It Could Happen Here Weekly 5

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Make sure to check out Drink Champs, your number one
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(00:21):
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(00:44):
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(01:06):
After thirty years, it's time to return to the halls
of West Beverly High and hang out at the peach
Pit on the podcast nine O two one o MG.
Visit Jenny Garth and Tory Spelling for a rewatch of
the hit series Beverly Hills nine O two one oh.
From the very beginning, we get to tell the fans
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(01:27):
can tell them all the good stuff to happen off camera.
Listen to nine O two one o MG on the
I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get
your podcasts. 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

(01:49):
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,
a podcast that is on the cycle of being sort
of Okayley introduced. When this episode goes out, it will

(02:11):
be Indigenous People's Day and so to to talk about
that more where we're gonna talk to Dalia Killsback, who
is a member of the Northern Chyenne, has Northern Cheyenne
tribal citizenship, and has sort of studied and worked in
federal India tribal policy. Dahlia, Hello, how how are you doing?
I'm doing well. Thank you for inviting me here today.

(02:32):
Of course Garrison is also here. Garrison Hello, Hello. I'm
I'm currently also doing writing about indigenous stuff, but within
the context of Canada, which people should will probably here
later this week. UM. So yeah, I guess first thing
I wanted to talk about is a little bit is
about what Indigenous People's Day is and why it is

(02:56):
that and not the other thing. Um. Yeah. So Indigenous
People's Day, um, as many people know, is replacing I'm
gonna say it, Chris chrispher Columbus Day. Um, that is
still like a federal holiday, but multiple cities and states
have opted to use Indigenous People's Day instead. Um. And

(03:19):
the reasoning for that is acknowledging the atrocities that were
committed by Christopher Columbus, who first of all, did not
discover America. UM, but um continue to um not only
use slavery, but UM commit different forms of genocide, rape, etcetera,

(03:39):
all of these terrible atrocities. And so rather than celebrating
UM somebody like that UM, Indigenous people Day UM has
been implemented in order to recognize the people who are
actually here first, UM and indigenous people's across the America's there, histories, cultures,

(04:05):
and contributions. Yeah, Columbus, real piece of ship, worst Christopher, Like, yeah,
it really cannot be overstated how bad that guy was,
even even you know, even people in that era who
had committed their own genocides like Isabelle and Ferdinand, who
you know, expelled the Jews from Spain. Where it's like,
you know, if once you've reached the sentence expelled the

(04:27):
Jews from X like you you're are You're already in
the ship list of the worst people in human history.
And even they saw what Columbus was doing, it was
like what on earth? Bad bad guy, bad name. Things
are going to continue to go badly? And yeah, that
that was an everything that I wanted to talk about,
which is federal Indian policy. And you know this this

(04:52):
is an incredibly broad This is an incredibly broad area
spanning like three hundred years. So we're not gonna be
able to go into like an enormous amount of depth
in it, but I think it's important that people have
an understanding of, I mean, ages what the US did

(05:12):
and how everyone else has had the sort of deal
with it. And then also the fact that this is
something that changes over time and has has looked different,
It's looked it's been bad in different ways. Yeah, and
so when talking about federal Indian policy, I always like
to contextualize it within a larger um sort of like

(05:33):
euro American like teleology of colonial conquests, and then moving
on to set where colonialism and where we are with
federal federal Indian policy currently. Um. So, how do we
connect Christopher Columbus to where we are currently? Um? And
this is the history of federal Indian policy and Western

(05:57):
legal discourse and how UM European powers throughout history have
defined what it means to be an Indian person in
relationship to UM Indigenous people's rights to their own land
and to self governance. UM. So, when we're looking at

(06:18):
the different periods of federal Indian policy, UM, prior to
their being the United States government, we have the colonial period, um,
which is fourteen ninety two to seventeen seventies six. UM.
This is how federal Indian policy illegal scholars divide that UM.
And it's really important to kind of give the difference

(06:43):
between what is um a colonial state versus a settler
colonial state when you're talking about not just the United
States government but also the Canadian government and UM, different
governments globally. UM. But I want to talk just a
little bit about what I've by the difference between a
colonial government and a Suttler colonial government, because they're tied together. UM.

(07:08):
So by a Suttler colonial government, I mean what I
mean is that it is defined by the d territorialization
of indigenous population populations. And so rather than in a
colonial government as you had with Christopher Columbus and the
Spanish and with the English, etcetera, UM is rather than

(07:30):
a state and sovereignty being conceived as all these resources
are going back to the metrical all these resources are
going back to England or to Spain, etcetera. And colonial
occupation is in is um conceptualized within this way in

(07:51):
settler colonial governments, UM, the colonists come to these lands
and stay and they're what they define a sovereignty is
within this land that they define now as their own.
So and in order for that process to happen, UM,
there needs to be different forms of genocide of the
indigenous populations. And so that's what we saw with Christopher

(08:13):
Columbus and throughout history, UM was just the depletion of
a lot of our indigenous populous UM. And so when
I mean about the United States UM being a settler
colonial state, I mean that this is current and ongoing.
And so when we talk about federal Indian policy, UM,

(08:34):
Federal Indian policy is always in this conversation with what
started with Christopher Columbus as the doctrine of discovery and UM.
So that's how we define the colonial period. And feel
free to like stop me and ask me questions. Else
I'm just going to try to move quickly because there's

(08:56):
a lot. Yeah, I think we probably should briefly talk
about what the doctory discovery is, um lacy before we
get to sit at the martial trilogy and stuff. For sure,
what does that actually mean legally? Um? So legally, UM,
it's the discovery of a quote unquote New found Land,

(09:17):
UM by European colonial forces. And the reason why it's
called the doctrine of discovery, was that indigenous peoples on
these lands were deemed unable to govern themselves and they
did not know how to utilize their land up to
the definition of what the European powers thought UM land

(09:39):
use was that UM, indigenous peoples didn't have the same
concept of property UM, and same with their relationship with
resources and resource extraction. So when um, Christopher Columbus and
all of these other colonizer as clunky clunkyst doors came

(10:03):
to the quote unquote new land, UM, they saw all
of this rich, plentiful resource and thoughts of themselves, Well,
obviously these people don't know what they're doing because there's
just so much they have not done anything with it. UM.
And we're going to take this back to two hours
because obviously their inferior beings and don't know what property

(10:27):
is so UM. Legally, UM, the doctrine of Discovery conveyed
legal title to an ownership of American soil to European
nations UM, a title that devolved to the United States
and so UM. This definition is expansive UM, and expansive

(10:47):
discovery implies that Native nations have a right to lands
as occupants or possessors, but they are incompetent to manage
those lands and need a quote unquote benevolent guardian such
as a federal government who holds legal title. And um.
So when we're talking about this legal title, it devolves

(11:10):
to the United States later on um in history, after
the American Revolution, um. And so rather than being colonial
states um as the United States like thirteen original colonies,
given um, the American Revolution and its own constitution and
its creation of itself as a nation state, then that

(11:34):
turns into a settler colonial government. Yeah. I think we can,
ye know, we can get to what happens next then,
because yeah, yeah, you have you have this elaborate legal
framework that lets you steal people's land and murder them
and then control it. And then the outgrowth of that
is this sort of weird event where the colonies go

(11:57):
into rebellion and suddenly, yeah, there's there's not a colony.
They're not colonies anymore. They just are the state. And
so yeah, about what happens next after the sort of
formation of the United States. So after the formation of
the United States, UM, so we have this period the
American Revolution. It's all not really diving into It is

(12:19):
seventeen seventy six to seventeen eighty nine, and it's called
the Confederation period. But next we have the Trade and
Intercourse Act era, which is from seventeen eighty nine to
eighteen thirty five. And so this is defined with the
United States Constitution and Congress's exclusive right to regulate trade
relations and make lands since the land secessions and enter

(12:43):
into treaties with tribes. So this is a treaty making
era with the tribes that only the United States federal
government is able to And there's a distinction there because
there had been a lot of contestation between state and
the federal government as to who is going to now
deal with these, um, these nations that are with our

(13:07):
within our own settler colonial borders. So whose job is
that to solve this issue? Um? So within the United
States Constitution, there are three clauses that define the United
States legal relationship to American Indians, and so these are
the treaty making clause, the commerce clause, and the property clause. Um.

(13:31):
And so this this movement from just relying on the
doctrine of discovery and treaty making processes between different European
powers now is between the United States federal government and tribes.
And so what this does is now tribes are located
within the United States territory, and this places Indians within

(13:54):
the boundaries and jurisdiction of the United States, and now
there're a matter of domestic interest something. It leads it
to one of the sort of complicated questions that the
changes to this whole era, which is about what does
sovereignty mean for these tribes and to what extent to
the even continue to possess it, and how does that

(14:15):
even sort of how does that work if you have
when you have this new state that's sort of just
has his clan control here, right, And also during this
period UM, well, well later on when we have um
started jumping ahead of myself, when we have the extermination
of the treaty making process, and this completely removes seeing

(14:39):
tribes as independent sovereign nations. UM. So I think that
will kind of get more into that later. But the
thing with federal Indian policy UM is that it's sort
of self prophesizing. So as settlers are moving across America, UM,

(15:00):
the United States government also has to create these policies
UM in order to legalize these land cessations and movements.
And a pattern that we do see here UM throughout
history and throughout time is that the United States federal government,
as a settler state is um over the rights of

(15:22):
over the UM, rights to land, and rights of indigenous
peoples themselves. You have a priority of the settler state
in order to acquire land. So that a lot of
the reason why UM later these treaties will be broken, etcetera,
is because settlers are moving into these lands and the

(15:44):
United States is then breaking these treaties in order to
UM have more more land, more land secessions. Yeah, the
laws are just following the violence, and it's just becomes
a sort of retroactive justification for yeah. Yeah, it's it's
a self justifying sort of sovereignty. So this is the

(16:07):
Removal period and what a lot of people may have
heard of. So it's from five to eighteen sixty one,
and what we have is the extinguishment of Indian title
to eastern lands and the removal of Indian tribes westward.
So UM. One of the most notable acts is the
Removal Act, which was authorized by President Andrew Jackson, which

(16:30):
moved Um Indians from the east to the west of
the Mississippi River into what was called Indian territory UM.
And what brought about this UM Federal Federal Act UM
was a series of three foundational statutes within Federal Indian
Policy UM, dictated by Chief Justice John Marshall. So first

(16:52):
we have Johnson B. Macintosh Cherokee Nation be Georgia and
Worcester be Georgia. And I won't go into UM too
much detail, but what this these essentially UM did and
legally defined tribes as being domestic dependent nations. And so
it clarified more that again tribal nations are underneath the

(17:16):
federal government's overview, not the states. So yeah, it placed
tribes above state jurisdiction. And what this was trying to
do was UM solve some issues that tribes such as
the Cherokee Nation had with different states when it came
to land and UM jurisdiction over suid land. UM. But

(17:38):
that is kind of the basis of a lot of
federal Indian policy and still remains true day. And what
is notable UM in each one of these statutes UM,
I believe, particularly in Worcester the Georgia, although it seems
that it was supporting tribal sovereignty in them and that

(18:01):
they were above state jurisdiction. A lot of these um
statute sided racist President and the doctrine of Discovery. So
what you see for federal Indian policy is that a
lot of the fount well all the foundation for federal
Indian policy based on President is the doctrine of Discovery,

(18:21):
which is reliant on the idea that American Indians were
savages and needed um federal benevolence and um paternalism in
order to regulate their own affairs. Yeah, and I think
that's well, okay, we should probably not just immediately get
to allotment, but yeah, because there's this, there's this, there's

(18:43):
also yeah, this is also the period of use. Yeah.
The thing you were talking about earlier is the thing
you helped me know about, which is, okay, it's not
true to say this is when this starts, but this
is Indian Removal Act, Trail of Tears territory. And one
thing that you know, I think one of one of
the sort of running themes of this is that, you know,

(19:03):
the the law in this context is just sort of
becomes a sort of retroactive excuse to do whatever needs
to be done from the perspective of quote unquote of
the sort of of the settler state to just take
all of this land. Yeah. And I think maybe like
one of the keystones of this is Andrew Jackson just

(19:24):
straight up tellings between court to funk Off so that
he can do so he can do with trail of tears. Yeah. UM.
So the Removal Act happened after all of these statutes
that you already had that supported UM federal Indian sovereignty.
And so the Cherokees in Georgia were one of the

(19:47):
tribes that were removed. UM. And so you kind of
see what you talked about, the the retrograde kind of
justifications for said removal to spite UM the statutes that
are there. So although that like Marshall UM in Worcester

(20:08):
b Georgia determined that the State of Georgia did not
have jurisdiction over Cherokee territory, all this territory although this
territory was in the state's borders. UM. Later on you
see with the Removal Act that although these statutes are
still president in Federalian policy, those were noll in order

(20:30):
for UM there to be more UM expansion of settlers
within these areas. So when it was decided that oh, wait,
we do need this land and we don't actually want
these Indians here, Let's put them to the side, over
past the Mississippi so that they're out of sight, out
of mind. Right, So we see more of this um

(20:51):
justification for settler expansion. And so again we bring back
to these themes of like settler colonialism and or are
too um kind of gain more of this land. And
a lot of these statutes are still cited the doctrine
of discovery in them and rather than supporting tribal policy,

(21:14):
the relationship between the United States federal government and American
Indians um was not based on the rights of Indians,
but more that they can't they can't govern themselves, right
and so so and that's the whole issue is like
people are like they don't know what they're doing, so
we're gonna push them and like take their land again.

(21:34):
So I I don't know if you want me to
go too much into the trail of tears, but um,
you're seeing a lot of patterns here, I think different
forms of genocide, different forms of taking land. And this
was this is all around the same time as the
Indian acting Canada as well, which was did a very
similar thing, especially starting in the starting in the twenties

(21:59):
century as well, with the like expansion of the like
assimilation programs. Yeah, and I think I guess the one
only thing I want to point out about this is that,
you know, so one of one of the things that
happens trailers here is at the Streme Court like tells
Jackson that he can't do this, and she actually just
does it anyways. And I think that's a very interesting

(22:20):
important moment because you know, this is this is this
thing right where the federal government can tell there's a
Preme Court to funk off, right, and there's nothing that
Streme Court could do about it. And if you look
at what they did it to do, the thing they
did it to do was genocide. And it's I think
it's it's just I think it's a very sort of
I don't know, this incredibly grim like you know, encapsulation

(22:43):
of like what this state actually is, which is the
sort of genocide machine and whatever sort of you know,
this is what sovereignty is, right, the ability to break
your own rules to sort of main instit or to
maintain the system. So you know, you you break your
own laws and you know, as we're gonna get to
in a second, like you break your own treaties continuous
and you do this because you know, the ganslit massion
has to keep moving right And Um. There's a couple

(23:06):
of federal and new policy theorists um Bindeler Jr. Who's
one of the most famous ones, and David E. Wilkins
who talks about how there's no need for checks and
balances within the federal Ondian policy system. So you have
Congress that is able to um pass whatever act they want,

(23:27):
and and then you also have the Supreme Court, and
then you also have executive action. But it wasn't really
delineated that well um within especially when it comes to
this period as to who is going to be dealing
with the Indians kind of thing. Um. And so this
kind of confusion and not really completely defining what it

(23:51):
means to be a domestic dependent nation, I think really
just goes to show how much of a fragile edifice
settler um colonial policy is, for it is within the system. Um.
But again moving on, it comes back again to land.
So the reservation area era in eighteen sixty one to

(24:15):
eighteen eighty seven UM has you have a lot of
westward expansion of non Indians UM settlers, specifically to California.
You also have the creation of Indian reservations and resulting
Indian wars UM. Uh. So during this era what you

(24:35):
see a lot out of UM are different types of
attempts that assimilation UM and a lot of warfare. So
you have a lot of the Plains tribes my tribe
for instance, UM, that are going through all of these
battles fighting UM forced removal onto reservations UM. One of

(24:56):
the most famous ones was UM the Bad of Greasy
Grass or a Little Big Horn UM where General Custer
was killed by Sue Cheyennes and Arapahos, and different instances
of battles such as those, and also where a lot
of tribes UM were forcibly removed to era areas that

(25:20):
they weren't originally from. So like how the Ripees were
moved to Oklahoma, there was attempts of my tribe, for instance,
more than Cheyenne to be moved down to Oklahoma as well,
and that's why there's some Southern Cheyennes in Oklahoma, and
then My tribes and Northern Shiance in Montana. Another UM in.

(25:41):
Another thing that is happening during this period are boarding
schools UM the boarding school era. So this attempt at
assimilation through education UM, and assimilation is also UM within
within the settler colonial kind of structure. It's defined as
a process where indigenous people end up UM conforming to

(26:04):
different constructed notions of UM settler norms UM. So if
they're not absorbed within the state completely, then their attempted
attempt to be assimilated UM culturally UM through education, through languages,
in terms of economics and how you have a bunch

(26:25):
of different sort of bureaucratic structures on these reservations trying
to make tribal governments appear to be UM or constructed
as as settler colonial governments are UM. So maybe it's
the three branches UM in ways that aren't just compatible

(26:49):
with different tribes culturally. And you also have the attemptive
eradication of different kind of spiritual and cultural practices is
and a lot of Christianity be course on to different
people and just kind of terrible things that UM. I

(27:09):
think more and more people are becoming aware of due
to due to current movements, but we'll get into that
more later. Do we want to talk about a lot
and briefly because if I remember quickly, this is in
the same period, yes, a lotment period and UM course assimilation.
So this is like eighteen seventy one to nineteen thirty four,

(27:31):
and so this is the end of the treaty making process.
So the whole idea of UM trying to force tribes
onto reservations and sign these treaties were too again take
land and make sure that the United States has more
land and all the land etcetera that they possibly have UM.
So at this end of treaty making UM, federal allotment

(27:58):
of Indian lands also happened in the UM the DAWs
Act UM. And so what this was was an attempt
to UM further shrink the reservation lands that tribes are
already guaranteed within treaties UM. So during this period, I

(28:21):
think that somewhere like nine million acres were UM taken
from travel reservations during the allotment process. So that what
the allotment process did was it counted each in every
individual Indian UM that was eligible. I think there were
adults UM. Yeah, adults that were eligible UM, and each

(28:47):
one of them were given a certain parcel of land
a certain number of acreage UM. And once all of
this land was calculated, what you had was an excess
of land quote unquote excess of land that the tribes
obviously didn't need because they had still too too many people.
And so what the excess of land um was utilized

(29:11):
force for pioneers and for settlers UM. If it didn't
go UM to the federal government, it was to um
incentivize settlers to colonized essentially centil on Indian lands. So
trying its hardest to not stay true to its treaty

(29:34):
making practices. I think everything goes interesting to me about
this is that like because one of the other goals
of this is to sort of like, oh is the
civilizing mission is like, yeah, we're going to turn them
into We're gonna turn these people into like like human farmers,
like true American finteersman or whatever. And it's just like
it just doesn't work because economically it doesn't make any sense,

(29:55):
like breaking up all these like lands. It's like, it
doesn't you can't just give someone a small patch of
like shitty land and have them farm like this doesn't
like this, it doesn't it doesn't like they certainly tried
and the yeah, yeah, like that was one of the
main things. One of the main things in Canada was
about getting them to adopt like like European farming practices,

(30:18):
which which they already knew how to get their own food, right,
they were trying to change this whole system of of
of like of of food growth to to this like
to to this European way of of farming, and it
just and they were just forcing them to and there's yeah,
it's it's it gets, it gets, it gets super, it
gets super like dark and horrible. Once you like look

(30:40):
at like the letters that were being written by like
the heads of these programs, um, like you know, instructing
like these agents were stationed at these like reservation that
to like force people to be doing doing this horrible
farming for like all day every day. And I think,
you know the sign that this is like like this

(31:00):
is this is so bad that even the US government
eventually is like wait this this like this is fucked
up and doesn't work. So I think that's yeah, your
transition to sort of like the next phase, I guess, yeah,
a very short phase. Um. Yeah, So the next phase

(31:22):
um is the Indian reorganization Act. And so this only
lasted six years from nineteen thirty four in nineteen forty UM,
so this is when allotment ended. As you said, the
United States government was like, wait, this isn't working. Um,
what else can we do with the Indians aren't dying off,
they're not assimilating, they're not a culturating. We don't know

(31:42):
what to do with them. Um, so maybe we'll We'll
have them adopt these constitutions and a lot of them
were just templates, so regardless of whether or not they
were um I think compatible with tribal different tribes way

(32:02):
of life, they were like, you have these constitutions. Now, um,
now you're you're a tribe and this is what each
tribe has to look like in order for us, the
federal government to recognize you as a legitimate entity. Uh
and um. And then so you have the establishment of
these um tribal governments that consist of tribal councils and

(32:24):
the business committees, etcetera. However, this period is fleeting, very fleeting. Um.
And next, um, you have the termination era. So this
is the period of time where the federal government, essentially
even more so, wants to just get rid of the
quote unquote Indian problem, which is the existence of indigenous

(32:47):
people's UM that are reminders to the government essentially that UM,
they are a settler colonial force and they don't know
what to do with us because they tried to commit genocide,
they try to remove us, etcetera, etcetera. It's still not working. UM.
They decided that our travel governments UM aren't aren't legitimate,

(33:10):
and they just decide, well, it's too much to try
to keep up with our treaties and what we promised
them when it comes to healthcare, education, housing, etcetera, etcetera.
How about we terminate our federal responsibility, our trust responsibility
that are delineated in federal in the policy and in

(33:31):
our treaties UM and give them off to this to
the states to decide what to do with. And so
during this period you see UM sort of the federal
um dissolution of some tribes such as the monomy Um
and other ones UM as well. So this is another

(33:57):
dark time. They're the dark times just keep on coming.
And what federal policy scholars have UM characterized federal around
policy as a pendulum, the swinging swinging from side to
side between this terminate this termination of tribes. So the
federal India government as trying to get rid of tribes,

(34:18):
especially as you can see in this era, and then
the pendulum of the other side of self determination. But
both of these are held within the context of goals
of assimilation. So, um, this is just another phase of terribleness. Well,
I think this this phase also like one thing I
think that also like is important people understand. Is it

(34:41):
like like it's not like people aren't fighting this like
the whole time. I mean even going like even going
back to the stuff the Seventh Cafrey, like the Seventh
Cavalry lose like bores Day lose bells all the time.
People are fighting constantly, and this is this period determination
period is also you see the rise of the American

(35:02):
Indian movements. Yeah, a lot of these periods can be
like dove into more and all of these different things. Um.
In every instance, in every instance of federal Indian policy,
you have resistance, which we are not covering here right now. Um,
but you have instances throughout history where indigenous peoples have

(35:23):
fought for their rights to land, to um, for their community,
to being sovereign nations, etcetera. And that's why the federal Indians,
the federal government not federal Indian government. The federal government
has not been able to eradicate us, much to their
dismay UM UM. And so now I'm going to switch

(35:45):
into the eraw that we are considered to be in,
which I have mentioned when I talked about the pendulum
of federal Indian policy. So now we are in the
self determination era UM, which began in ninety sixty two UM,
and we have UM the right it's characterized with the
revitalization of tribal entities. So UM going kind of back

(36:10):
to when there was the Indian Reorganization Acts that we
have our tribal councils UM. There's restoration of some tribes
under federal recognition who were terminated, again not all of them.
We also have the Indian Civil Rights Act, so this
this kind of guaranteed individual Indians UM some rights UM,

