged political crimes.
So what are he's saying here is that seventy five
percent of all of the deaths the entire Culture Revolution
weren't done by like the revolution parts. They were done

(02:41:39):
by the state, murdering the workers faction, the rebel factions.
And not only that, nine of of the actual political
persecution was done by the states and not by the rebels.
And when when when when you actually look at what
this means, Like this means everything everything anyone ever talks
about the Culture Revolution is completely wrong. It wasn't the

(02:42:00):
the thing had happened to the Cultural Revolution. Wasn't that
sort of student radicalism got out of control and they
started killing everyone that preaches all this violence. The thing
that actually happens is that there's a student like uprising, right,
But what happens is that the sort of conservative and
state factions just slaughter them. And I Walt Walter estimates
that the total number of people dead, it's somewhere between

(02:42:21):
one point one and one point six million people. And again,
like seventy five percent, and I think it's actually slightly
higher from that, like percent of the people who were
killed in this are killed by the state. And you
know this, this has an enormous effect on I mean
just everything that happens in China and Chinese society from
then on, because on the one hand, the popular memory

(02:42:43):
of the Cultural Revolution persists as this thing that was, like,
this is what happens if you like if people outside
the party and like students in radicals like start like
making trouble, is that you get all these people dead.
But then you know, you have the people inside the
state who like know how many people they had to
kill in order to hold on to power, right, they
kill they kill probably more people than like that, you know,

(02:43:04):
they're there's there's there's a very famous massacre of like
communists or like suspected communist Indonesia that it doesn't get
called a genocide because it was technically on political lines,
but like it was one of the worst anti communist
massacres in history, and they killed more people from that
during this period, and that like that level of violence
and the fact that the people running the state understand

(02:43:25):
what they had to do, it means you get you
get an elite that's incredibly paranoid about like anything that
like smells like organizing happening outside the party. And the
other thing happens is that like the most radical students
and workers of this period, just get that they're all dead, right,
they killed, they killed like they they killed like a
million people the you know, for for for for for

(02:43:48):
every one person who got killed, there's about nineteen people
who were like persecuted in a lot of way. And
that's like a lot of people are tortured. A lot
of these people are like sent to prisons. They're like
like really horrible stuff happens to people. And this process
keeps going like through through the seven Like there there's
a huge spike in like state killings nineteen seventy, and

(02:44:08):
by by the end of the seventies, like anything that's
sort of like could have cohered into into like a
movement that like wants democraty in the workplace, for example,
it's just gone. Because all of all of the radicals,
like and anyone, anyone who wanted anyone who wanted democraty
in factory, any of the people who were like even
sort of like just like sort of rebellious, like these

(02:44:29):
people have all been killed. And the consequence of this
is that throughout the through the eighties, he gets politics
that's driven by this like sort of like intellectual liberal
like liberal democratic politics that ignores completely ignores work lass entirely,
and you know, and these these people start to take
power and you get Dansha paying well, I think I

(02:44:52):
think it's it's like right before he takes power, but
Danjo ping wise up implementing the one child policy, which
is this like incredibly draconian and really success still attempts
just like re established the states like patriarchal control over
the household and strips like hundreds of millions of women
from like like of of of autonomy over their own bodies,
and you know, and and and and and it really

(02:45:14):
looks like through through the through through through like the
late seventies and the eighties, it looks like like the
Chinese ruling classes succeeded, right like they finally destroyed that
they finally destroyed like any opposition to them. But then
you know, things get very weird, which is that Setiman happens,
and you know, but by by nine, like the whole

(02:45:38):
like like as as a rule, like in general everywhere
the sort of classical workers neo meant that was like
at demanding tomoxy the factory, like they're basically done and
so they're they're unable to sort of do their own revolutions.
Now the only thing they can do is sort of
like latch onto other stuff. But the problem that the
party has is that so they've had a lot of

(02:45:58):
measures in place to to make sure that you've never
got these kind of movements in China, and they kind
of worked. But when it went through the nighties, like
China starts implementing a market economy, right, they start, they
started they started like cutting this the welfare state. They
start like destroying the sort of like limited control that
works has had in the factories, and they kind of
like unknowingly reproduced the conditions that have been producing these

(02:46:21):
revolutions in every other country. And you know, as this
massive inflation wave hits, they turned China into this powdern
keg and this, you know, and this combined with sort
of like the liberal democratic students moving gets you this
really interesting and weird ideology that these workers happen. I'm

(02:46:42):
going to read it from from an interview with with
with one of the workers, who was that gentleman, Why
do a lot of workers agree with democracy and freedom
in the workshops? Does what the workers say count or
what leader says? We later talked about it in the factory,
the dictatorship. Sorry, in the factory, the director is a dictator.