(36:34):
not just characterized by their tribes. Also the self determination policy,
so this is when UM Nixon condemned the termination policy
and gave more control to Indians rather than the Bureau
of Indian Fairs, which just a federal bureau and just
kind of like other policies that UM have given the

(36:56):
tribes more rights to UM German for themselves in their
own trust, their own people, UM to a certain degree
underneath the federal government as mess of dependent nations. And
again I I think that we have seen a lot
more movement, but within the context of being within a

(37:19):
settler colonial state. UM. It's always I think a possibility
that the federal Indian government, or the federal government I
keep saying Indian, the federal government will try UM to
take more and more. And I think UM, for instance,

(37:39):
when it comes to issues of fishing rights, issues of
UM hunting rights with states, not even just with the
federal government. So you have a lot of states throughout
throughout history but still ongoing UM that attempt to encroach
on tribal treaties UM. And again, treaties are the basis

(38:01):
of federal Indian policy. Without these treaties, that lands would
have never been succeeded to the United States. And so
UM there's just this sort of like legal legal conundrum
I would say, of where all these all treaties in

(38:22):
the history of the United States with Indian with Indian
tribes have been broken in some way, shape or form UM.
But still UM American Indians have to live on their
reservations instead of having their their land back. And so
nowadays a lot of movement has been towards um land

(38:42):
back what this means? What is this process? And I
think it means a lot of different things for different
people Indigenous people because again there's there's seventy four federally
recognized tribes and so it's not one monolith of ideas
and monolith of the beliefs. But by just by saying

(39:03):
land back, that's like recognition that this is our this
was our land first, and you're not keeping your side
of the deal and never have been. Could you maybe
go a bit more into land back with the topic,
because like specifically, like the past five years, it has
really gain a lot more like um popularity as like

(39:24):
a slogan UM. But I think for a lot of
a lot of people who chanted and here it don't
always really know exactly what it means. That there's a
lot of like mixed opinions on what it means. Um.
Of course, on like the more like reactionary side, it's
like people be like, what you're going to like kick

(39:44):
white people out of these areas, Like that's kind of
that's what a lot of like the reactionary takes on
land Back is. Um And I'm sure most people are
listening to this podcast that's not what they think, um,
But they may not really know exactly what it means either. Um.
They may I think it sounds like a good idea,
but they're not quite sure what it is. Do you
mind kind of talking about how land back is like

(40:06):
developed as as an idea and what like what like
you mean by it personally? At least? Yeah, I think
I can talk about more about like what I mean
by it personally and what I've understood it to mean
to other people, because I think, um, land back itself,
it means like a lot of different things, and I

(40:26):
don't think that there has been a concrete kind of
idea of what it means. But I think a lot
of the movement, I want to contextualize it within a
lot of the sort of act activism that we've seen
in their recent years. UM. So, for instance, no Jack

(40:47):
all the Dakota Access pipeline in two thousand and sixteen,
and kind of I think that's one of the more
recent events that have really illustrated on a wide scale,
like globally about indigenous movements, UM, sovereignty movements, and especially
when it comes to environmental justice. But what you saw

(41:10):
there was encroachment on tribal treaty land within UM that
when it had to do with the Dakota Access pipeline. UM.
So although it didn't cross some of the current reservation borders,
it was in treaty land, you know that kind of thing.
The same the same thing was stop line three. How

(41:30):
it encroached on like the hunting land and the farmland
that was not technically in the like residential like like
um like like not in like the reservation area where
people live, but it's in the surrounding area that is
for hunting that is specified in the treaty. So people
trying to use these loopholes to get the pipelines through
right right. And so I think what you see is

(41:51):
a lot of solidarity across tribes because this is not new,
This has never been new, and a lot of abs
can relate to that. And what you've seen and what
I've hoped that I've highlighted throughout this kind of very
brief overview of federal ving policy is the different ways
that indigenous rights to land and sovereignty has been attacked

(42:17):
in different forms by settler and colonial governments. Um. And
I think that the day and age that we live
in now has allowed for um sort of more widespread solidarity,
especially over social media. UM. And so when we say
land back for me, how I interpret it as what

(42:39):
people mean when they're saying it is recognition of our
tribal sovereignty, of our right to this land that has
not been respected. And then I also think that it means, well,
if these treaties aren't being respected, then how is this
treaty still UM valid? Right? How we aren't getting our

(43:01):
land back because they're not upholding your end of the deal.
While some people also might mean and recognize that this
whole United States government is a settler state right based
on the doctrine of discovery, which is based on denying
tribes and American Indians of their rights to this land. UM.

(43:25):
So some people might take it to this whole other
context of yeah, well maybe this is this is all
of our land, etcetera, etcetera. But in practice, what does
this look like? And I think in practice a lot
of people UM are seeing it with reparations or people
buying land back for tribes and giving it back to tribes.

(43:46):
And we have seen some of that or UM also
just people interrupting the narrative UM in their own mind
of their euro American identity, so not non UM American
Indians and primarily europe and settlers and their history of
their own families taking part of the settler colonial process,

(44:07):
and how has that UM what about their lands? There's
everyone who UM descends I guess from these these settlers,
and I want to be specific when I'm talking about
Euro American settlers um, UM and how they currently benefit
from these systems. And I think by saying land back, UM,

(44:28):
it's we're able to highlight this movement for tribal sovereignty
and recognition on a global scale instead of searching for
justice within the quote unquote like UM searching for justice
within the courts of the conqueror, How how do we
expect UM for the conqueror to be held accountable for
all of these atrocities, attempts at genocide, assimilation, et cetera.

(44:53):
By taking it more towards a global scale, such as
no adaptle highlighting these two other people as these are
injustices is UM, this is this is ongoing genocide. I
think that land back has many like a plethora of
meanings in the in that sense. Yeah. Yeah, I hope

(45:13):
that answers your question. I myself, UM might use it
in in some some different ways. Um, because land as
we conceive it to be property kind of grew that
concept grew in conversation with Euro American Yeah. Absolutely, Yeah,

(45:34):
conceptions of property. So I think that, um, moving forward
when we talk about de colonization as a process and
not like a metaphor, um that thinking of land back
not within that whole idea of your American property as well.
That's that's kind of another thing to consider. Yeah, I

(45:56):
think I think Lena would just be a hold other
thing that will pay someone more qualified than our team
to talk about on this show. Um. Because yeah, that's
definitely like you know, like all of the things we've
we've discussed, they deserve their own deep dives by people
that are uh not me, Robert and Chris. UM. Let's see,

(46:21):
is is there any kind of resources either books or
stuff online that you would recommend for people wanting to
learn more about this history? Um? And then any kind
of ways to I don't know, I guess show support
in these and these kind of like efforts that are
going on. Yeah, for sure. UM. So in terms of

(46:42):
resources and reading UM, I have read Lorenzo Verrocchini's UM
Settler book on Settler Colonialism. UM. That's really helpful when
you're trying to understand that framework in terms of getting
to know kind of or the basics of like current

(47:03):
UM issues impacting tribes UM. The National Congress of American
Indians does a lot of work on the federal level. UM.
If you want to talk more about UM kind of
lived current lived experiences of American Indians, there's illuminatives UM
and getting more involved in those as well. I think

(47:26):
that they have some tips, but I would recommend UM
everyone getting more familiar with the land that they are
on currently, the tribes within their states, and what they
can do UM, not just on the local level, but
on the state level to support tribal sovereignty UM. Because
a lot of issues UH. For instance, I worked UM

(47:49):
on the on the state policy level in Washington and
in Montana, and both of those have a significant amount
of tribes UM. But you have a lot of legislation
that's trying to happen that infringes on tribal treaty. Rights.
And the thing is is UM as ugly as it

(48:09):
maybe to say, but sometimes voices of non indigenous people's
are listened to more within those UM contexts. So you
need to get more involved on on those levels. UM
what sort of like at UM nonprofit organizations UM work

(48:33):
with your tribes or and what sort of issues are
impacting tribes. And again these are all gonna probably be
surrounding travel sovereignty, so maybe it's UM fishing access, hunting rights, etcetera. UM.
I think that's a really good way to make some
more palates UM tangible change, to feel like you're doing

(48:55):
something to support tribal sovereignty while you're also educating your
your self and making sure that their voices are at
the forefront. And that's also applicable to the federal level,
especially with as you already said, like stop line three
in Minnesota, contacting your legislators, etcetera, etcetera. And I think

(49:18):
also with when it comes to one of one of
the larger issues besides UM environmental justice for indigenous peoples
such as pipelines, you have right now missing a murdered
indigenous women, UM, so looking and looking into that UM
a little bit more and who you can support who's

(49:39):
addressing those issues. Along with UM, there is another movement
with boarding schools right now because there's been a lot
of UM bodies of young children UM that have been uncovered.
And this is not an issue that happened a long

(50:03):
long time ago, like for instance, my grandmother went to
a boarding school. UM. There's still schools that UM although
they're not called boarding schools right now that we're boarding schools,
but are still an operation under different names, etcetera. UM.
So kind of familiarizing yourself with those histories. And then

(50:23):
also there's a UM national UM I think it's called
the National Boarding School Healing Coalition based out of Minnesota,
and UM looking into them and supporting their efforts UM
with this issue is also a good place to start. UM.
Is there anywhere that people can find you online? Yes?

(50:50):
I don't. I don't really use UM social media that much.
From yeah yeah, yeah, I try not to. I don't know.
If I want people to find me, do not, don't,
don't do it better, It's it's better that people don't

(51:11):
find anyone online. It's better we're all just just posting
into the void. There's nothing not just just a void.
Well that that is I think gonna wrap up what
we have today. Chris don want to close us out
with a funny bit A right light your local gas

(51:33):
station on fire. Wow, Jesus Christ killing it here? Oh
my god, jeez wow. All right, goodbye forbody. The Gangster
Chronicles podcast is a weekly conversation that revolves around Underworld

(51:57):
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(52:17):
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(52:39):
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Listen to Before Breakfast wherever you get your podcasts. When P. T.
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(52:59):
six d five, what rose from its ashes would change
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our inaugural season, we'll be giving you a backstage tour
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is the American Side Show. So come along as we

(53:21):
visit the shadowy corners of the stage and learn about
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in a place where spectacle was king. We will soon
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So step right up and get in line. Listen to
Grim and Mild Presents now on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Learn more

(53:43):
over at Grim and Mild dot com. Slash presents What's
Terrible My Me? This Is It Could Happen Here, a
podcast about collapse. And that's a appropriate because everyone's faith
in me as a colleague has collapsed today as the

(54:05):
result of a series of horrific cluster fox On my part,
I'm late to the meeting. I accidentally left the meeting
when they started recording just a just a complete fucking
ship show. Speaking of ship shows, my co host Garrison Davis,
how are you Arison, I'm the one that saved this.
I had to send the guest to the zoom call,

(54:25):
I know, and I'm not even supposed to be on
this call. No you're not. You're not even supposed to
be working today. That's not true. Well, but you're not
on this call, not on this call. But here I
am saving. This is enough. This is enough, Woody Banter.
This is a daily podcast. And now let's bring on
our guest for today, monsignor Alex new House. Alex, how

(54:50):
are you doing. I'm doing well. Thanks for having me.
I feel like I was pulled in off the street,
just like bundled into a van and then yeah, yeah,
we uh. You know how people used to get like shanghaied,
like like captured by it, allegedly allegedly and forced to
work on on on boats in like San Francisco and whatnot.
We do that with podcasts. I mean that is actually

(55:12):
most of what I've done to the people who work
on your podcast. I think I think I've had everyone
from your show on our show now, and it has
been very much like I'm just pulling them on a string.
Speaking of which, Alex, you are one of the hosts
of the Terrorism Is Bad podcast, a very uh controversially
named podcast. Uh. And you work at the Middlebury Institute

(55:34):
of International Studies at Monterey Center of Terrorism, Extremism and
counter Terrorism Center on not not of that would be
a different center, very important, very important. Yeah, and we're
not We're not bringing you on to talk about how
to make explosively formed penetrators. Not this time. That is
someone else. Yeah, but you and you are also you

(55:54):
were also a actual games journalist. Yes, yeah, I got
my start in is Weird Space. How do you gamer Gate?
How do you feel about ethics in the game journalism industry? Alex, Uh,
always been fine, like the ship. Yeah, alright, anyway, that's
the end of that. Yeah, I do want to actually

(56:16):
start there, Alex, because you and I both have something
in common, which is that we we got our start
writing in a field that's wildly different from consulting with
like governments on terrorism. Like for me, it was I
wanted to write like Dick jokes on the Internet and
I just like stumbled into a bunch of ices propaganda
that most people weren't aware of, and and that started

(56:37):
me like lecturing at universities and ship And for you
it was gamer gates. I'm interested in kind of you
telling your story a little bit to start us off. Yeah,
so I was. I was during undergrad I enterned every
summer at game Spot video game website you may have
heard of. It's one of the two big ones along
with I g n UM. And when I was doing that,
I was so this was like right in at the

(57:01):
beginning stages of of gaming gate really popping off. And
what ended up happening is a lot of the people
I worked with, a lot of my colleagues and friends
were just in the blast zone. They were just targeted
by the absolute onslaught of of harassment UM and I
just had a curiosity started looking into some of those
people who were who are targeting my friends and colleagues,

(57:22):
and it ended up being a lot of the people
that were still talking about today. Uh, you know, it
all all rolls back up to the bright bart metropolitan area,
if you will. And um, I don't know what a
uh the thing that made me want to I mean,
obviously I've been aware of you work for well, but
the thing that maybe want to specifically bring you on
as you started on a new project to create like

(57:42):
a video game that that will hopefully have an ability
to help like de radicalize people. And I'm I'm not
entirely certain like of the details of the project, but
I think it's a fascinating project because, as as you
know all too well, a lot of this stuff started
in gaming, not as a result of anything specifically about
gay but the kind of like socialization that occurs in

(58:02):
those spaces and the kind of like different communities. And
it's been like we have going back to the nineties
evidence of like different Nazi groups on the early Internet,
like talking about like these are specific specific groups and
subcultures that you know will have an easier time radicalizing
and whatnot. But yeah, I'm interested in kind of what
actually is going on with this project, um, and and

(58:22):
how you think it's going to look at this stage.
I understand it's pretty early in development right now, so
I'm not expecting like, you know, an E three walkthrough. Yeah,
our E three size life and I wish we had that. Um. Yeah.
We won a grant from DHS and FEMA their their
Tears and Prevention Grant program this year. We just got
awarded it like literally two weeks ago, so I have

(58:44):
not even started work on it at all. But the
project will be a collaboration between my center and a
nonprofit games development company called the I Thrive Foundation. UH.
And basically what we are going to do is like
build digital scenario as digital narratives that can be engaged
with UH within classroom settings. So we're targeting high schools

(59:06):
for rolling this out UH. And the idea is that
we're going to give students the ability to take on
roles that empower them to better understand how extremism and
radicalization work as mechanisms, which will hopefully the idea is
that it will it will improve resilience and you know,
civil integrity and all those fun buzzwords within within high
school communities. So we're not necessarily trying to de radicalize

(59:28):
already radicalize people, but we're really trying to build community
awareness community resilience to to radicalization pathways. I mean, this
is something I think about constantly because I get asked
this a lot. You know, I'll get I'll get emailed
questions from people, sometimes as much detail as like, hey,
I'm like a teacher and here's some things this could
in my classes said or something he put in an essay,
and like, I'm growing really concerned about him, and like, I,

(59:50):
I what do I do? And my usual answer is
there's a couple of people who I respect that I'll
try to direct them too, But I I don't. I'm
pretty good at how people get radicalized. It's something I
spent a lot of time studying. I don't know how
how you I have trouble figuring out how to break
down these pathways because like, right, the the default for

(01:00:11):
a lot of people and for a lot of time
has been will you d platform? Right? You? Um, you
get them off of whatever? And there's there's still I
do certainly think there's there's utility in that, but there's
also you know, the toothpaste tube effect, the fact that
when you you squash these popular areas where they're able
to spread them, they filter off into increasingly isolated communities
that develop new terms, they find out ways to hide it,

(01:00:31):
and that actually increases you know, it may it may
reduce the number of people who get radicalized, but the
people who remain just get more and more extreme because
they're even more isolated from you know, everyone else. And
I don't know, how do you how do you how
do you break that that radicalization cycle? Like, how do
you how do you stop that ship before it gets,

(01:00:52):
you know, to a tipping point? Yeah, I mean, in general,
I'm with you, I'm pretty skeptical of a lot of
the radicalization state. G's uh. And it's it's like an
incredibly difficult task to to pull someone out who's already
going down these pathways. And then, like you said, it's
also an incredibly difficult task to make sure that when
you are disrupting the radicalization networks that they aren't just

(01:01:13):
disappearing off to some other corner of the Internet, which
we know they're doing. Like, one of the reasons why
we're we're working with a video game video game company
is over the last few years, we've noticed a big
migration into video game platforms, especially big social based video
game platforms like Roadblocks and Minecraft, which are like not
even remotely prepared to deal with you know, very well

(01:01:37):
developed sophisticated radicalization networks. They have moved over there, uh,
both for organization and radicalization reasons. Um, since mainstream companies
have started taking more of an interest in deep platforming them. Uh.
And so we're ending up like pretty wildly unprepared for
this sudden onslought of extreme as being right in front
of kids as they're playing games or you know, teenagers

(01:01:59):
or even young adults. So our idea essentially is to
use that language, the same language that extremists are trying
to adopt the structures of video games three via the
sort of interactivity there, to better communicate the impacts of extremism,
what it looks like, how to identify it, and hopefully

(01:02:19):
how to avoid getting you know, falling into the traps
that are laid for for unsuspecting people. One of the
issues and I'm curious your thoughts on this because we
we we talk a lot about, Like I think people
have become increasingly aware of how bad Facebook in particular is,
is a problem with this. It's it's really well real.
A lot of the Boogaloo movement to and now this

(01:02:40):
stuff is coming out about like the data Facebook has
had on just and this isn't this isn't this is
adjacent to radicalization, Um, the mental impact that it's been
having on teenagers, right, like the just how bad it
is for people, And UM, I'm wondering, like how do
you scale this stuff? I guess is the question, like
how do you actually how do you make the social

(01:03:01):
internet less dangerous? Yeah? I mean that's that's going to
be extremely tough. And we are even starting very very small,
like we're building we're building on a narrative platform to
target three high schools right now. UM. But the hope
is that ultimately what we can do is build a
tool set and and a platform like literally a game

(01:03:21):
platform that can be used by high school teachers in
high school classes throughout the country or throughout the world. Um.
The idea will be to hopefully make a new sort
of package of different methods and interactive experiences that can
be reused into the future. But it is one of
the big open questions that we will hopefully come to

(01:03:43):
some sort of answer for throughout the project about how
do we actually scale us up? Um. But you know,
in general, it is again like one of the biggest
open questions right now. One of the reasons why I's
so skeptical of a lot of d RAD and CBE
techniques is they try to go for scale about effectiveness UM,
when in reality, one of the best and only the

(01:04:04):
radicalization pathways that we know of involves people that you
know and I know going out and meeting with these
people one on one and having intensive, frequent communications with them.
So UM, there's as far as we know, there's not
a good answer right now. This is a huge place
of research right now because we just straight up do
not understand how to scale up UM radicalization, prevention and

(01:04:27):
de radicalization. I mean, and you know what you're trying
to do, and like, reaching kids in high school in
something that's meant they're meant to be consuming while they're
in school is even such an additional challenge because I
think you and I are both young enough to at
least remember that like almost nothing that you put before
kids in that context in a school gets through. I can.

(01:04:48):
I can. I can think about like anti drug programs
and stuff when I was a kid, and how in
effective they were. There was I had one one effective
anti drug like speech by a teacher and it was
just a teacher who who's it was part of this
this there was this one night and plane where like
six kids indeed on heroin. It was there was big
Rolling Stone article about it was a very famous moment,
and her son was one of the kids who nearly

(01:05:09):
died and she was and she like just explained like
physically what happened to him and begged us not to
do heroin. And that actually did stick with me. I've
never never shot up anything, um, but you know, like
the a lot of it doesn't work. And I think
part of why it's this thing I talked about when
I tried to explain like why isis propaganda was so effective,
it's the it feels more authentic than the than the

(01:05:32):
counter narrative, right, the counter narrative, because it's it's usually
focus grouped. It's coming as the result of like some
sort of government initiative, a bunch of people worked in together.
It feels focus grouped as opposed to there's something inherently
more compelling about something that just like it feels like
somebody who really gave a ship, cares a lot put
this thing together, even if it's terrible, and I that

(01:05:53):
strikes me as a really, because if you're going to
be scaling something and trying to reach a lot of people,
it's going to have to be something that is put
together at scale by an organization. And how do you
I mean, I know this must be on your mind
as you're trying to figure out how to craft this thing.
I'm just interested in your thoughts on that. Really, Yeah,
I mean that exact challenge challenges what led us to
proposing the project project that we are so the idea

(01:06:14):
behind it, or the the impetus behind what we did
what we proposed is, um, the exact problem of students
just don't listen to people in whether that's anti drug
programs or anything like that. Often, my uh my uh
feeling about it is they are often resistant to it
because it's very negative. It's very don't do this, don't

(01:06:36):
do this. I'm setting up boundaries for for kids and
analystens to act within. It's all very declaratory, very you know, commanding. Um,
there's no there's no sense of treating kids like people
who have control, who have interests, who have motivations. It's
all attempting to restrict them. And so the idea is

(01:06:58):
that we're going to attempt to build a game play
form than actually empower students to operate within roles that
have control, that that have something to say, to give them,
voices to give them um and that sort of feeling
of being an established um person within a within a
certain scenario. Um. The way that I've been thinking about
it is that we're basically merging video games with like

(01:07:19):
the structure of a model UN conference or something like that.
Hopefully we'll be a little less nerdy than the model
UN conferences, but that's the idea of giving people power
to make decisions, uh, and and treat them like actual,
you know, operating humans. Yeah, I uh, I'm wondering do
you have any kind of models that you're looking at

(01:07:40):
when you think of like something that you see is
is kind of worth I don't emulating maybe the wrong word,
but like, oh, these people I think got it right
and and this was effective, Like or is this really
a situation where you feel like we're kind of in
the fucking wilderness here. There's not a lot of great
models for what's effective. We are very much in the wilderness.
We're going to at this kind I was expecting you

(01:08:01):
to say, like so much of c V and d
RAD work over the last ten years has been directly
towards trying to essentially recreate the like the DARE model
or the anti drug model, just in a different field. UM.
And so we're going to be pulling from scenario builders
and like mala un and debate and like all of

(01:08:23):
these different models that seem to at least work to
get kids engage with like operating that sort of situation.
But it is going to be pretty I mean, at
least from what I understand, is gonna be pretty new.
We're going to be out there really flying blind for
a lot of it, UM, But we will you know,
we have a pilot phase built in to try to
bate attest this with with um some of the students

(01:08:45):
were incorporating students and instructors in the actual creation development stage.
So that'll be another hopefully good part of this will
we'll give some students experience with the game development process,
which I think will all. Yeah, that strikes me as
a particularly good idea of like giving and also just

(01:09:05):
giving them some agency. So it's not like this is
a thing that you are forced to consume, Like this
is the thing that you can like learn something from
I think that's that's very important. I'm interested in how
you see how you see this because like, again, we
kind of both got in around the same time. Gamer
Gate is when I started paying attention to radicalization to

(01:09:26):
how do you think it's changed since then? How do
you think like the nature of of how, particularly like
younger people are being radicalized has changed. And I guess
I'm also interested because I get the feeling that back
then it was mostly younger people getting radicalized and that's
no longer the case. I'm just as we're talking, I
just came across the video on Twitter of a group
of anti vax protesters chasing parents and children away from

(01:09:47):
an elementary school and screaming at them that they're raping
their kids with a vaccine. So clearly the problem is expanded.
But yeah, yeah, and honestly, one of the things that
keeps me up at night is that when we start,
if you know, knocking movies are a roll this out
to more schools, We're going to run into some probably
very resistant parents who have radicalized. Yum. Yeah, I mean

(01:10:08):
the big one is, like what you said, like the
radicalization demographics have vastly expanded to incorporate so many more
different types of people, so many more ages and even
ethnicities and genders. Um. But what we do know is
that the hardcore of the of the violent extremists are
still targeting adolescents. UM. We know, accelerationists, for instance, hang

(01:10:31):
out and try to essentially blackpill a bunch of teens,
especially autistic teens, especially teens with mental health issues, UH,
and bring them into a more violent, more accelerationist posture. UM.
So I mean, I think that has sort of stayed
constant throughout all of this. One of the big uh

(01:10:51):
changes has been platforms. You know, ten years ago, it
was much easier for a neo Nazi to operate openly
on YouTube or Facebook, but has thankfully changed. Um. But
they have spread out into like I mentioned earlier, they've
spread out into video games. They spread out into other
sorts of platforms where the social aspect isn't necessarily the

(01:11:13):
first part of the platform, but rather a secondary aspect
to it, and they try to engage um adolescence on
their own turf on you know, in a Roadblocks game
or in a in a video game forum. Out there.
It's not even enough to say it feels like the
task of reducing radicalization or or not not even mentioned,
pulling it back, just stopping the process. It feels not

(01:11:35):
just like whack a mole, but like whack a mole
when you're surrounded by moles. Um. And I guess that
is the thing that keeps me up at night the
most too, is that like the problem has gotten because
of how social media scales, I think, in large part,
has gotten so much worse than it ever was. And
the I see these crowds of adults, you know, assembling

(01:11:57):
in you know, places like Los Angeles, showing up outside
of schools to her ask people, and like, I don't
know what, I don't know what to do about that.
Like part of me thinks, um, part of me thinks
that the only effective long term answer is to mobilize

(01:12:19):
a larger number of people two show up to you know,
not necessarily confront those people, but make them make them
feel outnumbered, and maybe they'll stop, and that will start
a process where they they alter their thinking. Like I'm
thinking kind of back to some aspects of the civil
rights movement here right where you would have these people
show up at schools just try to stop integration and whatnot,

(01:12:40):
and they would be opposed, often by by larger groups
that they would see the size of the marches in
the street, and like, I don't know, I don't even
know if it works that way anymore. Like knowing that
you know, tend to one people think your stance on
vaccines is stupid and they're willing to show up to
like yell at you if that would do anything. But
I don't know what. I don't know what's going to do.
Like I'm I guess I'm asking you, like, can you

(01:13:03):
have you figured this out? Because I don't know what
the fun to do. Um, But it's it's it's not
you can't we can't close there. Obviously you're someone who's
trying to confront it directly, but we certainly can't keep
ourselves like just pretend it's not going to get worse, right, No, totally,
And um, you know, I often feel like it's almost
too far gone. And you know, frequently I worry that

(01:13:25):
we've already passed some sort of you know, point of
no return on radicalization exploitation of social media. But one
of the other things I've also recognized is that when
you're in a space that is dedicated to one type
of confronting one one method of confronting extremism. Very often

(01:13:46):
they will forget about, or the prioritize, or or even
ignore the other types, the other methods. And one of
the tasks before us, I think, before we throw up
our hands and give up, is trying to tie together
all of the different facets of of resisting extremism, from
the hardcore confrontational dosing and showing up in the streets counterprotesting,

(01:14:08):
which I think is an essential part of it, to
UM working as hard as we can to try to
get tech companies to to realize what's going on UH,
and then also on the educational side, like what we're
doing with this with this project UM. Some of the
things that make me at least a little bit optimistic
is that there is obviously inertia, both intentional and unintentional

(01:14:29):
at tech companies, but frankly, they are still extremely far
behind in understanding how to even do D platforming on
their platforms, how to even identify who t D platform
like the majority of tech companies are still making content
moderation decisions on a piece by piece basis, specifically looking
at content. Very few of them are doing actor analysis,

(01:14:51):
very few of them are doing secial network analysis. Very
few of them are looking at even the links between
like off platform violence and on platform content like the
They are still very much in the stone ages when
it comes to contentment moderation. And that's so so key
when I think about like what actually would reduce the
harm that these platforms are doing at scale. It's focusing

(01:15:14):
on the actors, um and and not just like the
individual actors, which is part of the patterns that let
you tell whether or not someone is like that same
actor who is kind of like putting on a different hat,
so to speak. Um, are you aware of like is
there any I because I have not seen that happen yet.
I haven't seen Facebook take that seriously. Um, and I

(01:15:36):
have I have spent some time there. I haven't seen
certainly haven't seen Twitter take that seriously. Um, I haven't
really seen. I don't believe TikTok is like they're they're
they're they're just um like you said, they're going after
they're taking it on a piece bay piece basis, which
is never there's too many pieces. That's never going to
handle the problem. Yeah, I mean, take talk is crawling

(01:15:59):
right now on the air in their infancy. Um, they don't.
They don't have a data sharing UH, any sort of
data sharing systems set up for for researchers or anything
like that. Yet I I've seen optimistic signals. So I
think Facebook's approach to q and on in boogleoo movement
over the past year has been probably the best, the
most positive development we've seen on the content moderation front,

(01:16:20):
because they took an actual network based approach to it.
It was handstrung by a variety of different policy decisions,
but it was still from like a from like a
mechanics standpoint, the most sophisticated one any of the companies
has actually talked about openly. UH. And YouTube has followed
in their path. They've started taking more network approaches. Um

(01:16:41):
they They've taken moderation action against q and on on
a similar basis. But the thing that I want tech
companies to start looking at is applying a lot of
the techniques they're using for disinformation and in info ops
work to extremism and radicalization. It's very similar, but right
now it seems to be just easier politically or just

(01:17:03):
there further along with doing the large scale network analysis
approaches on this info UM, Like Twitter is doing a
lot of that, but it's all on information operations and
to info yeah, as opposed to yeah people. Yeah. And
I I worry too because I'm paying attention to kind

(01:17:23):
of you know, you have this whistle blower from Facebook,
and how that's being politicized, right, how the right is
kind of coming at this from a they're trying to say,
like as Ben Shapira said, they're trying to to UM
to censor alternative media voices and the like. And I
I worry tremendously about the politicization because number one, it
means that at best we've got like three years to

(01:17:46):
get something together before you know, who knows whose wides
up in the White House next. But also if it's
just this thing of like veering between who gets who
gets paid attention to UM based on like what is
politically viable for Facebook, We're never going to solve the problem.
And I I think I agree with you for the

(01:18:06):
most part on the Facebook's response to the boogle Boo movement.
I mean, I guess I think the problem was that
by the time they developed a functional set of responses
to it UM, it had metastasized, it had grown, it
had grown strong enough to exist on its own, and
a lot of people have gotten exposed. What do you
think is the actual is reasonable to expect in terms

(01:18:28):
of response time from these people, Because with Boogleoo stuff,
it was about I want to say, about three months maybe, well, no,
it was more like five. It was about five months
that it had from like December of twenty nineteen was
when I started really noticing it. And then like you know,
May at the when when stuff really kicked off with
the George Floyd protests, when you started to see action

(01:18:48):
taking the tail into May. Yeah, so I guess that
I'm wondering, like what is the half life of this ship?
Like how quickly do you need to crack down on
this stuff before it it gets to be impossible to contain? Uh? Yeah,
I mean that's the biggest limiting factor on the effectiveness
of UH contemnation in general, but also in particular these

(01:19:11):
new approaches that the tech companies seem to be experimenting with. UM,
my understanding is that part of the So I'm not
I'm not defending Facebook by any stretch. I'm not here
to be the Facebook rallying croup. But my understanding is
that they literally did develop an entirely separate approach to
taking down the biblue movements, So that explains at least
a little bit of the delay. But hopefully, you know,

(01:19:36):
my optimistic side hopes that they will be able to
apply it more quickly in the future. Um. The problem
is a lot of the network approaches that have been
developed are have like these very high thresholds for attribution.
So it has to be like a dedicated network that
has crossed the line into criminal activity and is actively
calling for you know, political violence on like a network level,

(01:19:59):
and that like we all know that that isn't that
is like the end goal or the end point in right,
Like that is the terminal point of the development of
these extremist networks. So you know, we're one of the
one of the things that we're working on is trying
to figure out a way to convince tech companies that

(01:20:19):
you can and should take action earlier before it reaches
that point. And it's going to be a mosaic of things.
It's going to be combining violent extremism with hate speech,
with even like c SAM child exploitation stuff, with um all,
you know, criminal criminal conspiracy network policies. All of those
things need to be sort of thought of as pieces
in a single, big, overarching umbrella that we can use

(01:20:41):
to take down networks earlier on. But you know, it's
a it's a that's one of the biggest tasks is
just convincing them to think about it much much earlier. Yeah. Um,
all right, well, let's I think most of what I
wanted to get into today. Is there anything else you
really wanted to like kind of talk about while you're here? Um,

(01:21:01):
those are the those are the big ones for sure.
We will hopefully have more to talk about very soon.
And how we're approaching this project. Um, it's going to
be a pretty big project. It will take two years
to implement, but um, we're pretty excited to see what
comes out of it. Yeah. Um, Well, people can find
you on Twitter at it's just at alex new house, right,

(01:21:24):
alex B new house, alex B new house. Yeah, at
alex B new house. Um, they can check out where
you work at at C T E, C M I
I s UM And yeah, I'm I'm excited to see. Well,
maybe we'll have you back on when you UMU, when
you you you actually put out the game. But I'm

(01:21:46):
really interested in looking at that. Oh yeah, it was
the less than you brewed. Oh I brewed a red
I p a and I'm currently brewing three gallons of
apple cider. Oh nice. We just um reduced ten gallons
of apples and pears that I just kegged after almost
four weeks of fermentation that I know. I've been I've
been looking at I've been looking at apple mills, like
apple presses. Yeah I should I should just buy one.

(01:22:08):
And we found one to rent. Um So it's just
like I don't know, thirty bucks for the day. Uh,
and we just gathered up all the apples on property.
But it's it was rab definitely very soul. Yeah. We
were juicing all of the apples the day that um
tiny got shot at that protest in Olympia. So it's
just like looking at the Twitter saying there's been a
shooting into protests and be like, yeah, I'm glad I'm

(01:22:29):
not working today. Yeah, I'm glad I'm not working today
afternoon pressing apple. This is this is a more enjoyable
use of my time right now. All right, Well, Alex,
thank you so much for being on. Thank you for
what you're doing, and thank you all for listening. Go
with you know whoever, whatever deity up to you. The

(01:22:57):
art world, it is essentially a money during business. The
best fakes are still hanging on people's walls. You know
they don't even know or suspect that their faces. I'm
Alec Baldwin and this is a podcast about deception, greed
and forgery in the art world. You knew the painting
was fake. Um Listen to Art Fraud starting February one

(01:23:22):
on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever
you get your podcasts. I call the Union Hall as
his male alife and death. I thank these people to
planning to kill Dr King. On April four, Dr Martin

(01:23:46):
Luther King was shot and killed in Memphis. A petty
criminal named James Earl Ray was arrested. He played guilty
to the crime and spent the rest of his life
in prison. Case closed, right, James el Ray is a
pawn for the official story. The authorities would pray at
all we found a gun the James ol Ray bought

(01:24:07):
in Birmingham that killed Dr King, Except it wasn't the
gun that killed Dr King. One of the problems that
came out when I got the ray case was that
some of the evidence, as far as I was concerned,
did not match the circumstances. This is the MLK tapes.
The first episodes are available now. Listen on the I

(01:24:29):
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Jake Halbern, host of Deep Cover. Our new season
is about a lawyer who helped the mob run Chicago.
We controlled the courts, We controlled absolutely everything. He bribed
judges and even helped a hit man walk free, until

(01:24:51):
one day when he started talking with the FBI and
promised that he could take the mob down. I've spent
the past year trying to figure out why he flipped
and what he was really after. From my perspective, Bob
was too good to be true. There's got to be
something wrong with this. I wouldn't trust the guy. He
looks like a little scum, big liar, stool pidgeon. He
looked like what he was or at. I can say

(01:25:14):
with all certainty I think he's a hero because he
didn't have to do what he did, and he did
it anyway. The moment I put the wire around the
first time, my life was over. If it ever got out,
they would kill me in a heartbeat. Listen to deep
Cover on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcasts or
wherever you get your podcasts. It could happen here. Mike

(01:25:42):
is possibly anyway, I'm Robert Evans. Uh, you know who
I am because you're listening to this show unless you
stumbled upon this having never heard of the internet before,
in which case, this is a show about how things
are kind of falling apart, and we also try to
talk every now and then about how to maybe put
them back together a little bit. My co host is

(01:26:02):
Garrison Davis. Garrison, say hello to the people. Hello, people.
I'd also like you to say hello to Sean. Hi. Sean. Yeah,
there's a Sean somewhere out there. There's probably a few Seans. Yeah,
it was at least one or two. Garrison, What do we?
What do we? What do we? What? What? What are we? Well,
we're finally doing something I've been wanting to do for

(01:26:23):
a while, is branching off into kind of covering different
parts of like media and culture. Um that kind of
relate to all of these topics. Um. I know both
both me, but both me a little bit and and
Robert more so have worked for or have have written
for UM like an online investigative journalism website called Belling

(01:26:45):
Cat that deals in open source UM like research. And
one of the things that we're big fans of that
Belling Cat I've talked with a few of the other
people is a game called Her Story, which is a
video game that has maybe one of the better better
depictions of kind of open source UM investigations. Uh it's

(01:27:06):
it's a it's a very it's a very good game.
I highly recommended. I played it a few years ago.
It was lovely and I recently uh well, originally, when
I bought Her Story, I bought both that game and
like a spiritual sequel called Telling Lies, which I did
did not play for a while because I was too
busy UM. And then I went to the Earth First

(01:27:29):
Gathering this summer and I and I came back and
I had some free time, so I played Telling Lies.
And because of the continent of that game, I found
it really interesting. Because I'm not gonna spoil tons of it,
I think you should play it for yourself, and part
of it is solving the mystery on your own. But
but part of it does take place to like green
environmentalism activism setting and it has one of the more

(01:27:53):
honest depictions of environments like that. So I have of
we we are graced with bringing on the creator of
both Her Story and telling lies. Uh. Sam Barlow, Hello, Hey,
exciting to be here thanks to that lovely interest. Yeah,
I am, I am. I'm very excited to talk with you.

(01:28:15):
These games are some of my favorite things. Um. First off,
I guess I would just like to kind of talk
about your inspiration for this type of detective game, because
it is it is unique to every other kind of
investigative game out there. UM. And it's you know, very
much grounded in open source research. Um. And like using

(01:28:36):
computers in the real world. What what kind of got
you onto that kind of storytelling concept? I mean, I
think there was a whole bunch of things that all
kind of sparked off at once, Like when I made
Her Story. This was my first independent video game. So
I've been making video games for ten plus years, um,

(01:28:56):
working on other people's franchises, more traditional things. When I
started out working on like Nicolas Cage movie, Tiants and
extreme sports games and all these kind of things. Um.
But at some point I got to work on the
Sunlight Health franchise, which is this this very cool psychological
horror franchise, and it's one of the certainly at that

(01:29:17):
point in time, it was one of the few kind
of established gaming franchises that had a story that was
interesting and took place in the real world and had
characters and things. So kind of from that point, I
was really digging into kind of a lifelong interest in storytelling,
especially what we can do with it interactively, and continue

(01:29:39):
to be frustrated somewhat by working for these bigger publishers.
And at one point I worked for three years I
was directing and writing this this big budget video game
that got canceled, and that kind of gave me a
moment to kind of sit and think, like, what what
do I want to do? Do I want to get
on board another of these big video games. I was

(01:30:00):
very frustrated at the kind of incremental change that you
see in the kind of bigger budget video game space.
It feels like things happened very slowly, which can be frustrating.
So I was kind of looking around. This was when
like iPhones, people gaming on their iPhones and stuff was
kind of starting to blow up. The fact that you
could now distribute a game individually digitally and reach an

(01:30:25):
audience was sort of changing the landscape. So I kind
of felt like I should get into that. And so
at its conception, her story was was me going, what
are all the things I've wanted to do that that
I wasn't able to do when I was working with
these bigger budgets, with these more established kind of gaming templates.
So from the get go it was I wanted to

(01:30:48):
deal with characters that essentially lived in the real world,
which is a hard pitch. You know, if you're asking
for big bucks, every video game has to essentially be
about superhero. It needs to be some kind of wish
fulfilment for a teenage boy is generally what people are
asking for. Uh. And the big thing with her story
was subtext as someone's interesting storytelling. Us always trying to

(01:31:12):
push how important subtext is and the idea that there is.
You know, there are layers to a narrative that you're
not spelling out for the audience that they're going to
extract through performance or through whatever um And that was
always a hard sell when you were kind of dealing
with these kind of bigger companies that had a very
simple idea of what their audience was. So I wanted

(01:31:32):
to prove that the audience was actually smarter than we
were giving them credit for, and that if you gave
more control to them, if you gave more of the
kind of work of piecing these stories together, that that
would be not not just something they could do, but
which would actually be more interesting and more personal and um,
you know, and with her story, I had a kind

(01:31:54):
of lifelong love of like crime fiction and slightly more
kind of gothic leaning crime fiction. And so it's like, right,
I'm gonna create a video game which is in that
world and which kind of breaks a lot of the
established rules of how you might tell a story. Um,
and you know, a lot of that I was pulling from, Yeah,

(01:32:16):
my love of some of the more kind of avant
garde literally stuff, interesting pieces of kind of movies and things.
But it was, it was, it was pulling from a
lot of different kind of storytelling traditions and ending up
in this this interesting place where, like you say, it's
kind of a game experience where you're essentially researching the
story yourself and kind of putting the pieces together. Yeah. Yeah,

(01:32:39):
for for people who don't know, it's like you're basically
on a virtual desktop, um, and you're sorting through like
a hard drive full of footage and the versatility of
the game, and you know, people learning how to use
like search terms, right, just like people try to use
like UM in open source it's called like using like
Google operators. It's this kind of the same thing. Um.

(01:33:01):
But also there's like the other side of things. I
think Belling Cat wrote an article about your game where
they like made like a Python script to scan all
of the videos for specific keywords and put them into
like different folders and files. So it's like you can
do the thing where you just like search it, but
you could like take this to a ridiculous level or
you're like breaking the game open and doing it like
you're actually like investigating this and you need to be

(01:33:22):
very quick. UM. So I think her story is is
a lovely intro to this type of game concept. And
then for telling lies, you kind of changed you change
some things with it. Um. You made like I guess,
I guess like an expansion would be the way I
would describe it for how it like takes the same
concept and pushes it further. And I think watching these

(01:33:44):
things now, it is very different after being like two
years on Zoom. Right, I'm I'm sure, I'm sure you've
heard this from other people as well as, like, you know,
because because because of how telling lies operates, it's like
a lot of it is well you open the game
as you're basically cracking open and then I say hard drive,
so all of it is video from like webcams and stuff. Um,

(01:34:06):
so you know, watching people talking to their computer camera
like this after spending years on Zoom definitely hits harder.
I guess it was one of those things where so
when we were first working on this and conceiving of it,
which was I don't know, maybe and something like that. Um,

(01:34:28):
there was a leap, right, and as a storyteller you
allow yourself sometimes to take that one leap that the
audience will take with you. And the leap there was
like these people are using video chat a lot. But
I mean and as I was starting to put it together,
I would start noticing people around that time doing video
chat in the street on their phones, which was something

(01:34:48):
I was not used to sing and I was like, oh, ship,
maybe this is not too big of a leap. Um,
But yeah, I think I think it was the virgin
or somebody ran an article that like, Telling Lies is
still a great game, uh mid pandemic, it's just real
hard to play now that that like this Zoom thing
is our lives. I mean I was like, yeah, that
was that was a big thing I was interested in

(01:35:10):
at the time, was like, what what is this doing
to us? What is communicating over the internet? How does
that change how conversations and and things happen? And was
kind of looking into some of the research there, so
that Yeah, that was wild. Was was was kind of
living in that world for several years putting the game
out and then spending two years on Zoom calls. Yeah.

(01:35:33):
I mean in a few ways, I think the game
has aged very well because of that, and because the
way people People are more used to interacting with the
computer in that format now, so when they're you know,
trying to search for these like hundreds of video files,
I think they can understand it better. Um So, in
some ways, I think it's not it's not necessarily a
bad thing. Um But yeah, let's see. So I think, well,

(01:35:57):
I want to talk a bit about kind of the
influences for kind of the surveillance aspect, because, like her
story is filmed in like a police um interrogation room
for based basically basically the whole thing, whereas this pulls
video footage of people like in private moments. Essentially. Of course,
this was like after like the Snowden stuff and after

(01:36:18):
all of the other kind of after the you know,
surveillance became a bigger talking point. Um, But what what
got you to decide you wanted to kind of revolve
the game around this concept of internet surveillance. And then
you know, different three letter agencies kind of fighting each
other a little bit. So I think it was two things.
One was in making her story and making lots of

(01:36:42):
decisions somewhat intuitively kind of when it was finished and
it was a big success, and I looked back on it,
and then kind of when a little bit of time
and passed, I then had this very different relationship where
I had forgotten that I was the person that had
made it and so could have opinions about it. And
I was really interested in how that that game established
a level of intimacy with the main character that Viva plays,

(01:37:05):
that you're seeing being interrogated, despite the fact that it's
happening through a computer desktop, despite the fact that there's
none of what traditionally, you know that the agency you
would traditionally having a video game, which you know, conventional
logic would be that's how you would establish the idea
that this person is alive and that you're in contact
with them. But the act of like digging into all

(01:37:26):
this video footage of Viva and seeing her on screen
talking essentially at you created this this interesting amount of
intimacy that a lot of people responded to. So I
was like, well, that's one of the things that is
interesting to me to take further, because it's it's very
rare that a video game creates this sensation of kind
of intimacy or of getting close to or understanding people.