(02:47:04):
What one man says goes. If you view the state
through the factory, it's about the same one man rule.
Our objective is not very high. We just want workers
to have their own independent organizations in work units. It's
personal rule. For example, if I want to change jobs,
the bus company foreman won't let me go. I ought
to go home at five at five pm, but he

(02:47:24):
tells me to work over time for two hours and
if I don't cut my bonus, this is a personal rule.
A factory should have a system. If workers wants to
change jobs, they ought to have a system of rules
to decide how to do it. Also, these rules should
be decided upon by everyone and then afterwards anyone who
violates it will be punished according to the rules. This
is rule by law. Now, we don't have this kind
of legal system. And Okay, that's a really like I

(02:47:50):
don't know, I think it's a really interesting sort of
like fusion of a whole bunch of stuff, right because
on the one hand, like the sort of like ruling
discourse that's happening the things as you're talking about it
is like that we need the democracy, read the rule
of law. And but you know, the workers in these
factories are looking at are looking at like the situation
they're facing, and they're like, ha, we don't have a

(02:48:12):
democracy like here either, right, And so you get this,
you get what's a really conservative framing of the sort
of a very sort of very classical like critique of
woman rule in the factory that has been happening for like,
you know, like a hundred years. But what she's just
think about this is that like any actual attempt to
like do this right, get gets you to workers control,

(02:48:34):
like democratic workers control in the factory. And as Walder
who well, Walder also wrote another like he's a guy
who went and interviewed a bunch of the people who
have been a workers who have been involved with this
and as as they point out, like this unlike really

(02:48:56):
like any other time in Chinese history, like the it
the people who are part of like the Beijing Autonomous
Workers Autonomous Federation, are you know that they don't they
don't have an intellectual class like this. These are these
are just a bunch of workers and they have very
little connection like they don't they they have very little
like political connections, right, like beforehand, like to to the

(02:49:16):
lberal circles are just sort of hearing what they're reading.
And this is this means like what you have here
is like it's not like an intellectraal like this is.
This is just a bunch of workers and for you know,
for for for like one final time, their instinct when
they when the revolution sort of like starts, is the
demand democracy in the factory. And this demand, like above
all others, is completely politically unacceptable. And you know, and

(02:49:40):
when when the army markers on Beijing, it's it's these
workers that they wipe out, and they wipe them out
so thoroughly that the fact that this is what these
people were fighting for is it's it's scrubbed for the
record of the CCP, it's scrubbed like the protomocracy move
but doesn't remember it, even though their entire thing is memory.
And yeah, and this this ensures that the meeting of

(02:50:04):
these actual events, what the people were fighting for, what
they were trying to do, has been almost completely lost.
And I think at this point we can finally ask
what what what actually was tianaman Um And in some
sense in the in the Chinese context itself it's a
transition between two different Chinese working classes. These protests are

(02:50:26):
sort of like this is the last like political sort
of like mobilization of like the of the old Chinese
working class, which has been these people who had been
in the cities, who had been like they had been
the beneficiaries of this old sort of like socialist period
welfare state, and these people in in the street around channemen,

(02:50:46):
they mount the last attack of the of the classical
workers studments. And when they lose, this entire class like this,
this this entire urban working class that had been around
since like the twenties, that have been sort of the
driver of Chinese radical politics, that had been like that
have been have been fighting and striking for like seventy

(02:51:07):
eighty years. They they're they're gone. They're completely destroyed, and
over the course of the economical structure in the nineties
there they ceased to exist as a class, and they're
replaced by a new Chinese working class, which is drawn
from sort of these rural and sort of semi urban
underclasses of the old social system who are like dragged

(02:51:28):
into who are dragging the cities from from their villages,
from their towns, and who now fill Actually, well I
don't I don't know what the numbers are today because
it's weird because of COVID. But like there were two
and seventy seven billion of these people of this enormous
market worker like force who formed the backbone of like

(02:51:48):
the entire Chinese working class. And these people who they
have rural house registrations, and this means that they don't
get any of the benefits, like the sort of like
welfare benefits that you would get from living in a city.
And this means that they're you know, the they they
constitute like an entirely new class of of workers. And

(02:52:10):
instead of you know, like whatever sort of privileges that
had been like carved out by the old working class,
this one gets nothing. And the other thing that they
get is this entire raft to sort of capitalist ideology
that's based into like every aspect of the workplace culture.
This this is massive attempt in China to get people
to buy homes and you know, the like when where

(02:52:32):
the old working class could at least like positive the
factory is like a place where you could have democracy,
where like life could be improved by like different controlled factories,
Like this new working class like the thing that they
want the most is to leave the factory and become
a business owner. And you know, like this this probably
sounds familiar to like us, right, like this is this
is the old joke about like about the about the

(02:52:53):
American working class, which is that everyone sees themselves as
temporarily temporarily embarrassed millionaires and like, yeah, you know, in
modern China, it's like yeah, okay, it's like people consider
themselves to be like temporarily embarrassed small business owners and
this stuff. This, this this ideological self conception of like
I'm going to work in the factory, that I'm gonna

(02:53:14):
becme a some business owner is completely inimical to the
formation of like the classical or reservement. And there hasn't
been that kind of formation in China sense. And this
this is not really unique thing, right that the death
of that workers movement has seen a sort of like
complete and total collapse of the demand for like democratic
self management like everywhere across the entire world. And you know,

(02:53:37):
incredibly stubborn lee like the working class like refuses to
sort of cohare itself in the factory. And so in
this sense, China is really just sort of late to
the game. They they they got slightly early, they got
they got slightly later to the point that we're at now.
You said there was gonna be a happier ending that

(02:53:58):
they had. The happy ending was last episode. Uh, this
episode is this episode ending is really depressing? Well, I mean, okay,
they're there, there, there there, Okay, there's a slightly less
depressing note kind of Okay. The thing that's less depressing
here is that for my entire literally my entire lifetime
has been the US learning from one economic lapse so
another and the world, the world like the international economic system.