(01:37:47):
And then it was Snowden UM. I think it was
one of the the early reports UM from from all
the various things that came out via Snowden. There was
a particular UM operation in the UK, which I think
was called Optic Nerve or something, and the idea there

(01:38:08):
was that they were spying on everyone's Internet traffic. And
I think it's a little bit easier to do that
in the UK than it is elsewhere. And this one
particular operation I remember there was a PowerPoint slide that
was leaked that was like their internal presentation which proved
that like in any leaked government PowerPoint will be the
worst power point you've ever seen, like the clip art

(01:38:31):
and just terrible nous, right um. But in this scheme
what they did and this blew my mind was for
a period of I think it was two years, every
single video chat that went through Yahoo in the UK
was captured and recorded, and they had this issue, which
I think is if you want to talk about surveillance
kind of post nine eleven, the big problem with surveillance

(01:38:58):
and the extent to which is now used, is what
do you do with all this data? Like it's it's
it's just too much. So they they were capturing all
this Yahoo video chat and attempting to add the metadata
and sort it, which is kind of interesting because that's
kind of to some extent kind of how something like
her story worked. Yeah. Yeah, And the biggest issue they

(01:39:21):
had and they put up this power point and it
blew my mind, was thirty of all the video chat
through Yahoo at this point was sexual in nature, and
they were concerned about the feelings of their operatives who
were doing the tagging of all this data, so they'd
put their best computer minds on it, and they'd come

(01:39:41):
up with an algorithm which would detect an excessive amount
of skin tone and would then kind of flag and
silo those clips. And I just remember reading this and
being like, what about the feelings of the people whose
skin tone you're capturing? Right? Like you weren't you weren't
stopping to think like why are we doing this? Shouldn't
be doing this? You're you're you're solving for the problem
of like how do we stop our agents seeing all

(01:40:02):
this newity? And I think there was there was a
bunch of other anecdotes right in the snowed and stuff
of people alongside him, like you know, looking through people's
webcoun data and stuff and in a in a voyeuristic way,
and just this constant invasion of people's rights. So I
think that it was one of those things where I
was like, oh, this is this is like new, Like, uh,

(01:40:27):
you know we now have you know you you you
worry about certain levels of like your privacy being invaded,
and you would certainly worry if someone was letting themselves
into your house at night. But we suddenly found ourselves
in this position where we have these phones that we
put by our bedside at night that have cameras and
microphones that are pretty much just running right and capturing,

(01:40:50):
and just the extent to which now technology has transformed surveillance.
And that that was really interesting to me because I,
um and a big thing I wanted to do, you know,
I've made her story. And like, growing up, I loved
cop shows, and I particularly loved the good ones, like Homicide,

(01:41:13):
Life on the Street in the US. There was a
show in the UK called Cracker Um and these were like,
you know, somewhat nuanced in how they with policing, but
you know, you're you're still you know, we're in this
position now where we're starting to ask deeper questions about
whether we should watch this many cops shows. Yeah, when
they're like the main thing on all television all the time. Yeah, exactly.

(01:41:36):
And that would be like when I made her story,
Partly I pitched the bigger publishers like we should do
the equivalent of a cop show like that, we should
do crime fictional cop show, video game, and they would
always be like nah, And I would say, well, look,
this is like the evergreen. You know, if you're a
book publisher. You have a crime show, you have a
crime book. You know, if you doing movies, you're going

(01:41:57):
to have some movies with this genres it works, And
they would always kind of push against that. So when
I made her story, that was, in fact, like the
arc of of playing her story to some extent mirrors
my ark in that. Like at the top of it,
I was like, I want to make an interesting detective game,
and I want to deconstruct how detective stories work. And

(01:42:21):
I then started to do a bunch of research whereas
digging into, well, how do actual criminal investigations work, how
does one interrogate the suspect doing all that stuff? And
then I started to pull up what at the time
like there was a bit it was slightly ahead of
like the true crime explosion, but there was starting to
be stuff on YouTube and in various places where footage

(01:42:43):
from real investigations was online, and it was starting to
get a bit weird and interesting, and that people were
kind of vicariously watching these things. And yeah, thats as
questions they were trying to piece thegether their own kind
of conclusions based on these leaked or sometimes officially released
interview segments. Yeah, and and there was one in particularly

(01:43:05):
got really into the Jodi Arias case. It's just like
and and the way the media spun that story and
just really dug into Oh, there's like sex and murder
and Mormons, and there's this beautiful blonde woman who now
when she goes to court has gone brunette, and they
were endlessly talking about on cable news like her parents

(01:43:27):
and setting her up as this kind of them fatal
kind of ice maiden. On the slip side of this,
I think there's like the thing with them the Making
the Murderer documentary, which I think I have some issues
with how they handle the main guy, but particularly how
they showed the totally immoral interrogation tactics used on used

(01:43:48):
on Brandon the kid um, and that really cracked that
whole thing open, being like, yeah, the way the police
are interrogating minors without it was the lawyers is shocking.
And that was I was that was part of this
transition for me, was was going into her story with like,
the hero of this is the detective. It's Andre Brower
and homicide Life from the Street. It's the genius detective

(01:44:09):
that's going to come in there and crack this case.
And the more I dug into in cases like Jody's,
where um there word various um aspects to that case.
She definitely did murder her lover, but there are lots
of questions around whether the relationship itself was particularly healthy. Um.

(01:44:30):
And by the end of it, like all of my
sympathy was with Jody, not with the interrogator who you
watch it and you realize that, like, the reason this
person is in this situation is because their life has
gone very badly, and the reason for that is everything
that's happened in their life prior to this, and they've
never spoken to anyone about any of this stuff. And

(01:44:52):
suddenly they're in this room with the homicide detective who's like, hey,
you can talk to me. I'm the first person that's
going to sit and listen to you, and and all
these tricks that they use to just get people talking,
and it becomes very intimate and becomes kind of like
therapy session. But by the end of it so so
for me, Like the hook of her story is, oh,
you get to solve a murder, but really, by the

(01:45:13):
end of it, it's like a character port should entirely
be with her that is less about seeing justice done right.
So I even but even coming away from that, I
was like, I still feel slightly uncomfortable with with kind
of having made this thing that is reveling in how

(01:45:33):
much fun it is to be involved in the police
work or whatever. And so I was definitely thinking about
the snows and stuff thinking about that aspect and the
extent to which technology has just so empowered policing in
general to the point where it's there's this great um.

(01:45:56):
Like one of the core themes that I wanted to
dig into and telling lies was the when you see
people try and defend this stuff and defend policing in general,
is they try and set it up so that you
basically have They talk in terms of families and very
close relationships, so they're kind of like, well, the government
is your parent, and they're trying to look after you.

(01:46:17):
And you understand as a parent, you're going to sometimes
invade the privacy of your children or sometimes you're going
to inhibit their freedoms because you're trying to protect them.
And we all understand that, and that's part of being human,
and that's all that's happening here with government, right We're
trying to protect you from the Big Bad the Evil.
I sort of like there's some tweet from the YPD

(01:46:38):
the other day that was like, you'll be come, You'll
come running when evil is on your doorstep. Someone was
saying something macros and and and for me, once you
you take that understanding of how people relate directly to
which they have, families, work, the second you scale it
to the size of government, it breaks like that you

(01:47:00):
d not extent that metaphor. And then when you add
in tech, um, you know the extent to which uh,
you know, privacy has been degraded, our freedoms. Um. You
know when you start just blanket looking for crime, right,
you start creating all the systemic issues that we have
just suddenly become amplified. Um. So that that to me

(01:47:23):
was kind of interesting. Um, well, you know, here is
like a means to explore that. And I like one
of the things that was interesting to me about her
story that in retrospect was the extent to which it
was about watching video, which seems like a dumb thing
to say, but like the choice to use real video

(01:47:46):
kind of inspired by watching all these interrogation piece of
footage from Jodi and people. Um, you know it was
was kind of made, oh yeah, that makes sense, and
I just kind of got on with it. But then
looking back, I was like, oh, well, it's interesting because
people talk about this game as being an interactive movie,
but it's nothing like a movie. No, not at all,
and it's not how movies work. It just happens that

(01:48:06):
it uses a video camera. Only similarity is that it
has live action footage. That yea. So I was like,
I really want to go even further into that texture.
And so I was just thinking about and when I
was starting to do my research, like the idea of
surveillance and and the commonalities between like classic old school surveillance,
I you know, someone sat in a car some binoculars

(01:48:30):
watching someone and and modern surveillance. The commonalities that it's
quite boring, right, there's just a lot of sitting and
watching doing nothing. Yeah, right. And but out of that
and when you kind of read the first hand accounts
of the people doing the surveillance or some of the
depictions of this media, like there's a level of intimacy

(01:48:52):
that you get with the person you're surveilling, right where
you know, if you're just sat watching them, when you
chef someone's life, if you're listening to a bug in
someone's kitchen and just hearing all the just everyday ship
in their lives, or if you are you know, watching
them through some kind of technology. Um, you're just spending
all this time with them, and that's like a that's

(01:49:13):
like a very non cinematic thing. It's just like this
that menu sha and the time stretching out of just
being present with somebody. And that was kind of interesting
to me of just kind of putting you in that
headspace and kind of thinking about what that means. I
think that totally gets through because of the way you

(01:49:34):
break up the conversations and telling lies. You have to
sit and watch these characters as they're just doing nothing
for sometimes like like over five minutes. They're just like
sitting there, um, and you do get like very intimate
with these characters, but it almost like in a very
like creepy way where you like you feel like I
shouldn't be here, which is kind of the general feeling

(01:49:57):
of telling us really interesting because I like some people
to have a very and this was you know, completely
again like trying to process how I felt watching the
like the videos of all the various police interrogations and stuff.
Was like, this is fascinating because there's human beings were
fascinated by other human beings, and here is this extremely interesting,

(01:50:17):
dramatic stuff where people are just really spilling their lives out.
That's why true crime blew up, right, But then you
have all these moral questions around it. And obviously with
turning lies, it's inspired by lots of real things, but
it's fake and you're watching actors act this stuff. But
still some people would have this real visceral reaction of
like I shouldn't be watching some of this stuff, and

(01:50:39):
I'd be like, I mean, you you can. It's like
that was that was where it became really not cinematic
to me, was like, you know, if you're watching a
you know, a noir film or you know, a thriller
and you have you know, or even like the The
thing for the domestic stuff for me was, you know,
you could watch and it was sitcom, watching any a

(01:51:00):
normal sitcom, and the husband and wife sat in bed chatting.
At no point do you feel like I shouldn't be
here because you're in the kind of classic Hollywood invisible
camera set up. You're this, you know, you have permission
to be there as the invisible camera spectator, and it
doesn't feel as weird as it would if you're hiding
in the closet of this couple's bedroom. Um So, with

(01:51:23):
the setup I'm telling Lies, you immediately feel like, oh,
like this, I am in this position that I shouldn't be.
So suddenly all those more domestic moments become charged with
like a very different vibe. Yeah, because you're watching them
and you're you're not invited, like right, you're you know,
you're sitting looking at this ns A horror drive and
you're like, yeah, I'm not supposed to be watching this

(01:51:44):
like this, this this isn't They never invited me into
this conversation. Telling Lies very much feels like a much
more mature game than her story, not in terms of
like has like more mature content, but like in terms
of like this concept growing up and like evolving and
gaining more depth. Um particularly because you know, not only
just because it has way more characters, but because you know,

(01:52:05):
you get to know all of your kind of games
deal with some degree of like characters lying to you
and like just doing like straight lines to your face.
That's kind of a That's my read on a lot
of a lot of your games. Um, I mean you're
the game is called Telling Lies, so so you definitely
see like elements of of you know, all of these
trying to figure out what is true and what is not.
I think it is interesting looking at like how easier

(01:52:28):
it is to lie via these technological platforms. Um, I
don't know, to just like you feel like telling the
truth is just so much more work and you may
as well just get through this conversation by doing a
few white lives, which is that inspiral out of control. Um.
When you combine this with you know, law enforcement, infiltration
and all this kind of stuff, he gets it gets
very complicated, very quickly. Um. One thing that I think

(01:52:50):
you guys handled very well in Telling Lies was kind
of the activism side of things. So like when when
I play this game, like almost immediately after coming back
from the stop line, re protests, um and like and
and like an Earth First gathering, you know, everyone there
is always very people try to be aware of surveillance
to be like, okay, you know, you don't talk about
certain things if there's phones nearby and stuff. So so

(01:53:13):
that whole side of things was very interesting to like
play this game right afterwards because you have to see
like the other side of things, being like, okay, if
the the FBI is infiltrating this group, here's you know,
one of the ways that they do it, and like
that from my perspective being you know, in activism spaces
for a while, not just like environmental ones, but you
know other ones like here in Portland. Um, you had

(01:53:36):
you handled this topic very accurately. Um, where what kind
of stuff did you pull from to kind of create
these like these you know environments and interactions between people
because I'm not sure if you haven't experience yourself and
stuff like this, or if you've got people onto like
like you talk to people who are more experienced activists,
what was kind of your inspiration for like, you know,

(01:53:57):
the opposite side of things, not on the law enforcement.
So that was that was like one of the big
initial jumping off points. So uh like in terms of
the kind of real life inspirations, Like the seed of
this whole thing was Remember when this was it was
I'm gonna say two could be completely wrong here, but

(01:54:19):
it was The Guardian in the UK I think broke
the story, but it was and and we've recently had
some good progress in this this area, but broke the
story of this UK spy Cops operation, which was a
specific unit within the London Police whose job was to

(01:54:41):
infiltrate groups, to surveil them from the inside. And um,
it was horrific. And they're like a couple of things
about it that were horrific. One of them was that like,
essentially their modus operandi was to find vulnerable young women
on the periph of groups, target them romantically, and then

(01:55:03):
they would be the collateral to get you know, to
have people then more solidly enter into these groups. And
then they had like a whole you know, stepped plan
of like once you're in, how you kind of would
would destabilize steer these groups from within. Um. And the

(01:55:24):
the thing that really made this even worse UM was
the fact that most of the groups, I think maybe
all of the groups targeted with this particular unit were
green activists. There's this incredible, incredible, like you couldn't make
this stuff up. But there's a famous libel case where

(01:55:48):
McDonald's was suing these these two activists in the UK
right because they were putting up flyers exposing some of
the practices of McDonald's and the group that they were
members of, which I think at this point was called
Green Piece, but it was different to the kind of
more famous Green Piece in London. Prior to them doing

(01:56:10):
this big kind of McDonald's thing, UM was losing members
and it got to a point where there were so
few people in this group that it would have shut
down had it not been for the fact that there
were a large number of undercover cops in this group.
So you know, if you imagine at some point they

(01:56:32):
were actually more undercover cops and private security people undercover
in this group that actual activists UM, which has enabled
the group to continue. And in fact, the original flyer
that they put out was written I forget the guy's
name now by one of these undercover cops. He wrote
the copy for this flyer that went out and then

(01:56:55):
was you know, saw this these people dragged up in
court and was this huge you know, Donald's won the case,
but in terms of pr it was hugely damaging to them.
But yeah, that that for me was the thing that
seemed even more a point because because here you had
this story of the state sanctioning the you know, one
of the most terrible abuses like Essentially, you know, what

(01:57:18):
was happening was pretty easy to to kind of call
it rape, right. There was women in sexual relationships with
people and thinking it was consensual, but not realizing that
they this was you know, what they were getting into
is not what they thought it was. And so this
was just so appalling and like from a just to

(01:57:42):
kind of base emotional level, just it was so hard
for me to imagine the pain of um and these
women when relationships with these undercover officers for years and
then and and out of the modus operanda was when
you were done, you had to exit and disappear, and

(01:58:03):
they had this whole plan where the cops would claim
that they were being followed and that they were worried,
and then they would disappear, and then they would call
from some European country and say that they've kind of
fled the country because they were worried that the cops
were onto them, and then they would slowly kind of
disappear and this you know, some of these were kind
of pre modern internet, so it was easier for someone

(01:58:24):
to kind of disappear. But this stuff totally happened in
the Green Scare in the States, in you know, around
this was around. This was my big question was was
this you know, some of these cases were kind of
the original inspiration And when I started thinking about trying
to tell a story inspired by their originally it starts
off and and and it's still in based in the

(01:58:47):
UK and based on these things. And there was a particular, ah,
a particular flavor to it where the cops doing this
work it was part of the matt Police who were
you know, that's the more kind of gang story, Like
there's there's a real reputation that the Met Police have.
So these cops that were chosen for this work were

(01:59:09):
the ones that were a bit more kind of marcho
and edgy, and there were there was I mean, there
was so much stuff to it was horrific, Like they
would only pick cops that were married, um because they
felt that that h gave them some level of ability
to be sleeping with these activists and not lose themselves

(01:59:32):
in it. Um. But obviously the wives didn't know what
was hapdening um and and there's just there's so many
layers of this that I just thought was it was awful,
And coming off the first story, I was like, well,
I would love to tell an undercover cops story in
which we acknowledge that the undercover cop is bad. Yeah,

(01:59:53):
they aren't, like you know, because because it's such a
classic trope, is the undercover cops story. Because you get
to have your cake and eat here. You get to
see someone on both sides the law, you get, you
get all the tension and thrills of it. But usually,
you know, whatever, even if the if the movie or
the story or whatever has a bittersweet ending, the protagonist

(02:00:13):
is always the undercover cop. And ultimately, because they're the protagonist,
they're the one that your heart goes to, right. And
the secondary characters, whether that's like the wife and Donnie
Brasco or Good Fellows or something, you know, they basically
serve as a foil to the main character. So I
was like, well, can we tell a story where, um,
we we treat the wife and the activist who's being

(02:00:35):
targeted and the other people on the periphery of this
guy think more about their perspective on this world, and
let's acknowledge from our perspective that this is wrong. Everything
that's happening is wrong and it's not justified. And then
let's just see what the impact is on people. UM.
So once we started developing it, and when I was

(02:00:56):
speaking to Anna partner about doing it, UM, I felt like, oh,
we should move this to the States um to make
it feel certainly as well, because the larger audiences American
to to kind of reiterate and make it feel kind
of more identifiable and have it be less quaint and British. Um.

(02:01:17):
So my number one question from day one was like, well,
does this ship happen in the States and as uch
does it happen in the same way. And so we
brought on a researcher who then started pulling stuff up
and and the big thing for me was replacing the
undercover group the met with the FBI, and and then

(02:01:37):
I that became fascinating to me because then I started
digging into the FBI and understanding their history and everything
that's wrong there. But yeah, immediately I start seeing all
these great examples of yeah, this explicit infiltration of green
groups UM so, pretty horrific cases of entrapment um where

(02:02:00):
you know, people infiltrate these groups and then encourage them
to do more extreme and violent things. On the record.
It's the point where you're listening to like recorded FBI stuff,
and and you can hear the group being like, I'm
not sure about that, Like that doesn't sound like a
great idea, dude, And the the FBI person is they're

(02:02:22):
going like, what, I don't know, I really do think
we should blow this bridge up, guys. And it's so obvious,
like when you listen to which is why a lot
of these cases have ultimately been thrown out. But yeah,
it was it was. It was, I guess for the project,
reassuring to see that all this stuff was happening over here. Yeah.

(02:02:43):
And the FBI, like the specific FBI agent that we
kind of follow definitely feels very American and feels very real. Um.
I really like the actor that you got to play him. Um,
he definitely feels like a lot of kind of the
law enforcement dudes who kind of handle this side of things. Um.

(02:03:04):
That was that was That was definitely that was like
an FBI. He became like the fbiis of it became
very important to it. And it was interesting the way
that the FBI they had this brand, which is partly
reinforced by the media, Like they had the great idea
back in forties or fifties to themselves fund and support
cop shows. So this whole idea we have through the

(02:03:27):
X Files, through pretty much every serial killer media whatever.
The idea of the FBI is being like the smartest
and the best, like that's put out by them. But
it's really interesting to see they believe that, like they
are beyond approach and like they have higher standards for like,
you know, if you want to join the FBI, there

(02:03:48):
is in theory this kind of moral moral check that
you have to pass. BUTTBI agent flipping backwards and shooting
somebody with his gun falls out of his pants at
a club. Well, then you read about it and you're like,
actually the experience, the lived experience, and we would it
was it was so bizarre because I was like, I

(02:04:08):
really want to understand what it's like to be an
FBI wife, and um, let's find let's reach out the
research I've done. Some of the stuff we pulled up.
I was like, oh, it, it does sound pretty bad.
Like there's a requirement if you're an FBI agent you
have to move every three years or something. So if
you're the wife to an FBI agent, you essentially move

(02:04:29):
every three years, and so you never get a chance
to build your own career or to make roots. And
so you're generally and the wage is not great, which
is why they're very vulnerable to uh corruption really. Um,
so you're generally living. There's usually kind of areas where
all the FBI families live, so it's this very insular

(02:04:51):
world and you you start to see where some of
these wives have come out and spoken about it. They're like,
it's really shitty because husbands who believe themselves to be
like you know, March of superheroes get to disappear for
three days at a time and we can never ask
where they are or what they're doing. And there's this

(02:05:12):
kind of internal code which you see a lot of
law enforcement right where they will cover for each other
and protect each other. Um. And you you suddenly start
to see that like, ah, you know this, this is
not like And in fact, I remember reading sort of
the guy who inspired like Silenced the Lambs. The TV

(02:05:33):
show mind Hunter was based on him in his book
Us this guy who was one of the early kind
of serial killer profiling people within the FBI. You read
his book, It's a terrible book. When I heard that
Fincher was adapting, I was like, wow, good luck. Um,
but it's incredible the lack of self awareness he has. Um,

(02:05:55):
this guy is so sexist and so bad. Every time
he introduces a warm then it starts by from the
legs up like he's describing it and um. At the
very end of the book, he reveals that his wife
leaves him, and he kind of writes as if this
is a huge surprise, and yeah, he's calling us from
chapter one and he has the best buddy. So like
the guy who's who's the kind of number two in

(02:06:17):
mind hunt on TV, there's like a real life version
of him. And halfway through the book, his wife hires
an assassin to kind of hitman to come in and
kill him, and the guy just narrowly avoids it. And
the guy writing the book is like, what an evil woman?
Like my poor friend, and you're like, well, having a minute,
what did your what was your friend like? Yeah, what

(02:06:39):
was going on? Yeah, there's there's there's probably something going
on there. So yeah it was Yeah that that sense
that which I think for me, expanded beautifully to the
bigger picture of like that character kind of believing that
he's the good guy. Absolutely, you know, he's the sheriff
in the Western he's come in and he's fixing problems

(02:07:01):
and he's but and then he falls apart. Yeah, and
and and his inability, Like it's such a brittle world view. Yeah,
he is. He is very Once yeah, once he's exposed
to thinking that the world is maybe different, it just
totally breaks him. Yeah. His specific arc I think is

(02:07:23):
extremely interesting. Um, but I don't want to spoil it
because I think it's it's it's too it's too shocking.
Once you get to the final piece of his story,
you're like, oh wow, um, I think that was laid
out in a really beautiful way. But it's it's it's
it's not like shocking away, like oh this this like
doesn't make sense. It's like, oh no, yeah, I can
see that, I can see why he's doing this, but
it's still it's like you kind of slowly watched this

(02:07:44):
guy get broken down piece by piece. Um, you know,
because he starts he's very much like the superhero FBI agent.
He's like, yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna stop these terrorists
or whatever, and then he just like yeah, watching him
progress throughout the story, and you can see like how
pathetic he is. Sometimes there's a there's a great uh,
one of the UK spy cops. Um, I forget his

(02:08:05):
name if we're doing this three years ago and I've
had all these names in my head, but he um. Uh.
So he was assigned and he was he infiltrated this
green group somewhere in the UK for a couple of years,
had this relationship with this girl. Um was participating and facilitating.
The one detail that I loved and try to make

(02:08:26):
sure it was accurate, was all these cops would have
a van or they would have like a big truck
in the UK because they realized that, like in these
smaller groups like being the transportation was like your superpower.
So like if you are someone was like, oh, I'll
drive everyone to the thing, I'll get his all that
because I have this big van. Um. That was the

(02:08:46):
easiest way to just kind of make yourself useful. Um.
But this guy is doing all that. At some point, Um,
they decided to pull him and they pull him out.
He returns to his wife and his normal life back
in London. Um. But he can't go back to his
normal life, and so he starts and he's done all

(02:09:07):
the stuff of disappearing, but he just starts getting up
and driving and maybe he's in the north of England
somewhere just just shows back up and he's like, oh,
I'm back, guys, and they're like, oh, Ship, what happened.
I thought you had to like disappear because people are
after you. And he's like, no, it's all right, ah
and just goes back to living as an activist. UM.
And at some point one of his superiors notices that

(02:09:30):
the mileage on his police paid vehicle is huge and
they're like, why is this guy doing so much mileage
in is because he's driving all the way back uh
and and continuing to live this life and inhabit this
character that he's set up. UM. And at some point
I think he gets found out and it all goes

(02:09:52):
horribly wrong because he no longer has like the fake
idea and stuff that they gave him. But yeah, I
mean that and like that stuff is interesting. But then
he was always important to never be ugly sympathetic when
you see the struggling there. There is certain points where

(02:10:12):
you see the FBI agents struggling because of how like
smug he is. You're like, yes, he's struggling, and you
like get excited when he gets like when he gets
like reprimanded or he you know, people are like mad
at him for various reasons. And it is very interesting
how you like how sympathies get pulled in certain directions,
because like by the end of the game, you definitely
have a much fuller perspective on who this guy is

(02:10:32):
and how it's kind of psyche works because he is
really in a lot of ways like kind of pathetic
as like a person. Um and he like needs to
like hype himself up for himself to like make himself
feel like he's special. Then when that gets broken down,
he just completely collapses. I guess one of the last
things I want to talk about is like throughout all

(02:10:53):
of your games, you have kind of a through line
of like fairy tales. You kind of you bring in
fairy tale concepts into all of these games. Um And,
I like how a lot of your games are very
open ended in some ways. I think that her story
being much more open ended than than telling Lice in
some ways. Um And, I really like that you kind
of you can't like look up, like what is the

(02:11:15):
ending of this game? It's like no, like you have
to piece it together in your own brain like that,
and whatever you think the story is, that's what it
is for you. There's no like definitive ending, especially like
especially for her story. Um and how this combines with
fairy tales. I think it's really interesting way to like
include like mythology into these more modern stories. What's kind
of your pot process behind you know, kind of kind

(02:11:37):
of including mythology and fairy tales into these more like
modern stories of like you know, people interacting with like government,
law enforcement, and then just you know, breaking down their
own psyches under these high tensed situations. Yeah, I mean
I think it. I think it came initially with her
story of ye thinking about that the kind of meta

(02:11:57):
storytelling nous of these things, right, the extent to which
their experiments and like how we tell stories. Um And
but a lot of times, like the myths and the
kind of classic stories that people go to those right
to try and understand the bigger questions or certainly like um,

(02:12:17):
I guess partly came out of Ah, the start of
first story, I had like two youngest kids, and you're
so you're reading them all the classic stories, and you
realize the extent to which these are just encoding our
society's values, right, I had this incredible book that was
that my parents got for me, and I tracked down

(02:12:38):
and made sure we still had when I had my kids.
That was called It was like folk tales of the
people's of the Soviet Republic from like the early eighties,
and it was collected like a lot of people. I
think it was Ukrainian folk tales, and they were amazing
because they were so dark. Like the message of each
of these stories was trust no, the rich will always win.

(02:13:01):
You will end up dead and unhappy, right, And each
story would start with the poor peasant, his brother gets rich,
he asks for help. The brother like is horrible. Like
this is one story where's this brother who's like, oh,
if you want some grain because you're starving, and then
gouge out your own eye and I'll give you some grain.

(02:13:22):
And then it comes back from more grain later and
he's like, guge out your other eye. Now, chop off
your hand. And it's like they're so dark, and I'm like,
but this is reflecting what it was like to live
in that world and grew up and you're preparing people
for the realities. So um, you know. I think that
to me was really interesting. In and her story tells

(02:13:44):
this story that kind of to some extent grows out
of this childhood and then were telling lies. Definitely, it
was part of this idea of of yeah, how Logan's
character David sees the world and lates to his part
in it, and like his utter inability to realize that
he's the bad guy in the story, right, and he

(02:14:05):
thinks he's the good guy. And and that was like,
that was partly the key to breaking his character. And
it was his daughter. So he has this character who's
the six seven year old daughter and that's like, you know,
he lets down and does horrible things to a whole
bunch of people. Um, but the thing he's not going
to be able to get over is knowing that he's

(02:14:27):
laid his daughter down, right, knowing that at some point
she will grow up and be an adult woman who
if she learns about what her father has done, we'll
we'll think less of him and you know, we'll realize
that he's the bad guy in the fairy tale whatever.
So um, that was like just interesting to me to
set him in that moment and have him reading those

(02:14:49):
stories and see see his relationship with his daughter. Um,
And yeah, I think that that Yeah, he end up
just relating those things back to what are the these
kind of base values, and so much of those folk
tales is preparing you for the fact that people are
going to lie to you and trick you and you
know all those kind of aspects. Yeah, a lot of

(02:15:11):
them do deal with, like, you know, failures of trusting
people and you know, getting getting let down and being misled.
A lot a lot of those do kind of follow
on these same same kind of rough templates. UM. Let's see,
is there anything you're working on now that you wanna
that you wanna plug um, and of course you know
people should pick up Telling Lies her story. UM. I

(02:15:32):
have them on Steam. I think they are best suited
to be playing on PC, but you can get them
on console, we can get them on iOS. But in
any anything anything upcoming. Yeah, we're working on currently. This
project is called Immortality, UM, which is very ambitious. Uh.
It will be out next year. It deals with the

(02:15:55):
story of an actress who only ever made three movies
the Ladder Half the twentieth century UM, and then disappeared.
And we have recovered footage from these three movies. UM.
It's been interesting because we're telling lies like I've always
been someone that when I think about the kinds of

(02:16:16):
stories I want to tell, I've always thought that I'm
not a capital P politics person, right, I tend to
be interested in how people relate to each other and
some of the kind of smaller politics. Um And once
I got to telling lies, it was like, oh, actually,
like there is some capital P politics tied to all this,
and so dug into that was like, well, so I

(02:16:38):
want to do right by this, right, So we did
involve speaking to lots of people, did involve bringing in
all the research and everything. Um So, coming away from
telling lies, and as I mean, it was making the
game was insane because it was during Trump Trump happens,
and I remember going into it being like, we're making
this story about the FBI being bad. That's a pretty

(02:17:01):
reasonable endpoint. And then once we hit Trump, you had
all that stuff of like the good FBI agents and
theory or the FBI might be the people that bring
Trump down, and suddenly they it was leaning into the
myth of the FBI and I was looked down it
and just everything getting worse, and it was like, oh,
this is like so intense to be making something and

(02:17:23):
speaking to some of these issues whilst this is all happening,
um so finishing that, I was like, well, okay, for
the next project, we are definitely going away from talking
about real life issues and capital p politics. And then
just accidentally it's become because we're talking about an actress
in the twentieth century and what it means to make

(02:17:46):
movies and ah, digging into that suddenly becomes about a
whole other bunch of systemic issues. So not not managed
to avoid the politics again, but it's I think a
really really interesting protection. I think I think once you
crack that egg open of realizing that politics are kind
of intrinsic to every story we tell, it's hard to hand.

(02:18:09):
It's hard to kind of put that back in the
box because once you realize you can use politics in
a very interesting and complex storytelling way that still doesn't
alienate a lot of audiences, it's like, oh, yeah, this
is just using another way to interact with the world.
I think that was that was one of the things
that was slightly disappointing. I guess we're telling lies was
like we we're working on it. I'm like, we want

(02:18:30):
to make sure we get these things right, because like
these are very important issues, and there are some nuances
and so we you know, we don't want to accidentally
say something that is incorrect or we don't want to
give people the impression that we're you know, yeah, yeah,
yeah wrong. Um. So I was expecting some level of
scrutiny in terms of discussing the games themes and everything.

(02:18:51):
Um and I guess like the video games world is
still not quite ready for that. Like they're quite happy
to talk about the game mechanics and how this thing,
what works since big picture or emotional responses, but no
one's willing to kind of dig deeper. And we had
like as the game was coming out and continues to be,
you have the bigger name developers being like, there's no

(02:19:12):
politics in our video games. As they're like invading to
make a game about you know, you know, being a
black Ops unit taking down communist countries. We're not gonna
about politics. We're gonna yeah that constantly, constantly just saying
it's it's possible, and they'll always say we we both
sides it right, Well, we'll tell both sides and let

(02:19:33):
people make the decision. And something that I was very
adamant was very im porn to me on telling lies
was like, if we're making this game, it is not.
The point of the game is not to give you
a mush of information and have you decide the moral yeah,

(02:19:54):
good or bad? Something like we are going into this
with the assumption that we and the audience or most
of the audience believe that people doing these things are wrong,
and then we're just And then I'm interested in what
does it due to the people, What what is it
like to be in this world? What are the consequences
of ramifications? How does one exist and continue to live

(02:20:16):
a life after having been involved in these things? So,
for me, a political game is it can't be the
political story in any media. It can't be going back
to first principles pretending we're in debate club, because I
just I think that's just that's lies the audience. I
think you can say a political story is one which

(02:20:36):
embraces and acknowledges the reality of the various power struggles
and inequalities that we have and then has something to
say about or has a particular angle it wants to interrogate,
or something that wants to shed light on. But it's
very childish, and I think we're definitely struggling with this
in video games to be like, oh, if it's about politics,

(02:20:56):
then it should be a big question and we should
assume no one and it's like, yeah, this is completely
bullshit and and it kind of it can lead to
some problematic ways, which is why you see a lot
of you know, game footage in actual like terrorist propaganda,
like with like like it was like not sayings and
white supremacist stuff. They use a lot of game footage

(02:21:17):
in their propaganda videos when especially when it's like both
sides of these issues. Yeah, it's a I have I
have a particular interest in the intersection between like politics, extremism,
and gaming because the gaming is very important to our
modern kind of extremist ecosystem um, particularly around like four
Chan and like you know, like mass shooting is all
of these things play into game culture. Not not saying

(02:21:38):
games cause these events to happen, because they don't, but
like the way they interact with these people is actually interesting.
You know. This is very different from like the way
like this Senate is like, oh, games are causing mass
shooting because they're not. Yea, I think it's it's it's
it's it's it's a completely separate thing. It's it's there
is there is a Fox News kind of hysteria around gaming.
But at the same time, like and and really you know,

(02:22:01):
one way I pitched her story when I was telling
people why it was interesting us like this is a
game about listening. I was like, that's cool because you know,
whatever you think about the larger politics of it, or
the question of whether video games themselves are inherently harmful
or anything, like, the fact that's still the stories we
tell are about someone with a gun in their hand
or assort in their hand, and the power dynamics and

(02:22:24):
the story the types of stories and the types of protagonists, like,
it's screwed up. And I think to the same extent
that the fact that, like the Marvel Cinematic Universe is
about a bunch of glorified cops going around saying the
world like, you know, if you continue to reinforce these things, yeahbously,

(02:22:44):
all of the art we make are saying certain things
about the world, and we're reinforcing a certain narrative over
and over again and not really thinking critically about it. Yeah,
that's a problem with making art. I mean, I'm not
trying to come off as being anti gamer. I would
play a lot of games. I really like gaming. I
just think some some companies need to figure out why
why certain games are used in mass shooting manifestoes in

(02:23:08):
certain games aren't um particularly around like politics like this
is particularly particularly talking about like white supremacy and how
certain games kind of playing too certain things. Because even
even a game like Wolf and Stein, which I think
handles this topic very well, still will you know, get
brought up in certain you know, propaganda videos because they
do have cool shots of Nazis walking around, right, That's
the kind of the problem with some of these things. Um.

(02:23:30):
And you know, if they weren't killing if Nazis weren't
killing people as much as wouldn't be as much of
a problem. But because that's still a thing, that's still
a thing that needs to get talked about. Anyway, this
this this took a very sad sad turned towards the
end of anyway. Yeah, I will, I will. I will
just strongly recommend playing her story playing telling lies. I

(02:23:50):
think these games, you know, interrogate our our predispositions about
about kind of police detective were, um, and you just
get to learn a lot. You get to learn a
lot about like people on characters because like a lot
of these games, you know where the setup is like, oh,
solve this crime or mystery, but then by the end
you're solving a very different mystery and you're kind of

(02:24:11):
solving what makes the person tick. And it's very You've
I really like the art that you have in your games.
They've brought me a lot of happiness. So thank you.
Thank you for that, and thank you for talking with
all of us, um about your work. I'm enjoying it.
Thank you, thank you for having me. And uh yeah,
like I say, I was, I was hoping to have

(02:24:32):
hundreds more conversations about what Telling Lies was about and
about these issues when it came out. But it's uh,
you know that, it's I mean, it's hot just general
media landscape now, like you put something out there and
it comes out and people consume it, Yeah, move on,
Like you don't have that. It's bad of like discussion

(02:24:54):
that that. I don't know, it feels like it used
to used to be a thing. Yeah, I think it
definitely did. It used to be a thing. And definitely
your games have had an influence on media in certain ways,
and I know there's been like a few other like
projects that like Netflix is doing that is kind of
taking your concept but not really doing it correctly. Yeah. Yeah, yeah,

(02:25:14):
there's definitely been a lot. Yeah. People always send me them.
They're like, oh, this sounds a lot like story this thing,
and it's like, oh, but it's it's build non linear. Yeah, exactly.
You let people. Yeah, usually it's like watch there are
eight episodes. You can watch them in any order, which
isn't how her story works. No, Yeah, like, yeah, this
is there's a Yeah, there's a whole different thing going on,

(02:25:35):
but no, I mean it's it's interesting times for for
that sort of stuff. But anyway, play these games on
Steam and that that doesn't for today. You can follow
the show on Twitter and Instagram at Happening here, pod
and cool Zone Media. Do you have Do you have
social media that you would like to plug or would
your people if people are on Twitter, that's where I

(02:25:58):
tend to be. Despite it's despite yeah, I know, I
am I am Mr Sambo Twitter M I will say
I I actually I actually do like your Twitter account.
You do? You do post some fun stuff every once
in a while. That's that's kind of a weird contescen
think we think to say of anyway. Bye for Puddy

(02:26:23):
Raffie is the voice of some of the happiest songs
of our generation. Baby So who is the man behind
Baby Bluga? Every human being wants to feel respected. When
we start with, all good things can grow from there.
I'm Chris Garcia, comedian, New Dad and host of Finding Raffie,

(02:26:45):
a new podcast from my Heart Radio and Fatherly Listen
every Tuesday on the I Heart Radio app or wherever
you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Robert sex Reese, host
of The Doctor Sex Reese Show, and every episode I
listened to people about their sex and intimacy issues, and yes,
I despise every minute of it. And she she made

(02:27:06):
mistakes too, I mean, did she kill everyone at her wedding?
But hell is real. We're all trapped here and there's
nothing any of us can do about it. So join me,
won't you? Listen to The Doctor Sex Ratio every Tuesday
on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever
you get your podcast. Here's to the great American settlers.

(02:27:26):
The millions of you have settled for unsatisfying jobs because
they pay the bills, and you just kind of fell
into it. And you know it's like totally fine, just
another few decades or so and then you can enjoy yourself.
Of course, there is something else you could do, if
you've got something to say. You could, I don't know,

(02:27:49):
start up podcast with spreaker from my Heart and unleash
your creative freedom and spend all day researching and talking
about stuff you love and maybe even earn enough money
to one day to own your irritating boss. As you
quit and walk off into the sunset. Hey, I'm no settler,

(02:28:11):
I'm an explorer speaker dot com. That's spr e a
k E R hustle on over today. That's gonna that's
gonna be way too jarring to open an episode where

(02:28:31):
well we already did it, so just keep moving. Yeah
uh huh. Um, the episode is actually going to start
with Garrison saying that's way too jarring to open an
episode with, and the listeners won't know that is much.
That is a much easier opening. Um, alright, so we're
doing I'm gonna be I'm gonna be reading a thing
today and then we're gonna talk about the thing that

(02:28:51):
we're reading. Um and and and who and who are you?
And who is here? Oh yeah, this is a happen here.
This is it could happen here. I'm I'm Garrison. I
am our resident Canadian. Yeah, that's Anderson. That's Anderson the
dog in here. We have we had to hire a
Canadian for a diversity quota. You do not anyway. We

(02:29:16):
have Chris here, Robert Evans as usual, um, and Sophie.
So we're gonna talk about We're gonna talk a little
bit about about Canada today. So in the like descripted
what if scenarios first positive in the original it could
happen here. Um. It detailed what it might be like
to live in the United States during a modern civil conflict.

(02:29:38):
And like one of the stories that we kind of
tell ourselves as a culture is about, you know, crossing
up into the safe haven of Canada whatever stuff breaks
out in the States. Um, whether that be like an
escape from just the hell that's us politics, um, or
you know, going up into the cold northern terrain better
equipped to deal with climate change. Canada is kind of
just viewed as a bast gene of like little of

(02:30:00):
liberal democracy in North America. UM. You know, I've I've
made jokes in the past about using my Canadian passport
to escape up into the forest of Alberta when things
get too dicey here in the States. But this like
weird utopian view of Canada is not just wrong about
Canada's current political state, but also assumes that a Canada
is like immune to the political shifts that the States

(02:30:21):
have gone through the past few years, which is it's
it's very obviously not um so like Canada internationally is,
and specifically in the States, it's it's used as like,
you know, Canada's it's used it's like America's little brother,
but it's you know, it's much more you know, democratic,
it's much more liberal. It's like it's like this kind
of ideal scenario for like what the States could be.

(02:30:46):
And like Canadians have a weird view of the States
as well. Like Canadians, they're both like the like they're
kind of obsessed. Like a lot of Canadians think no
more about US politics than that they know about Canadian politics.
Um but almost in like a way that we watch sports.
It's it's like it's like this thing that we like
watch as entertainment, like like some kind of like sick

(02:31:06):
reality show. That's how I think a lot of Canadians
really view US politics, um, because it's just so wacky
compared to the kind of more like civil parliamentary system
that we have in Canada. US politics just looks very,
very bizarre, and there's always this notion it's like, no
matter how bad things can get in Canada, at least
we're not the States. At least at least we're not

(02:31:28):
at least we're not the US. And that is kind
of a lot of a lot of how a lot
of stuff can get really get can just like surviving
Canada longer, because it's just they view it like, at least,
at least we're not as bad as the other people.
So that's how, you know, it gives them kind of
some kind of sense of security. But in terms of

(02:31:49):
like in terms of Canada as a country, you know,
we we we've said that Canada as a country is
basically just you know, a few mining companies in a
trench coat and the trench coat is healthcare, um. And
that's that's really all they are is as as as
a country. UM. But today we're gonna be talking about
kind of Canada's slide towards farther right wing politics. Um.

(02:32:11):
Both you know, historically and then more recently, because a
lot of what we've seen in the States has happened
kind of in its own weird Canadian way around the
same time. UM. But before we really before we really
get started, I think to be remiss not to mention
how the Canadian government has historically treated Indigenous and First
Nations people UM living on that land. Of course, it's

(02:32:32):
like not only just hundreds of years ago, but a
lot more recently as well. Just in the past year,
there have been thousands and thousands of like hidden graves
found across the provinces at the sites of these residential
schools UM. And the process of looking for these on
Martin graves has like just just started. UM. The Canadian
Historical Association published a letter this past Canada Day Canada

(02:32:53):
Day is like Independence Day but for Canada, UM, saying
that it was abundantly clear that Canada is guilty of
is guilty of genocide. UM. I know there's there's a
few episodes behind the Bastards, UM, and I think even
worse deer that that talk about residential schools UM and
and the genocide of indigenousop Canada. So you can you
can check those out and I wrote this episode to

(02:33:14):
be more focused on Canada's political shifts the past five years.
But since we're talking to be talking about Canadian fascism,
I thought it would be irresponsible to not mention this
upfront as like a thing responsible and very responsible. So
I'm gonna try to take us through aspects of Canadians
of Canada's politics chronologically. Um, you guys can button and

(02:33:34):
kind of ask questions and clarifications about stuff. Um, But
the first thing that we're gonna start with is actually
going to be on the First Nations the side of things,
and that that's kind of how that that's what mostly
Indigenous people are called in Canada's First Nations. Um, even
you know the Indigenous people up in Canada, most amuse
that term. So that's the term I'll be using for
some some of this stuff, just because that's the one
that's used up there. Um. So the the residential School's

(02:33:59):
program is where gonna briefly mentioned a few things about it,
just because of how it kind of relates to some
of the stuff that we're gonna be talking with for
the rest of the episode. Um yeah, I'm gonna I'm
gonna read someone I'm gonna read some words by by
Duncan Campbell Scott. Who was the department, Who was who
was the Deputy Superintendent of Indian Affairs. This was like
a rank in the Canadian government. UM. He served as

(02:34:22):
the Deputy Superintendent from nineteen thirteen to nineteen thirty two. UM.
And he's arguably like the main architect of the residential
schools program. UM he was. He was also good friends
with the first Prime Minister of Canada, John John John McDonald.
So here's here's here's how this guy the the architect

(02:34:43):
of this program. This is this is how he kind
of talked talked about this in letters to both his
like his underlings, and just like openly quote. It is
readily acknowledged that Indian children lose their natural resistance to
illness by habituating so close in the residential schools, and
that they died a much higher rate than in their villages.
But this does not justify a change in the policy

(02:35:03):
of this department, which is geared towards a final solution
for our Indian problem. It is quite within the market
to say that fifty of children who passed through these
schools did not live to benefit from the education and
which they had received. So that's that's just what he
calls it. He says, the final solution to the Indian problem.
It's very very very clear. What what like that. That's

(02:35:25):
just the language he uses. And this was like before
Hitler though, like this was this was attention to these Yeah,
yeah like this this is just like this is the
mindset of all of these same people. This is all
of all of the same thing. Um. Another another another
quote from this dude is I want to get rid
of the Indian problem. I do not think of it
as a matter of fact that the country ought to

(02:35:46):
continually protect a class of people who are able to
stand alone. That's my whole point. Our objective is to
continue until there's not a single Indian in Canada that
has not been absorbed into the into the body politic,
and there's no Indian question and no Indie Department. That
is the whole objective of this bill. The bill referring
to the residential schools program. So that's that's how he

(02:36:08):
talks about these things. Um. There there's other letters that
he's sent that's like telling his um, his like agents,
because he had like agents stationed at at Canadian at
Canadian reserves to like not let Indians do dancing because
both that's you know, that's doing their cultural practice, but
also it will distract them from learning how to do
Western farming. Um. Like they weren't allowed to go to

(02:36:29):
fairs or exhibitions or anything that you like that anything
that has like that is reminiscent of like any kind
of cultural tradition that is not white in European. Um.
So he he is, he is a pretty pretty pretty
bad dude. He probably deserves his own his own thing
that this this specific guy. But you can you can
kind of see like these like fascist ideas and rhetoric

(02:36:51):
are not foreign to Canada. Um. And you know it's
been there since its infancy. Now, Canadian politics is very
different in a lot of ways compared to American politic ticks. Uh.
Canada tries to kind of follow the European model, whereas
America is very much like the rebel state that tries
to play on its play by its own rules. Um.
Kind of The first main difference is that Canada isn't

(02:37:11):
a two party system. Um, it's it's more like a
two party plus the system. Because yeah, there still is
the main liberals and the main Conservatives, but there are
there are other parties that actually can get elected. Um.
And it's it's not it's not like a strictly two
party system the same way the States is. So that
makes things more interesting. Um. And another thing that's really
interesting about like a cultural politics. That's that's different from

(02:37:33):
the States, you know. Besides, you know, Canada obviously has
like a parliament and the prime minister. That's different. But
the Canada view and Canadians view nationalism and patriotism very differently, uh,
compared to to like United States, Um. Citizens patriotism and
in some ways nationalism have always been kind of more