(02:54:20):
Like I think I was born in like the middle
of like the dot com collapse, and then I got
two eight, and then like there's been a bunch of
economic classes in the last like three years, and you know,
the whole systems like learned from crisis to crisis to crisis.

(02:54:40):
And that means that there's been an incredible, just like
a rapidly increasing number of revolutions everywhere, even though the
sort of like darker gore of the factory like has
ceased to be this thing that like creates the working
like the identity of the working class. And this means
that you know, Okay, so in order to have some
kind of mass move but you needs some kind of

(02:55:00):
collective identity to to mobilize around. And you know, if
if you can't make this in the factory, the place
where it's going to be made instead is the street.
And this means in the last you know, like twenty
yees years, like with with without the sort of positive
identity in the workplace to to to to hear itself around,

(02:55:21):
workers are really only able to sort of mobilize on
a mass basis, like indirect opposition to a threat that
can that can that can confront like everyone at the
same time. And this is the only thing I can do.
This is really the state. And you know, the state
has the ability to to increase the price that basic
commodities and slash welfare benefits, and that becomes the only
available enemy. And so yeah, if if you look at

(02:55:42):
what revolutions have been in the last twenty years, it's
a constant fight against the police, because fighting the police
is the only thing that can that can allow you
to create a new social identity, like a sort of
sort of collective identification. And you know, and so this
means that collected like modern revolts. Like everything we've seen
over the last like four years. The four him that
it takes is mass street movements and you know, continuous

(02:56:03):
confrontation with the police. And you get to literally see
this with with occupy, right. Occupied was originally like the
like the slogan occupy was about the Dargentina in factory
occupations and in two one, but then you know that stops,
like that's the end, like just one like that that
that's that's the end of the whole cycle. There's there's
no more factory occupations actual astitude. You get one in

(02:56:26):
Bosnia has A Govia, which is funny because it's like
they occupy a bunch of factories, but like they don't
know what to do with them, and so you get
just like a regular like occupy, like like in the
sort of like score occupation you'd get in like New
York or whatever, where everyone's sort of like sitting in
a circle talking about stuff, but it's happening in a factory.
But but they're not like trying to run production, they're
not trying to do any of that stuff. They're just

(02:56:47):
sort of like they're in the factory. Isn't is no
longer this sort of like space of like creation and
possibility that could be turned into something new. It's just
like a place where you go that's like indistinguishable from
like a square. And you know, the last ten years
it's like people people. Originally it was like it doesn't

(02:57:07):
left right, everyone's everyone's occupying squares. But you know, by
by about a dozen fourteen, people have figured out that
you can't, like it's it's almost impossible to hold a
square if the police attempt to run you out. And
so this gets your place with running street flights with
the police. But this, you know, this places everyone who's
trying to do this in this incredibly dangerous bind because
you know, the like the old workers councils were able

(02:57:31):
to bring down states, like largely they got crushed by
outside militaries, but they were able to bring down states
because you know, there is an enormous amount of power
in being able to control production. But the problem is
that like you know, if you're in a square, right, like,
you don't have the ability to do that. And with
without the sort of without the factory occupations alongside them,
there's been a lot of general strikes in the last

(02:57:52):
four years there's want of peruse one in France, there's
someone in Hong Kong and Soudan, and every single one
of them has been crushed. But you know, but but
this is a real problem, right, because the current labor
conditions aren't going to produce another way of factory occupations,
and so the way forward for anyone who, like you know,
wants to have a democracy in the workplace is completely unclear.

(02:58:15):
And I think I think that's the actual legacy of Tianamen.
The workers who are assembled outside Tianamen Square had already
left their factories, and you know, for for for all
that they spoke the language of the old workers movements, right,
they spoke a democracy in the factory and one man rule.
They stood and fought and died like we do in
the streets. There's this bridge between sort of the classical

(02:58:38):
workers movements and us, and you know, they face the
same revolutionary crisis that we face, the crisis of Popula
and Palestine, Columbia, Iran and Myanmar, Hong Kong. Of this,
this crisis of victory that's just beyond the horizon can't
be grasped. You know, I don't think the people at
Tienamen have any answers to give us like, I don't
think they do. I think they rent. They headlong into

(02:59:00):
the crisis that we ran into, and they all died. Yeah.
I think expecting answers from the dead is demanding too
much of those who before and after us died finding
for liberation and all we can really do now is
find our own way when, with the names of the
dead in our lips, build the world they died fighting for. Hey,

(02:59:25):
we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from
now until the heat death of the universe. It Could
Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For
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updated monthly at cool zone Media dot com slash sources.

(02:59:47):
Thanks for listening.