(02:37:54):
of a liberal progressive thing um, you know, in opposition
to the States where it is not really seen as
a liberal progressive thing. Um. It's like, even under conservative leadership,
Canada kind of pride itself as as sort of like
liberal utopia. And that's where a lot of the patriotism
and celebration in Canada comes from. Among its you know,
mostly liberal and more socially progressive citizens. They like celebrate

(02:38:15):
Canada as like this great progressive nation, and that's where
a lot of the patriotism comes from. Is like, oh look,
look how progressive we are. Um. Then the nationalism part
can be a bit more tricky, uh, because you first
need to understand like the English and French divide which
within the country, which I barely understand that to be honest,
I was I was, I was. I was born in

(02:38:36):
the Prairies. That was you know, much more of like
the Protestant English Ilish English settlement. You know, I'm not
from Quebec, but we'll be talking about Quebec a lot
here because it is very important to how nationalism works
in Canada. So the divide between the French and the
English make elections really interesting because the English majority politicians
usually need to court some of the French Canadian population

(02:38:58):
and and people in Quebec in order to get enough
parliamentary seats to have a majority government. Because Canada works
on having a majority within the parliament. Um, you can
have a minority in in in the Parliament like the
Liberals currently have. So even if you know, someone doesn't
win a plurality of votes, that can still be in
control of the government in an in a minority or
usually a majority capacity. We'll get into this kind of

(02:39:20):
stuff later, um. But even though they need to get
seats from Quebec to have you know, a decent control
of Parliament. Quebec kind of likes to act like its
own special country. Um. They even have their own like
federal political party, uh, the block Kebuqua and so like that.
That that's a that's a federal party that operates in
forwarding the interests of Quebec. Sometimes it functions as like

(02:39:44):
a separatist party, but not really anymore. Um. So although
the Blockbuqua is a lot is a lot more secular
and progressive than basically any any other major party outside
of the n d P UM. But despite them being
much more like socially progressive, that also like one of
the biggest nationalist parties UM in Canada. And you know,

(02:40:08):
the far right parties in Canada have had always had
their you know brand of ethno nationalism, but that was
that's that's been much less pronounced than the kind of
like keep non French Canadians out of Quebec and keep
Americans out of Canada type of nationalism that's common with
like liberals UM and specifically you know progressives inside Quebec,

(02:40:28):
which you can't blame them for wanting to keep Americans. No, Yeah,
like good sense. If I could keep Americans out of America,
I would do it. Yeah. But so that kind of sentiment,
you can see how that connect like you know, be
used to foster some not good things though that that
that that specific type of thinking of of like keeping nationals,
like you know, keeping four nationals out of your state. Yeah,

(02:40:51):
it's good to not have Americans there, but you know
that's going to get extended towards other people's unfortunate Yeah,
and and like so even though the nationalism can be
a lot more progressive, that's not to say as no
nationalism does not come up within these sex um, which
is going to bring us to uh when when a
briefly talk about something from the thirties called the called

(02:41:13):
the National Unity Party of the National Unity Party of Canada. Um,
the National Union Party National Unity Party, that is a
weird thing to say. Um was was originally called the
Canadian National Socialist Unity Party. Oh wait, now that remindmate
national socialism. That seems like a term with a little

(02:41:36):
bit of baggage. Remember correctly, yep, it sort of does. Um.
So that this was a party formed in nineteen thirty
four by a little Nazi shot head named Adrian R. Khan. Um.
Now that is if you cannot tell that it's me
trying to say a French name. So he is from Quebec.
This is a lot of Canadian Nazi stuff originates inside

(02:41:58):
Quebec because it already has such nationalist tendencies. Um. So
our cons introduction into nationalism started around the turn of
the century, um amid fears in Quebec that Chinese immigration
would threaten the white French Canadian working class. Um, this
is still a big thing in Canada. Uh. Racism and
nationalism against the Chinese is still a big thing. We

(02:42:20):
will talk about this at the very end of this
of this of of these episodes, because it's that's still
a thing the Conservative Party talks about a lot. Um So. Yeah,
his his internationalism was because of fears of Chinese immigration
in the early nineteen hundreds. Um, the the anti his
so his anti immigrants upbringing, plus the fact that he
attended the Catholic school. Um that there there there was

(02:42:42):
no there was no public schools in Quebec until the
nineteen sixties. All of the schools were either Catholic or Protestant.
Now this is also part of the cultural divide inside Canada,
where usually the English speakers are Protestant and they're usually
further west and the and the Catholics are usually you know,
French Canadians. There's a lot of that inside Quebec. Um.
So he went to a Catholic school of which were

(02:43:04):
at the time very anti Jewish because what was happening
is that the Jewish people in Quebec wanted to make
their own Jewish schools, and the Catholics, like in charge,
didn't want that because then that'd be less people were
inside Catholic schools, and they weren't you know, learning Catholicism.
So there's a lot, a lot of stuff going on
here that is kind of extreme contributing. So he was
you know, already anti immigrant because of the Chinese, and

(02:43:25):
then he got got exposed to anti Semitism inside its
Catholic schools um and that you know, pushed him onto
this specific path. So in Urkhan made a deal with
the head of the Conservative Party R. B. Bennett that
in exchange for fifteen thousand dollars, which is like two
hundred and fifty thou dollars in today's money, our our
con would craft a smear campaign. Um trying to assist

(02:43:45):
the Conservatives in basically smearing the Liberals to gain more
Conservative support inside the province of Quebec, which at the
time was majority liberal leaning. So our Kan got to
work and started prepping like pseudo fascist propaganda for the
Conservatives um and by the nineteen thirty federal election it
absolutely worked um Bennett and the Conservatives one they gained

(02:44:06):
twenty four parliamentary seats in Quebec, which is a massive success.
Like before they did not win any seats in Quebec.
So gaining twenty four seats in for over the course
of just one election, massive win. Um. So after getting
the after getting the Conservatives elected, the Conservative Party dropped
Arkhan because he was, you know, a little hashtag problematic
um uh huh. So after he got dropped by the

(02:44:29):
Conservatives short shortly later, our Khan made contact with the
growing National Socialist Party in Germany um and over the
next few years he just he started to gain more
fascist contacts around the world. He would exchange letters, people
from people like Peteople, people from the German Nazis would
come over and meet with what and come over to
Canada and see what he was doing. He would travel
around meeting other other Nazis around the world. Um, so

(02:44:52):
it's kind of just like just gaining a lot, a
lot more contacts. So then in nineteen thirty four he
formed his own fascist party, which is the Canadian National
Socialist Unity Party, and within that year, so in in
the you know, midnighteen thirties, it merged with other Canadian
nationalist parties that were more based in the west, so
you know, in the prairies like Alberta, Saskatchewan and BC.

(02:45:12):
So he emerged a few other kind of nationalist groups
and started gaining traction, getting thousands and thousands of members.
This actually became an actual thing. You can find footage
of of his rallies and they're just terrifying, just like
you know, just it's it's the same thing whenever you
see like the Nazis, you know, rallying in Britain. You
know it it feels different than watching a Nazi rally
in Germany because you can feel a lot more, you know,

(02:45:33):
if it's it's it's the same feeling, but come but
come home your own countrymen kind of do the same
thing that you associate with the old footage of dead
people is exactly yeah, so he was getting thousand numbers
across Canada. UM, you know, mostly in the provinces of
of Quebec and Alberta. So the two main provinces were

(02:45:54):
to talk about are going to be Quebeca and and
Alberta because that's where a lot of a lot of
the far right stuff get started out. UM. So in
ninety eight, so that's like four years after he started this, Uh,
the Canadian National Socialist Unity Party merged again, this time
with various nationalist group groups and so called swastika clubs.
UM in there we're already inside like Ontario and Quebec,

(02:46:17):
so on the eastern side of Canada. So now he
he united both the Quebec stuff, Eastern Canada and Western Canada.
And then he called that the National Unity Party UM
and our Khan appointed himself the Canadian fural Gosh, yes so,
and I'm going to quote from a time Time magazine
piece from July of nineteen thirty eight, Our Cohn scheduled

(02:46:40):
Canada's first national fascist convention for Kingston, Ontario. The mayor
and city council did not want a fascist convention held
in their city and called the police to prevent it. Defiantly,
Leader Arkhan slipped forty five of his leaders into a
room near police headquarters. It's this old tibe language held
forth unmolested for five and a half hours. Upon emerging,

(02:47:02):
Leader Arcan wired thanks to the mayor for his courtesy
extended and announced the formation of the new National Unity Party.
A flaming torch will be the new party's emblem, Canada
for Canadians, its slogan, and the upraised arm of its
salute for King, Country and Christianity. Moving onto Ontario, leader
Arcan supported by eighty five of his Blue Shirts. Uh

(02:47:25):
he claims there were eighty thousand members at the time,
held a meeting in Nancy Hall that there was attended
by about eight hundred sympathizers. More impressive, however, there were
three anti fascist counter demonstrations held simultaneously. Two outdoor anti
fascist meetings drew four hundred persons until broken up by
police fearing a clash, But at Maple Leaf Gardens the

(02:47:47):
Canadian League of Peace and Democracy attracted ten thousand so
as was the first big fascist rally in Canada. There
was like, you know, ten thousands of these more liberal
people rallying elsewhere and four hundred like anti fascion just
ready to you know, beat up these Nazis, um, but
then the police beat them up. Because history doesn't change.
Times of flat circle, we're still doing the same thing. Now.

(02:48:08):
Do you know who won't rally eight hundred Canadian Nazis
called the Blue Shirts to sell you products? Tell us
promise that, yeah, depending depending what. Because Hello Fresh has
recently been sending there, why do you always pick Hello Fresh?

(02:48:30):
There are so many worse brands that we can't ignore
the fact that they've been increasingly building their militant capacity
for the last seven years. Anyway, here's some ads. You
have too much to read, and we are back talking
about the Canadian Blue Shirts, Um, the Hello Fresh, Hello

(02:48:52):
Shut please continue, Blue Aprons, the Blue Aprons, thanks Chris
that they Christopher saving the bit all right, thank you. Um.
So next year, after his first rally was nineteen thirty nine,
World War two obviously started to ramp up, and the
Canadian government arrested Arkhan for plotting to overthrow the state

(02:49:12):
UM and his National Unity Party was banned from federal elections.
Arkhan was released from prison after the war, but he
continued his political aspirations. UM. He ran for federal election
twice in Quebec, once in nineteen forty nine and once
in nineteen fifty three. Both times he uh, he ran
under his National Unity Party banner despite it being banned
from elections. I don't know how he did that, um,

(02:49:32):
both times, laws are fake. Yeah. Both times he placed
second with over five and a half five and a
half thousand votes, which was about like thirty percent of
of of the vote. Um. Actually, but the second time
he ran as he ran just under a nationalist banner, um,
and he got second as well, but he got like
the vote, so he he did a slight slightly better

(02:49:53):
just running as a nationalist in Quebec, not like the
National Unity thing because that was, you know, more overtly Nazi.
But he kept holding National Uni of the party public
rallies until the mid sixties. His last rally I think
attracted like one thousand supporters, too many. I was hoping
you were able to say like three and there was
probably sad footage, but that's sad in a different way. Yeah.

(02:50:14):
So he finally died in nineteen sixty seven, and with
him also died the National Unity Party. I So I
bring this one up because it's one funked up and
interesting um and too, it's like it's indicative of the
weirdness that can come out of Quebec's nationalist political bent. Uh.

(02:50:35):
We can see that now with a modern fact, you know,
neo fascist Canadian political party that's based out of Quebec,
which we will talk about shortly. Um, but even like
the nationalist tendencies within Quebec's more mainstream progressive population. Like
I'm going to read some of the policy positions of
the Block cabu Qua party. That's that's that, that's the
that's like the Quebec sovereignty you know, party that is

(02:50:58):
still actually very very pot killer in in elections specifically
in Quebec. And just ahead of this, if you're a
French speaker and you're frustrated by Garrison's pronunciations or my
pronunciations of Quebecua that your language isn't real and it's fine,
and you're desended from the French. Yeah, and you're responsible
for this Nazi so unlike unlike English speakers who have

(02:51:22):
been responsible for Spanish. That's my take, okay, anyway, saying
Spanish here here here is the progressive liberal block Qubuqua
policy positions UM Quebec sovereignty you know, up into independence.
But usually it's just you know, them pushing the interests
of Quebec. UM environmentalism, abortion rights, you know, pro abortion rights, UM,

(02:51:44):
l g l g lgbt Q rights, UM, legalization of
assisted suicide, UM, opposition to Canadian participation in the Iraq war,
UMU abolition, abolition of the abolition of the monarchy. All right, Uh,
forcing forcing immigrants to speak French in Quebec lost lost

(02:52:07):
blocking immigration to Quebec. You've also lost me the Quebec
Secularism Law, which bans public workers in positions of authority
from wearing religious symbols primarily targeted at Muslims, and seeks
exemption Quebec's exemption from the requirements of the Multiculturalism Act. Yeah.
I mean, I don't know the Multicultural Act, but I'm

(02:52:29):
it's great. It's it's it's good. So yeah, so you
can kind of see how like they have you know,
all these like you know, pretty good, pretty good progressive
STIGs and then and then they get really anti immigrant, right,
so this is like this is kind of hard to
explain to Americans, how like you can be very like
pro gay, pro you know, abolition of the monarchy, but

(02:52:49):
then also be like no, but we don't want those
brown people in Quebec. Yeah. So yeah, anyway, we're gon
we're gonna move on from Quebec specifically, but don't worry,
we will be back because you're still a problem. But
there there are there are other things too, are other
things to discuss. So after our CON's fascist Canadian movement,
there was a stint of like Canadian skinheads in the seventies,

(02:53:12):
you know, around the same time as the UK and
the US. UM in the seventies, there was an unsuccessful
Nazi party called the Nationalist Party of Canada that spawned
a skinhead gang called Heritage Front. Um. Heritage Front disbanded
around the mid two thousands because the Canadian Feds infiltrated
it and kind of you know cut that down, so
critical support to the Canadian fans. But now we're gonna

(02:53:33):
move on to Unite the right, not not not the
unite right that you're thinking of, the Canadian Unite the
Right movement from the ninety nineties and early two thousands.
That one probably wasn't problematic right there. It has no
lasting problems so because of because of Canada's multi multiparty system,
there's more opportunity for ideologically similar parties to split the vote,

(02:53:56):
you know, of people leaning in a certain direction. Um.
Throughout most of the later half of the twentieth century,
they were multiple conservative right wing parties that were operating
at the same time, which did split the right of
center vote. This is in part what allowed Canada to
rise as like a liberal haven, because for a while
the Conservatives just couldn't get elected because they were splitting
the vote too many ways, leaving the main liberal party

(02:54:17):
to win the vast majority of elections. Um. Obviously this
frustrated right wing politicians and vote and voters than in
the ninety nineties there were there were there were two
main right wing parties. There was the older Progressive Conservative Party.
They're like a classically fiscal conservative party with slightly less
socially conservative beliefs, so you know, I would rather take

(02:54:38):
them compared to the alternatives here. Um. The other major
party was a right of center party called the Reform Party,
which was much more of like a right wing populist
and extremely socially conservative party, more similar to like the
Trump era Republican Party. You know, they they're they're they're
much they're much more right wing, populist, they're way more
socially conservative, kind of what we traditionally think of as like,

(02:54:58):
you know, like a racist Republican that this this this
is their party called called the Reform Party. So, after
after loss after loss throughout the nineties and during the
turn of the century, concertative efforts were being made between
these two parties to unite into one. In nineteen there
was a Unite the Right conference held in Toronto, Ontario,
trying to bring together politicians and delegates from these two

(02:55:20):
main conservative parties. But they also brought in some much
more extreme Christian fascist parties, which there was like four
of at the time. There was a lot of a
lot of Christian fascist parties around this time. Um so
the conference garnered a negative news coverage in part to
due to the inclusion of these far right Christian extremist parties.
And then after the conference, polls were conducted that suggested

(02:55:41):
that many of the progressive conservative supporters would rather vote
liberal than vote for the new kind of merged, more
extreme right wing party. So like a lot of these
a lot of these fiscal conservatives are like no, I'm
not going to vote for all of this weird racism.
I just don't want there to be higher taxes. So
like I'm gonna I'm gonna rather vote for the liberals
then vote for these fucking weirdos, which I mean, yeah,

(02:56:02):
that's that, that's the Conservative I would rather have. UM.
So the conference didn't sit well with the with the
Progressive Conservative Party. UM it's politicians or or the political leaders.
So the merger plans were cut off. They're like, no,
we're not going to do this. You guys are too
weird and racist. We're not doing this. UM. Then in

(02:56:23):
two thousand to no. I think this is important that
this was after nine eleven. I think this is really
the reason why this happened. UM. One of the original
Reform Party founders that the Reform Party is the more
populist one. So one of the original founders named Stephen
Harper took control of the populist Conservative Party and works
to improve the optics of the more extreme sides of

(02:56:43):
his party. I think it's very important this this happened
after nine eleven, and this is how the merger actually worked.
So in two thousand three, merger talks start sort of
up again, and in August of that year, the two
parties announced the merger had been completed. There was a
new United Conservative Party. UM. In the announcement, harper is
quote it as saying, our swords will henceforth be pointed
at the Liberals, not each other, And in December Harper

(02:57:06):
was voted in as the new party leader. The work
did pay off in the two US and six Canadian
federal election. The Conservatives gained a controlling minority government among
the electorate, with the former co founder of the extremist
you know, populist Reform Party, Stephen Harper, becoming the new
Prime Minister of Canada. So this is how he got
from Reform Party to being the you know, the prime

(02:57:28):
minister in throughout through the two thousand's um he was
the Prime Minister of Canada for most of the time
I lived there. That that that's who I think of
when I think of the Prime Minister of Canada's I
think of Stephen Harper. So Harper remained as Prime minister
until the two US fifteen election that saw noted black
face appreciator Justin Trudeau elected under the Liberal Party. So

(02:57:48):
that's good, what a good system we have that that
that man like just your range of his pla say
what you will about the man, very careful. You know
you under no circumstances gonna hand it to him. You

(02:58:08):
do not, in fact have to hand it to him.
Well you have to hand him. Uh the little the
towel that he uses to get the black face off
of his face can go into his work running Canada.
Huh yep, cool country. Didn't find out that like five
of our governors all had black face photos. It was

(02:58:32):
it was. It was a big year for black face.
It really, It's incredible because I can't picture. Like again,
I grew up very right wing and definitely had some
said some uncomfortable things in my time. I don't think
there was ever a point at which I would have
been like, yeah, this seems like a good right it's
what the fuck? Like? Yeah? Pretty? What is the joke there?

(02:58:57):
It's pretty? It's pretty bad? Uh? Justin Trudeau? Uh yeah
he is. He is the one all of the wine
Mom's thirst over. Yeah yeah. Anyway. Um. Beyond making it

(02:59:20):
easier to vote in right of center candidates, what what
the Canadian Unite the Right accomplished was pushing the conservative
establishment much further to the right than what the previously
popular progressive Conservatives had established, while maintaining the respectability and
civility the progressive Conservatives had cultivated. We are now going
to skip ahead to two thousand seventeen. UM. In January seventeen,

(02:59:42):
soon after the US President Donald Trump put into place
the travel band from from you know, seven Muslim majority countries,
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau delivered a message via Twitter to
those fleeing persecution, terror and war. Canadians will welcome you,
regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength. Hashtag welcome
to Canada. Though, so Trudeau was like, if the US

(03:00:03):
is gonna be racist, we're gonna we're gonna let them in.
UM for this, uh, for this next part, I'm going
to quote from the New York Times. UM. Just hours
after watching the television report suggesting Canada would accept immigrants
that were shunned by Trump, the twenty eight year old
political science student packed his glock, handgun and rifle and

(03:00:23):
trudged through the snow covered streets of Quebec to a
nearby Islamic cultural center. As fifty three men were finishing
evening prayers. He unloaded forty eight rounds. Six people were killed,
several of them with shots to the head, and nineteen
others were injured. One was paralyzed for life. In the
month before his rampage, the shooter tralled the Internet eight
hundred and nineteen times for posts related to Mr Trump,

(03:00:47):
reading his Twitter feed daily and homing in on the
American president's travel ban on several Muslim majority countries. He
kept a cache of guns underneath his bed at his
parents house, and among his friends was just his twin brother.
The shooter told investigators that he wished he had killed
more people and he wanted to protect his family from
Islamic terrorists. Experts on radicalization say that in Quebec, the

(03:01:07):
French speaking province surrounded by an English speaking majority, the
anti immigrant far right offers fertile, fertile, imperilous ground for
psychologically unstable youths seeking a sense of identity and a scapegoat.
The head of the Canadian based Center of Prevention of
Radicalization Leading to Violence that they said that the Quebec
Mosque shooter was in part of it was part of
a growing number of educated, middle class to white youths

(03:01:30):
in Quebec drawn to far right ideas fueled by the
election of Mr Trump and fanned by fears of immigration
that threatens Quebec's identity. When the Anti Radicalization Center was
started in two thousand and fifteen, they dealt with sixteen
cases of youths in the province that we're getting radicalized
by the far right. Last year, which was like sixteen, Uh.
This center had one hundred and fifty four such cases.

(03:01:52):
So this is this is kind of the the arc
of things. Really Trump's Trump's election did respire did did
for a lot of this growing like oh, these political
beliefs are acceptable now, right, Like this is something that
is like we are we are we are allowed to
do this and that that did echo in Canada and
across a lot of the a lot of a lot

(03:02:14):
of other countries. Um. What what one of one of
the victims of the of the Quebec Uh massacre his
his father said that he come to Canada from Algeria
in the escape terrorism um and he said that like
Quebec did not create the monster the shooter, but the
Islamophobia that is inherent inside Quebec gave him like the motive.

(03:02:36):
So this is really does relate to connate to like
the political situation of Canada. And it's very it's it's
it's not a coincidence that the majority of these types
of attacks are inside either Quebec, Toronto or um. You know,
if you're if you're a white, if you're if you're
in Alberta. It's that it's more tied to like other
other like conservative values, but like a lot of it

(03:02:56):
is around Quebec for a lot of these like shootings
and all these acts of terrorist them. Um. There was
like the there was the in celle guy who ran
over tons of people in in Toronto with his car. Um,
same same kind of thing of like of getting more
more used to these kind of having these far right
ideas be more allowed, um and then thinking them as
more of like a normalized thing. So that so the

(03:03:20):
Quebec mosque shooting, uh kind of well couple a lot
of people in Canada's being like, oh, we're not immune
to this. This is like an actual thing that we
have to deal with. Two. Um. And the next few
months after Trade's January announcement, border crossings did see an
increase in Canada formally accepted more immigrants and refugees and

(03:03:42):
and no not and there was like the term in
Canada is like an irregular spike of border crossings. Um.
The fact the way Canadian media reported this, I think
it's very irresponsible, the way they tried to like frame
this as like after this announcement, we're getting so many
irregular crossings that only few old this type of like
this type of anti immigrant sentiment. Um. It was. It

(03:04:04):
was not really great. A lot of the old articles
I pulled up for this for like, had really had
really disgusting framing, especially you know, viewing it now. So
in March, the Canadian Parliament passed a motion that condemns
Islamophobia and request that the government recognized the need to
quell the public of climate of fear and hate specifically

(03:04:25):
around Muslims and immigrants. Um. The motion was non binding,
So it doesn't it doesn't mean anything. It's just the
government saying something nice. Um. But it's still it's it's
still sparked tons of outrage. Um. You know. It called
on the government to condemn Islamophobia and all forms of
systemic racism and discrimination. Uh. The the margin was passed

(03:04:47):
by like it was passed by a margin of like
two hundred two h two over ninety so people a
lot of a lot of the Conservatives in Parliament didn't
didn't like this, but it it's it's garnered so much
online backlash. There were there were petitions and nationwide protests
condemning this bill as an attack on free speech um

(03:05:08):
and uh. The the person who introduced the bill, um
uh in an MP named um Akra Khalid, received death
threats um on through like their email and like they
had like their private private information leaked. And it turned
in this very very big kind of one of the
first things where it had like these like national protests
in Canada that you know, similar to how we had

(03:05:29):
like the free speech thing around to two and seventeen.
This was like the Canadian version of that and how
this kind of started. UM. Then in December, Urdeau signed
into the United Nations Global Migration Pact. There's another non
binding incentive designed to provide understanding among nations about how
to deal with the global immigration crisis. Again, all these
things are just people talking um but it made people

(03:05:50):
very very mad because if you're talking about it, that
means it actually is real and it's actually gonna affect you,
or it's just ignoring that these problems exist. So really,
after Trump's election, after the Quebec, after after the Quebec
Mosque shooting, than we have all these bills. This kind
of ignited a in person rallying possibility and in person
protests that Canada hadn't really seen before for this type

(03:06:13):
of like anti immigration sentiments. Um, and we'll we'll talk
more about these protests after after we have a little
little bit of an ad break. You know, who doesn't
get protested except for that one time when they illegally
overthrew the government of Ecuador. Uh, have to be more
the the That's right, Garrison, our sponsors only one time

(03:06:37):
did they cause mass protests as a result of overthrowing
a sovereign government. That's pretty good, Garrison, Pretty good. Are
you trying to do like a Banana republic thing? What
are you? What are you doing? I'm just saying most
podcasts three to four governments overthrown by their sponsors, all right,

(03:07:00):
could happen here? Just the one baby, Hello, welcome to
Why Canada isn't a liberal utopia and actually has a
lot of the same systemic problems that every other Western
country does, and it's not immune to fascist infiltration and
co option so as so, I know, we we've talked
a lot abou Quebec and stuff, which is uh great

(03:07:23):
because yeah, it is a problem. But this exists in
the western provinces as well. Saskatchewan, Alberta, BC have a
lot of these growing kind of things. But they're not
French Canadians doing this. They're more like you know what
we in America would you know recognize as like rule conservatives. UM.
So around all of this, you know, increased discussion around
immigration in two seventeen UM, around the same time people

(03:07:45):
in Western Canada have We're facing a bit of an
economic recession. They had you know, significant job loss around
this time UM. And projects that traditionally brought work to
the area, like pipelines were you know, there was discussion
of them getting stalled and people you know moving more
towards renewable energy. This kind of increasing of the political
tensions between the Eastern you know, liberal majority Canada and
the western more rule Canada. Um. Quoting an article from

(03:08:08):
the CBC, Uh, Trudeau just keeps giving away all of
our money to immigrants, said Samantha two boy and is
a that is a French name. I'm not even attempted
that one. Samantha Frenchie. Anyway, this mother of five, she
attained a January fifth rally with a Webster, her husband,
and two of their children. It was her first protest

(03:08:30):
for any cause we're stuck paying for all this money
that he wants to give away to everybody, but Canadians.
My kids are growing up, and my grandkids and all
of their kids are going to be poor and stuck
in a hole that they're never going to get out of.
This is this is you know, very common type of thing,
like oh, we're getting taxed and taking all of our
money and giving giving away to immigrants. This happened after this,
after the Syrian refugee crisis, when Canada is sort of

(03:08:52):
accepting a lot of Syrian immigrants. That's that's around the
time that I left Canada. Um. But I totally remember people,
you know, having very similar sentiments of like, why are
we you know, paying for all of these refugees, you know,
and and that that that's that's the thing that happens
in the States too. Yeah. Um. So, the economic tensions

(03:09:12):
developing in Western Canada, combined with the increase in anti
immigration sentiments among conservatives, were in part spurred by the
Trump presidency led to the Canadian yellow Vest movement. UM.
This is totally separate from the French protest movement UM.
The Canadian version just stole like the working class branding,
just used it for their proto fascist crusade UM. So

(03:09:34):
the Canadian yellow Vests were a a group of connected
protest movements over the course of nineteen that had a
lot of like in personalities but also a lot of
online mobilization. It's kind of since died out, but it
was a major force in pushing right wing extremism in
Canada and having it be accessible to like regular people,

(03:09:57):
right It's it's not It's not like the Proud Boys
at all, where it's like you know specific you know,
bad people doing this thing. It was like appealing to like,
you know, the oil workers, appealing to like the moms.
It was like it was it was. It was primarily
used Facebook as a means of passing off this type
of information and making it seem you know acceptable. Um.

(03:10:18):
The Canadian Lovests, quoting an article from Vice UM, Canadian Yelvest,
which had over a hundred thousand members on their Facebook
as of May, carries the greatest potential for radicalization leading
to violence in Canada right now, according to the executive
director of the Canadian Anti Hate Network uh. The group's
description says it says it was created to protest the
carbon tax and build that pipeline and stand against the

(03:10:41):
treason of our country's politicians who have the audacity to
sell our country's sovereignty over to the globalist u N
and their tyrannical policies. But concerns over Canadian oil sector
appeared to be a very little factor in the discussion
that goes on inside these groups. Instead, members are obsessing
over with the defending you know, Western civilization from Islam,
bashing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and spreading whatever you know,

(03:11:04):
far right conspiracy theory is trending at the time, and
I cannot overstate the amount that these people hate Trudeau.
But it's it's not for like reasons because he wore
black face. Like they find the most bizarre ways to
hate this man um A lot of these people think
that Justin Trudeau is the illegitimate son of Fidel Castro.
This is a this is you look similar. This is

(03:11:27):
a very a very popular conspiracy theory in Canada. It
is like the way that Trudeau is treated by conservatives
is baffling because like I hate Justin Trudeau, but I
think I hate him for like reasonable reasons, Like he
made a lot bunch of promises around you know, environment
stuff that he didn't follow through on. He doesn't do
he doesn't do anything he is. He does a lot

(03:11:48):
of black face. It's like there's a lot of reasons
to hate Justin Trudeau, but not because he's the illegitimate
son of Fidel Castro leading us to like leading trying
to sneak Canada into with the socialist you end, like
that's not that's not what he's doing. Like, yeah, he
was the illegitimate son of Fidel Castro. There's a couple
of those in the United States. One of his daughters

(03:12:09):
is now like a right wing radio personality, and that
makes so much sense. He you know, he's Castro. He
did a lot of fucking Like who who would care?
It's not your your fault, who your dad is. It's
just like this is it's it's like it's like a weaker,
like funnier version of Birtherism. Yeah, like it is. It

(03:12:30):
makes it It is like the Canadian version of that like,
it's very weird. He's like Justin Trudeau is very cringe e.
He lies about all of his promises. Um, he talks
about game, he does a lot of virtue signaling, he
does a lot of black face. There's are all really
good reasons to have a lot of black face. UM, yeah,
a lot of black face. But the way the ways

(03:12:51):
that they come up with trying to make him seem
like a bad dude just baffling. UM, very very bizarre.
So UM in an interview with somebody from the Yellows
Exposed Anti Fascist Research Team, which was a very good
Twitter account around it's it's it's inactive now, but this
this was a very good account, a very good account
that did really really solid research into the into the
Ellis movement. UM. In an interview, they were asked what

(03:13:13):
type of impact they think the elbsts could have in
Canada and this was this was their response. The image
of the threat is no longer the skinhead, blooded, blood,
blood and honor type. We're dealing with average people who
don't understand the impact of the rhetoric. They're calling for
the mass death of an entire religion, or they're celebrating
them or they're celebrating the violence against that religion, or
they're celebrating violence against government officials. They are just one

(03:13:35):
step away from outright fascism, but they can't see that,
and they refuse to see that, which I think it's
very is a very good UM summary of like how
the yellow vests were a popular movement specifically on Facebook. Um.
Another part of it was the idea of like Western separatism. Um. Like,
you know, the people in Western Canada feel ignored, They

(03:13:57):
feel you know, put upon, They feel oppressed not just
for feeling not not just for being Westerners, but they
honestly feel oppressed because they're white. They feel like, oh,
we're focusing on you know, only gonna give money to
the brown people. That's the kind of thing that they
feel like in the West. Um, they're like, well, you know,
my right to free speech was taken away because of
the because of the non binding bill, and refugees can

(03:14:19):
just walk across the border and they make more money
than I do. So they they have they have all
these all these ideas that are not actually based in reality,
but they can believe them. Um. And they you know,
find these new sources that are just echo chambers that
reinforce this belief to the point where they they become
radicalize themselves. UM. It's very it's a very very common thing,
especially around twenties nineteen. I was tracking a lot of

(03:14:40):
these Facebook groups around twenty nine as well, just in
my spare time, UM, because it's just interesting to watch
them interact. UM. I'm gonna give like, you know, like
a brief recap of like a typical yell yellow best
protest around like Edmonton UM, based a bit off of
of of of a few CBC articles, So you know,
testers would gather around in front of UM like the

(03:15:04):
legislative building, holding signs, wearing bright yellow vests. UM. And
they would do this like basically every every weekend for
you know, months and months and months on end. UM.
Some protesters when we stand at the podium showing conspiracy
theories about how powerful the Jewish families controlling the world
are UM, as one as one dude did at the
Alberta Legislature UM on like January. UM. Some may come

(03:15:29):
sporting red make Alberta great again. Hats uh. This was
very very popular, very popular. UM. Others may proud the sidelines,
stress like they belong to a biker gang. Um. Instead
of only instead of Hell's Angels patches, they have patries
that say Wolves of Odin and Canadian Infidels. Uh. I'm
gonna give you one, guests, what type of ideology the

(03:15:51):
Wolves of Odin have? Yeah, the the communists, Yeah, no,
they're not season Um. But most of the protesters voices
are not away from like, are not from the fringes.
Most of them just have jobs, um, you know, you
know in like high rises, or they drive it for Uber,
or their teachers or pipe fitters or real estate agents.

(03:16:12):
And although their message is like muddled by all of
these other like you know, much more overtly extremist kind
of talking points, they all have one thing in common
that they feel like they're getting ignored and being left
behind by the liberals in the east. UM. This is
echoed by one of the person they got interviewed at
these rallies was named Lynn Smith, who was a former
oil and gas worker who now works in the school system. UM.

(03:16:33):
They were at a a yellow vest rally on in
January that was like the fourth first fourth protester she attended. UM.
She said, they're just giving away our country. We have
no rights anymore. They're taking them away. No more Lord's prayer.
But they're putting prayer prayer rooms in schools for Muslims. Um,
marry Christmas. You're you're You're not. You're not allowed to
say anymore. It's supposed to be happy holidays. They're changing,

(03:16:55):
they're changing our country, and we've got to stand up
and say something about it, because because this is our
count tree, I was born here, my parents are born here.
It's wrong. So you know, I'm sure people in the
States are familiar with this type of rhetoric. Um, but
the the increased nature of in Canada was surprising to
a lot of Canadians and like president of a lot
of like liberal Canadians, because they're like, but you're you're

(03:17:17):
in Canada. Why are you doing the States thing? Why?
Why are you doing the thing that they do in
the States. Why are you doing it here? Um? But
you know, the same reason you know people do in
the States is because they feel ignored by politicians, you know,
saying that's that's why this happens in Saskatchewan and Alberta
NBC way more than it happens in like Ontario, right,
is because you know, the more farther away you are from,
you know, the big cities, the less your interests are

(03:17:39):
cared for by a lot of politicians. So the ones
that speak to you are these like extremists who are
trying to pray on these actual you know, financial insecurities.
Um so A lot some of the protesters say that
they're not like a post immigration but but most of
the focus of the Edmonton Yellow Best rallies has been
has been about who can come into the country and
how they're allowed to get here. Um one one I

(03:18:00):
named Brett Webster, the father of five for works like
contruction construction industry, says they're overwhelming our resources. We can't
properly let these people and make sure it's safe for
them to come in and make sure that they're skilled
and assimilate into our country and know our ways and
our values. So most of the extremest stuff in Canada
outside of Quebec does come from does come specifically from Alberta.

(03:18:20):
You know, the big big cities in Alberta are our
Calgary and Edmonton. This happens also in a lot of
the more rural areas that you know, mostly used to
run on like oil drilling. UM After losing an election
to the more social democratic NDP party. Uh, the two
provincial Conservative parties in Alberta had their own little mini
Unite the Right and merged together in to US in seventeen,

(03:18:43):
leading to their success in the polls in ten. So
then the Conservatives have since then, they've done a whole
bunch of stuff in Alberta, like cutting down their health
care to actually a lot of a lot of the
Conservative voters don't like, but like they voted for because
that was the platform. You just were being scared of
brown people, so you voted for the Conservatives. Now, but
now your healthcare is cut. So that's that's how politics works. Um.

(03:19:05):
So that that's kind of a brief summary of the
Yellow US movement and how it how it gained a
lot of popularity. Um. They they would do rallies around
like polling centers. They would they would they would they
would attack people. They would have you know, violent rallies
where a lot of like older, older men who were
in the Yellows movement would be you know, pretty violent
towards you know, and anyone in their area during a protest. Um.

(03:19:27):
But they kind of kind of around COVID, the Yellow
Vess kind of sput it out. A lot of the
people in these Facebook groups got you know, moved into
other conspiracy theory groups um, and the LLOS movement kind
of lost its train. UM. So that's where we're kind
of going to end for today, is with the kind
of the LLOSS kind of fizzling out, and then the

(03:19:47):
next part we'll talk about what's happening from like en
and the election that year took like kind of the
present fascist rumblings um inside different sectors of Canadian politics.
So yeah, that is that's my that's my very very
brief right up of of right wing populism and extremism
in Canada. Yep, it's fun. It's not fun. It's it's

(03:20:13):
it's it's it's upsetting um, and it's you know, it's
a lot of the same problems we have here of
you know, politicians really ignoring people in certain parts of
the country which provide provide very fertile recruiting ground for
a lot of extremists. I think it's going to all
end well. That is our that is our that is
our official policy that everything is going to turn out great. Yeah,

(03:20:38):
it seems fine. I mean there's like there is actual
ways of preventing this are happening, right, It's not it's
it's not a hopeless thing. We can actually do it
if we want to. Just people with power to do it,
don't don't don't like doing it. Yeah, well and good
that is the message of the pod, Sophie cool and good.
So yep, that's that's Canadian fascism one cool. Um. I

(03:21:02):
would recommend if people want to learn more about the
Canadian uh yellow vests, check out the yellow Best Exposed
Twitter account. Uh. There's also like there's also articles about them.
They were a very a very good anti fascist research team. Um. Yeah,
I would just recommend if you want to learn more
about this the specific movement, all of their work on
it has been great. Um. So yeah, shout out, shout

(03:21:24):
out to Yellow Vests Exposed. That's the pod. Alright, Well
go get your Tim Hortons and tomorrow, Yeah, I go
get your Tim Horton's and you're I don't know, maple
syrup and go find a moose Fozon Media or happen
here pot on, the twits and the inst against Bye

(03:21:48):
bye everybody, a goodbye A A adoption of teams from
Foster Care, the topic not enough people know about, and
we're here to change that. I'm April Dinuity, host of
the new podcast Navigating Adoption, presented by adopt Us Kids.

(03:22:08):
Each episode brings you compelling, real life adoption stories told
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Visit adopt us Kids dot org, slash podcast, or subscribe
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(03:22:30):
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(03:22:52):
the I Heart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts,
and make sure you leave a review. Hi. Hello, Nope,
that's not it. That's it. Garrison episode has begun it
cannot be unbegun. A let's let's roll right into it.

(03:23:15):
Let's talk so well, welcome this says it could happen here.
Um today the today, the here is is Canada, that
is the that is where it could happen. Um. This
is gonna be part two of my little deep dive
into Canadian fascism and the far right rumblings in general
in the Great White North. And oh god, that is
a bad, bad nickname for Canada, the Great White North,

(03:23:39):
not inaccurate. Did not really think that went through? Oopsie doodle.
Maybe the Yeah, there's a good chance anyway. Um. The
last episode we left off with the Canadian yellow vests, um,
and you know of frightening increase in Islamophobia and anti
immigration rhetoric around late seventeen and eighteen after Trump selection.

(03:24:03):
And we started the last episode by talking about one
of Canada's first fascist political parties. And we're gonna start
part two but talking about Canada's new neo fascist political
party that also got started inside the province of Quebec
just like the National Unity Party did. Uh. This one
is called the People's Party of Canada. Um. Before we

(03:24:26):
get into the People's Party and first to give some
background on the founder of the party, Maxine Bernier. Um.
And that's how that's that's how I'm gonna say his name. Um,
No one at me, it's good enough. Um. Bernair was
born in Quebec in nineteen sixty three and is the
son of a conservative talk radio host turned politician. Isn't
that funny? Isn't that funny? How that keeps happening? Um? Yeah,

(03:24:52):
So Bernair entered politics into US in six um he
ran as the Conservative Party candidate for the House of
Commons in the same writing district that his father had
represented in the eighties and nineties. Stephen Harper, leader of
the new United Conservative Party, initially wanted Maxine's father to
re enter politics, but Bernair Senior was less keen on

(03:25:12):
that idea, and instead told Harper that he that perhaps
his son should run in his place. Radio and nepotism,
radio and nepotism, yep, and politicians and yeah it is
it is starting great. Um. So at this point Bernair
was more like a free market libertarian, libertarian type guy,

(03:25:33):
you know, still with some of the same like conservative
immigration stuff that's that's common in Quebec, but he was
more of just like a libertarian dude. Bernair easily won
the writing writings of what we call districts here in
the States, ranking at sixty seven percent of the popular vote,
which was the largest majority for a Conservative politician outside
of the province of Alberta. So he he did, he

(03:25:54):
did very well. Bernair, who had a background in business,
quickly rose through the ranks of the Conservative Party. Within
the same year he was appointed to be a cabinet
minister in the Harper government. Um and he worked as
a as an industry minister from to us in six
to US and seven before being promoted to a foreign
affairs minister, and then in two thousand eleven he was
appointed of. He was appointed as Minister of the State.

(03:26:18):
So in in spring of sixteen, after the fifth after
the federal election, uh Brena Air put in his bid
to be the new elected Conservative Party leader. UM So,
I'm gonna briefly explain how Canadian elections work. You You
don't vote for a prime minister. You vote for a
party within your specific district if you if if your

(03:26:40):
party wins, they get a seat in parliament. Whoever has
the most seats in parliament, that's whose prime minister gets elected,
so whoever is whoever is the leader of the party,
they will be prime minister if that party gets the
most seats. So in tow us in sixteen, burn Air
put in his bid to be the new Conservative Party leader.
Uh he got remarkably close to securing the spot as

(03:27:03):
leader of the Conservatives. In the final round of voting,
he received forty nine point zero five percent of the vote,
losing to Saskatchewan Conservative politician Andrew Shear, who got fifty
point nine percent, so less less than two percent difference.
He was so close to the comic leader of the
Conservative Party, like ridiculous. So yeah, after his extremely slight loss,

(03:27:26):
he continued to work in Shear's Conservative Party for a
few years. Um, if you remember from the last episode,
Around this time was when these lamophobia and anti immigration
talking points were starting to gain a new popularity, and
Berner followed along with this trend. He would tweet out
about the dangers of extreme multiculturalism and he had like
an increasingly racist and divisive rhetoric and that kind of

(03:27:49):
caused some drama within the Conservative establishment. So in August
of eighteen, around the same time, the yellow vest movement
in Canada was starting up. Berner resigned from the Conservative
Party with the stated intention of forming a new federal
populist far right political party. Um here here, here's a
segment from his resignation speech and he he does talk

(03:28:12):
in a very thick French accent. I'm not going to
do that. Um yeah, you're you're channel the energy. Um
that was that was just direct audio. That was instead

(03:28:34):
of leading as a principal Conservative and defending the interests
of Canada and Canadians. Andrew sheer is following the Trudeau Liberals.
I was told that internal polling is showing that the
Liberals response to Trump is popular and that in six months,
if the polls change, the party's stand may change to
the same thing happened in reaction to my tweets on
diversity and multiculturalism. This is another crucial debate for the

(03:28:56):
future of our country. Do we want to emphasize or
ethnic and religious dif princes or exploit them to buy
votes as the Liberals are doing, or emphasize what unites
us and the values that can guarantee social cohesion. Just
like other Western societies grappling with this issue. A large
number of Canadians and certainly the vast majority of Conservatives
are worried that we are heading in the wrong direction.

(03:29:16):
But it's not to raise such questions. So yeah, and
I think the honestly one of the main reasons why
Brenaire hasn't been super successful UM is because of his
accent like he is. It's harder for Protestant white Canadians
to support him because he talks with a French Canadian accent. Um.

(03:29:40):
If if if he talked in like good English, I
think he would have he would have won Conservative leadership
UM and his Populist party would be way more popular
than than than it is now. So critical support to
other French racism is preventing the racist from being racist enough. Yes,
you love love to see it. You certainly see it.

(03:30:05):
We do, we do see it. So Brenner faced some
pushback from his conservative colleagues, including Stephen Harper U, of
trying to divide the right and split the right of
center vote. UM and some of the less socially conservative
members of the main Conservative Party decried Berner's departure and
subsequent New People's Party as just a plain attempt to

(03:30:25):
pander to xenophobia and racist right wingers. But Berner went
right to work and ran enough candidates under his new
party to secure a spot in the federal election debates
that were like that, you know how we watch presidential debates,
same thing, but these have you know, multiple candidates because
there are multiple parties, the same thing. But basically he
was able to get in the televised debates. Um, the PPC,

(03:30:47):
which is the People's Party of Canada. I'm just gonna
say the PPC now because it sounds funny. Um. They
started going viral on the internet after pictures of massive
billboards with Brenner's face and big text that said say
no to massimmigration. This this this guy very is this
guy very Mimi around like these big, these big PPC billboards. Um,

(03:31:08):
I'm gonna I'm gonna read a bit from a write
up and it's going down by some local um Montreal
anti fascists. There have been suggestions that the PPC spokesperson
and architect of its public relations strategy, Martin Mass, has
been key to its embrace of the far right. Mass
was owner of the publisher of the Capucua Libre, which
is an online libertarian news outlet that shut down in

(03:31:29):
six and that pp but that PPC's cozy relationship with
racists primarily due to the influence of this one person
is highly doubtful. However, that's the PPC is positioning itself
as the option of choice for those who find the
Conservative Party insufficiently right wing. Racism is clearly just one
of the most effective tools for such a strategy, witnessing

(03:31:50):
PPC billboards and tweets against mass immigration, also tweets about
being against Antifa and Bernard's diet tribe about radical Islam
being the biggest threat to freedom and peace and security
in the world today, and how he complains about other
parties are are complacent and pandering to Islamists, and promising
that the PPC will make no compromise with the tolitarian ideology.

(03:32:11):
A number of media articles have revealed the far right
connections to people active in the PPC as organizers and
members whose signatures were used for the PPC to gain
official party status. Um for instance, a Derek Horne, the
PPC volunteer and a security agent who accompanied Bernair at
a variety of events and media interviews. He has been
revealed to be a founding member of the neo fascist

(03:32:33):
Canadian Nationalist Party, which we we briefly mentioned in the
last episode. UM. Sean Walker is an American immigrant and
organizer with the PPC in St. Catharine's UM, as well
as one of the people who as signed on for
PPC to be an official party. He was revealed to
be the president of the National Alliance US based in
the not the organization seven. He was also convicted. He

(03:32:55):
was also convicted of hate crimes at the time for
violence stands People of Color UM. Following these latian's Walker
was expelled from the PPC and Bernard claimed that he'd
slipped through the party's betting process. However, was also revealed
that Bernar follows him on Twitter UM. Others who signed
up for the for the PPC to be an official
party include Janice Balch, a founding member of the Patriotic

(03:33:16):
Europeans Against the Islamification of Accent and also Justin L. Smith,
leader of this of the Sudbury chapter of the Soldiers
of Odin. So a whole bunch of whole bunch of
fascist people are working work working for the party UM
and unsurprisingly a number of a number of candidates have
made headlines. But there as there you know social media

(03:33:36):
posts from the past and present have surfaced featuring like racism, islamaphobia,
and a lot of spreading of far right conspiracy theories.
You know that was just kind of common. There's too many,
honestly to mention. Um. And it's it's not just that
the PPC has a few bad apples in it. It's
like the whole the whole party is rife with these
kind of one of these kind of sentiments. Um. One

(03:33:57):
gauge of this and the sign and a sign that
like this is intentional is the as looking at the
candidates who have left the party or have been kicked out.
When it became clear that there would be no condemnation
of the far right from the upper ranks, there was
like and and justin like twenty nineteen alone, there was
like three candidates who were who left or were either
kicked out um because they you know, had objections to

(03:34:20):
the racism rampant within the party. They were like complaining about, hey,
these guys stem of racist and then they were kicked
out of the party or or or or they left.
So yeah, that's that's a not a good problem to have. UM.
So in in uh, finishing up this, this little quote
here um. Indeed, a cursory accursory look at the Facebook

(03:34:42):
pages of PPC candidates reveals what's been really noteworthy is
how selective the news stories about racist tweets or Facebook
posts have been. Almost every PPC candidate in Quebec has
recently in repeatedly shared articles from climate denialist sources, including
many with a conspiratorial bent. A candidate for Path and
You even produced his own YouTube expose revealing how George

(03:35:03):
Sorrows it's behind an international global conspiracy theory to crash
economies and make money spending a panic about climate change.
Secondary to climate denial, there's a lot of fears around
free speech and mass immigration, which are both recurring themes
in the PPC candidates, and roughly one in five have
recently shared news articles from what we would deem a
national populist or full right sources, including less manchetz dot com,

(03:35:26):
which is the website of the French language of the
French language translator of the Christ Church Um Manifesto UM,
and that that the guy who had the website is
also involved with organizing in the Montreal in the Montreal
chapter of the Yellow Bests. UM. Yeah. So he he
both translated the manifesto and he's also running the Montreal

(03:35:48):
yellowst movement. So that's fun. Um, it's not fun, it's bad, um,
andre Pytree pipe pood Wow. So you remember, So I
didn't learn French in Canada because I was in a
weird Christian private school. Otherwise I could be a lot
better at this job. But anyway, there's there's a there's

(03:36:09):
a there's a there's just like a far right YouTube channel.
But this guy called uh Studio who a lot of
his stuff was shared. Um, and there's a more like
eccentric and sporadic mix of of of other news sources
including Unite the Right attendee Faith Goldie who also ran
from Mayor of Toronto and got third place, UM, Quebec
based que and On figure Alexus trudell Um, and the

(03:36:31):
al right YouTuber black Pigeon Speaks. Of course, the main
yellow Vest page was shared a lot, and also sources
from the highly racist The Voice of Europe. So yeah,
a lot of a lot of a lot of not
not great news sources being being shared by the PBC. UM.
So that is the gist of the People's Party as

(03:36:54):
of twenty nineteen. UM overall, their performance in the election
was kind of a flop. Uh. Bernair lost his own
seat in Quebec. No CTC candidates got into office and
the party only managed to get one. Uh. The party
only managed to get one point six percent of the
total national popular vote. So that's good. It only got

(03:37:16):
one point six percent of all of the votes in Canada.
So we're gonna take a break from the People's Party
for now and we will circle back towards it um
at the end. But after after an ad break, we
will we will talk about the what the main Conservative
Party was up to during this time and uh and
a little bit after the election. So yep, and now

(03:37:40):
the cats just blocking the whole thing. All right, we're back.
The cat is in the bathroom. I moved my cats.
They were blocking the camera. Hello, um, People's Party not
doing great in the first election. That's fun. Let's see
what the regular Conservatives are up to. I'm sure it
was things that are just good and cool. If I
know anything about conservative it's that they're not not hashtag problematic. Yeah.

(03:38:07):
Just let's just got okay, So I'll just be sad
over here and the audience can know that I'm sad
the whole time you're talking. I would rather as episode
me not such a not such a downer, but it's
it's hard to make it. That is kind of an upper.
I'll make a bargain with the audience that if they listen,
I will I will do my French accent at least
one more time. We'll see doing the French accent. This

(03:38:28):
is the happiest I have seen Robert all day. He
does look very tired. You didn't say earlier, Garrison, and
this was very funny that you'd be better at your
job if you could speak French. But given what we
are here, it cools oon media. You would actually be
much worse at your job. Um And in fact, if

(03:38:49):
you if you were to speak French, I would I
would fire you immediate. It's actually requirement that you can't
pronounce things to certainly not French. There's other languages you're
allowed to know how to pronounce, but not French. No
oblo francie. So let's pick up right after Maxine Bernair

(03:39:13):
lost the Conservative leadership to Andrew Sheer in Um. Sheer
won the leadership on a on on like a platform
of classical financial conservatism and a slightly more socially moderate
platform UM. When Sheer got into office, though, one of
the things he faced criticism for, even among the Conservative
caucus was his association with a little media with was

(03:39:36):
his association with a little media outlet called Rebel Media.
Yeah so most most listeners may not know what rebel
media is, but you've certainly seen their stuff or felt
their effect. Yeah, it's like the rough draft of bright
Bart And also Canadian and Canadian, Yes so Canadian? Uh

(03:39:58):
so Rebel mead as a Canadian far right neo fascist
propaganda outlet's turn that has a lot of a lot
of bright bardy vibes. Umbel Media, Yeah, bright Bartesque. Rebel
Media hosts and contributors have included a white nationalist and
white genocide proponent Laurence Southern UM and Proud Boy founder

(03:40:19):
Gavin McGinnis UM. McGinnis produced a quote satirical video for
Rebel called ten Things I Hate about the Jews. Yeah,
yeah so, and and it's and it is worth noting
that both Southern and McGinnis are Canadian. Um. They're actually
a lot of alter right figures that are Canadian. Of course,

(03:40:42):
we have we have Lauren Southern Gavin McGinnis. Um, we
have Stephen Crowder, uh, Stefan malin you and of course
Jordan Peterson. All of those people are are Canadian and
most of the most of them still live in Canada. Yes,
he's still alive. Made he made it. And same tweet
the other day. God, he made the most tweet. That

(03:41:05):
tweet made it all worthwhile. Baby, he got everyone to
go check his Twitter feed. It is amazing. You can
you can hear his brain shorting out when you read
that tweet, Like you need to find the tweet it is.
It is just it is the most beautiful piece of
poetry of everywhere. It's like somebody taught a stroke out

(03:41:26):
of type. It makes no sense. God, it's so good. Um,
I'm going to quote an article by a Global News
dot c a on Andrew Sheer and Rebel media. Quote.
Despite a string of controversies faced by Canadian right wing
media outlet of the Rebel, including allegations of downplaying the
Holocaust movie minted, Conservative Party leader Andrew Shear has so

(03:41:49):
far continued to make himself available to the company that
other prominent conservative politicians have criticized for its controversial reporting
and activism. Shears campaign organization also has a direct nection
to The Rebel. His campaign manager, Hamish Marshall, is listed
as a director of the company's federal incorporation records, which
show its most recent annual gathering meeting was in February

(03:42:09):
this year. Following the leadership election in Toronto on Saturday,
Sheer granted one on one interviews with a handful of
major media organizations, including a face to face interview with
The Rebels Ottawa correspondent Brian Lily. Prior to his convention interview.
Sheer appeared on The Rebel in February in a studio
interview with host Faith Goldie on her show on the Hunt.

(03:42:30):
At the end of the discussion, Goldie asked Sheer if
if he would agree to go on a duck hunting
trip with her after after he wins the leadership on
Canada Day, which he agreed to. UM. We briefly mentioned
Faith Goldie earlier in her connection to the People's Party
UM and her brief campaign for the Toronto mayor, but
here's some more background on her UM and her coverage

(03:42:51):
and her coverage of the Unite the Right rally for
Rebel media. Quoting from Winnipeg Free Press. In the course
of her dispatches, Goldie argued the events in the Charlottesville
were evidence of a rising white racial consciousness that was
going to change the political landscape in America. She also
wanted to she's actually not wrong there. That was. Yeah,

(03:43:12):
she's not wrong, but I think she's incorrect. She's on
the other side of the island. And whether this is
a good or bad thing. Yeah. She went to great
lengths to laud the twenty point Meta political Manifesto composed
by White National's leader Richard Spencer, a document that includes
calls to organize U states along ethnic and racial divides

(03:43:32):
and celebrates the superiority of white America faith. Goldie describes
Spencer's manifesto as robust and well thought out. Goldie was
fired by Rebel in mid August seventeen, but not due
to her participation in Unite the Right. She was fired
for appearing on a Daily Stormer podcast to discussing the right.

(03:43:54):
So yeah, yeah, that's that's fine, So yeah, fine, nice
to have her. Interviewing Conservative of leader Andrew Sheer asked
for his reaction to Unite the Right and Rebel media
um after what happened in Charlotte'sville in seventeen. Sheer, who
had previously been interviewed by Rebel multiple times UH, finally
disavowed the outlets, saying, look, I believe there's a fine

(03:44:16):
line between covering events and giving a platform to groups
who are promoting a violent, disgusting point of view. I
won't be granting interviews going forward. So that's nice that
it took someone dying in Charlotte's Ville to realize that
you probably shouldn't talk to the fascist media source. Um So,
in the aftermath of Unite the Right, the mainstream conservatives
kind of had to tread carefully around social issues because

(03:44:38):
it's like, oh, yeah, they're there's still not seas we
probably shouldn't be pandering to them. Um But as more
time of distance let the air cool, some conservatives went
back to the same old rhetoric around the twenty nineteen election. UM.
For instance, in his twenty nineteen election campaign, UH Tom Chemick,
the parliamentary representative of one of the parliamentary representatives for

(03:44:59):
Calgary l Berta, wrote out and spread flyers with the
all claps with the all caps header of crisis at
the Border with text treating their constituent. The Independent Auditor
General of Canada has published a scathing report confirming that
the Ottawa Liberals have failed to safely and responsibly manage
Canada's borders. Since Justin Trudeau you responsibly tweeted out that

(03:45:19):
Canada would open Sportis to anyone seeking entry, the number
of people illegally crossing the boarder into Canada from the
United States has surged past one thousand a month, with
almost twenty thou people illegally enteringen alone, and while speaking
to voters of Connect repeatedly insisted that all the problems
of people illegally crossing the Canadian border isn't a symptom
of a failure of systems to respond to a growing crisis,

(03:45:41):
but merely a failure for border patrol to to assert
control over people. UM quotes and flyer courtesy of About
This Tom chemic Guy. A courtesy of a. Dan Olson
of Folding Ideas. He's a great Canadian documentarian who released
a magnificent piece on Q and on and conspiracy theories
last year on his YouTube channel of Folding Ideas. Overall,

(03:46:03):
I really really like Dan. He makes very good stuff.
UM So thank thank you to him for sending me
those those those flyers. Um. Anyway, during the election, sheer
led the Conservatives to gain a total of twenty six
seats in the party inside Parliament, going from nive up
to one hundred and twenty one. But they did finish

(03:46:25):
thirty six seats behind the Liberals despite beating the Liberals
and the popular vote by one three percent. So that
was a thirty four point four percent for Conservatives and
thirty three point one percent of the popular vote for Liberals.
The margin was just over like two hundred and forty
thousand votes. Um. The Liberals lost twenty seats in the
election and the NDP lost fifteen seats. And this was

(03:46:45):
the first time since uh since nineteen seventy nine that
a party won the most seats without also winning the
popular vote. Um. What what pushed the Conservatives over on
the popular vote was due to you know, extremely high
conservative turnout in uh in in in various in various writings.
So basically more Conservatives voted instant runnings and they usually

(03:47:06):
do so even if the Liberals still win the district,
there was still more conservative votes to be counted. Um.
And also they basically swept the Prairie provinces of Alberta
and Saskatchewan, where they won seventy of the vote in
sixties five percent of the vote, respectively. But their victories
in those states and their higher turnout did not convert
into many seats because the less population dense areas have

(03:47:28):
fewer federal writings and fewer available seats UM, and the
Liberals had to rely heavily for seats in Ontario, the
you know, the most populous province that include cities like Toronto, UM,
and you know other a few other big cities. So
you know, Canada doesn't have the most democratic system like
so the same way you know in the States were

(03:47:48):
familiar with, you know, people losing popular votes um but
still getting elected president and stuff. You know, in Canada's
it's it's it's a little bit different because of how
you vote for parties in your own little district. UM.
But you know, it's still not perfect, right because like
it is. It it does feel weird for the leader
of the leader of the country to not have his
part do not have also won the popular vote because

(03:48:08):
of how you know, districts work out and how higher
turn out in some areas doesn't mean that it's going
to have more seats. Um. You know. But the other
side of things here is that like Canada also doesn't
have ranked choice, so like, still the majority of people
voted for left of center candidates if you include you know,
the Green Party, the n DP, and the Liberals. So
even the Liberals lost the popular vote, there's still like

(03:48:29):
a majority left of center voting. So if they if
they had ranked choice, maybe the results would have been different.
So Canada's system, it definitely is, I'm perfect for how
they do elections. Um. I would I would prefer ranked choice,
as you know, basically basically I would prefer that for
like every country if they're gonna have elections. Um. So yeah,
just kind of explaining why they can lose the popular

(03:48:50):
vote but still you know, still win a majority controlling government. Um.
So after the election, Sheer announced he was resigning as
head of the Conservatives in December twenty nineteen. Uh. This
was after it was revealed that he had used party
funds for his children's own private schooling. So good for him. Um,
A new bid for Conservative leadership went into effect. We're

(03:49:10):
gonna mainly focus on two candidates here. Uh. There was
an erin O'Toole and Derek Solan Um. O'tool fancies himself
as another kind of like classic financial conservative and a
social moderate. He feels more like the old progressive conservative
candidates from back before the two of us in three
Unite the Right merger. Um we got some like John
McCain vibes here, um, but Derek solan is more similar

(03:49:33):
to the farther right parts of the U s IS
current Republican Party, like anti abortion, anti LGBT, racist tweets, etcetera. Um.
But as a whole, Solon's extremism was rejected by the
Canadian Conservatives. Um he got only he got like only fourth.
He got fourth placed with fifteen percent of the vote
during the first round of voting, UM and ultimately o'tool

(03:49:55):
one leadership after three rounds of votes. UM and o'tool
now has the has the new challenge of trying to
appeal to the Canadian conservatives more moderate wing, as well
as the more Trumpian wing that's developed the past few years.
He's been relatively successful in crafting like a boring, polite
Canadian version of Trump's nationalism, with slogans like Canada First

(03:50:18):
and take Canada Back. Um, you know, despite supporting trade
deals outsourcing Canadian jobs to cheaper overseas markets, because they
never actually mean what they say. UM and the and
As the Liberals have grown more aware of Canada's bloody
history and have like toned down the red and white
maple leaf patriotism, the Conservative Party under o'tool has seized

(03:50:38):
on this opportunity to make Canadian patriotism more of a
right leaning staple, just like patriotism is, you know, it's
more of like a right wing thing in the States.
So basically, after we were like, oh yeah, residential schools
were bad, Canada's kind of sucked up, liberals are like, Okay,
we maybe shouldn't be so we shouldn't be waving our
maple leaf flags everywhere. Maybe we're not a perfect country.
The Conservatives like, no, you have be proud to be Canadian.

(03:51:01):
So they've kind of taken patriotism to be their new thing. Well,
previously it was much more of like a liberal thing.
The Islamophobia and overt religious bigotry under a tool has
been slightly trimmed down. UM and climate change has at
least been mentioned as existing UM, but there has also
been increased discussion on trying to hack down Canada's healthcare
and privatize more aspects of it. Which, yeah, good job, guys,

(03:51:23):
take away the only good part of Canada. Um like Uh.
The province of Alberta under Jason Kenny has done this
to a disastrous effect, um, raising the cost of medical
care for lower class people, many of whom voted Conservative. UM.
I have family in Alberta and just the past five
years the changes to the healthcare system there has been horrible. UM,

(03:51:44):
it's not it's not great. So basically what what what
old Tool wants is he he wants he wants to
just privatize more elements of it. He has a specific
term he uses like. He wants like a. He wants
to like split the FED like the like the taxpayer
healthcare and privatize health care into two sections that you
can choos which one to join in. Anyway, it's silly.
Um O'Toole did take a wee little stance to distance

(03:52:07):
himself from the more extreme wings of his party when
he decided to remove MP Derek Solan from the caucus.
Oh Tool announced that Solan will not be allowed to
run as a candidate for the for the Conservative Party
in the next election either, saying racism is a disease
of the soul, repugnance to our core values. It has
no place in our country and has no place in
the Conservative Party of Canada. I won't tolerate it. Um.

(03:52:28):
Also last year, O'Toole refused to say whether he thinks
systemic racism exists. UM. But the decision to remove Soland
was made after it was revealed that he accepted the
donation from the Canadian Nazi Paul from during uh during
Soland's bid for a Conservative leadership back in the nineties
of From was a figurehead of the Canadian far right movement,

(03:52:50):
appearing at Heritage Front rallies and also caught on video
at a party celebrating Hitler's birthday, which he lost his
high school teaching job over. Sol. Look, it's just polite
to celebrate a guy's birthday, you know, whether or not
he's Hitler, under no circumstances. Do you got us? This

(03:53:13):
is a hot tike um. So there has been a
bit of the There has been a bit of a
rift in the Conservative Party over how much Trumpian rhetoric
should be allowed in the Canadian Conservative Party. UM. And
this kind of rift has definitely increased after January six. UM.
The problem for Conservative politicians is that to win elections

(03:53:34):
they need to appeal to the largest swath of voters
UM and that includes more socially conservative and increasingly far
right rule folks. But if they go too far, they'll
lose the moderates to the Liberal Party. So you have
to it's like this delicate balance but to kind of
give you like an overview of what the current state
of the Conservative of like votership is UM for and
tent of the Conservative Party of Canada members. So you know,

(03:53:56):
people signed up to vote in the party. You know,
regular people UM four in ten would say that they
would have voted for Trump. For intents say that they
think Democrats told the presential election, and for intens say
that the Conservative and four intent believe that the January
six riot was staged or was done by the Democrats,
are done by Antiva. So that's kind of the state

(03:54:19):
of the Conservative Party in Canada for like the for
the voters. So you know, politicians have to kind of
in order to win, they need they need still still
still need to appeal to those people, but they don't
want to do that thing. Usually like they usually don't
like usually there the like a big talking point is
like rejecting the divisive politics of the of of the

(03:54:40):
of the United States. Like that's a big thing people
say in Canada. Is that like they don't want it
to become like, you know, like a fighting match, because
like the other main difference between Canada's elections in American's
elections is like America is like always an election season,
right like every you know, even after each election, it's
like you feel like campaigns start right up again. Um,
Canada's campaigns only run like a few months before the election, Like,

(03:55:02):
like it is not like those things you guys do
objectively better than us, and a lot of the world does.
It's not just Canada. The idea that like, oh, elections
are terrible, we should spend a little time. It's like
to like two or three months of campaigning. That's it,
Like it's not it's not like a two year, four
year thing. No, that is a thing that we should.
Absolutely the election should be about eleven minutes from from

(03:55:24):
the start of the campaign to the vote. Everybody gets
a minute to explain their their politics and then we
vote and then we throw them into the sea. Yeah,
so trying to trying to craft marketing to the divided
right wing. It's been interesting to watch. You know, there's
like videos about Tool walking through you know, downtowns with
Pride flags in the background and you know, featuring visible

(03:55:47):
like minority Canadians intermingling. But then you also have a
tool like Ralely against cancel culture feeling suggestions that the
liberal government's pandemic response is part of a socialist great
reset and pulling out the dog whistle on like China
and the coronavirus, you know, as often as you can.
UM tools in the past also downplayed Canadians Residential Schools
program UM and described the efforts of activists pushing to

(03:56:10):
removal of statues of the of the Residentary of School
Architects as stupid. UM. So, I I do think O'tool
prefers a conservative party, resistant too far right branding, but
he knows he needs to appeal to the voters in
order to win elections. So it's it's it's it's just
it's the thing that's not great, but it's interesting to watch. UM.
In August one, Justin Trudeau noted black face appreciator UH

(03:56:34):
called a snap election in an effort to gain more
parliamentary seats in hopes of getting a majority Liberal government,
something a prime minister should not be allowed to do,
by the way, like a priva minister should not be
able to decide when to do elections. That is, like
should totally not be a thing. Like what, no, you
shouldn't do that, but anyway. Um. As snap election ramped up,

(03:56:57):
the Conservative Party under a tool, made some extremely questionable
choices for their marketings and their slogans. Um, what does
the phrase secure the future bring to mind anything? Yeah?
So that became the new tagline for the entire Conservative
Party under o'tool. Right. Okay, sure, we got, we got,

(03:57:18):
we got, we got Secure the Future, billboards, we got,
we got, we got websites, Conservative dot c a slash
secure the Future. We got mailer's magazine covers all emblazoned
with secure the future or secure our future. Um, and
you know what will secure our future? Garrison the Chevron
ads that keep popping up that we keep securing our future. Yeah, great,

(03:57:42):
you're welcome. It's a great time. Chevron appreciators for everyone. Ah,
we're back and just appreciating Chevron, just like Justin Trudeau
appreciate like Justin Trudeau. Yeah, so secure the future great
slogan and not a good slogan. Bad. Um. I'm going
to read a bit from a mailer that went out

(03:58:04):
to Conservative Party members after a Tool one leadership quote.
I firmly believe Canada has everything. It has everything it
takes to recover from COVID nineteen and enjoy a prosperous
future if we have a government that knows how to
secure the future. If the truth, if the Trudeau Liberals
stay in power, they'll continue spending taxpayer money at pandemic
era levels long before, long after the virus is behind us.

(03:58:26):
The result, all the things we love about Canada will
be in serious jeopardy, Our debt will become out of control,
and they'll never be able to get back the Canada
you and I grew up in the kind of Canada
our children and grandchildren deserve so uh. Later on in
the page, oh, Tool says we need to stand up
to the Chinese Communist Party and hold Beijing accountable for
sabotaging our economy and taking jobs from Canadian workers. Um. And.

(03:58:49):
On August sixteen, the Canadian Conservative Party Twitter account tweeted
out and I quote, Canada's recovery program will secure the
future for you, your children, and your and your grandchildren.
So that's fun. Also, also, guess how guess guess how
many words is in that last sentence. It's fourteen of them. Yeah, yeah,

(03:59:10):
we're going back to calling Canada Clanada again. It's like
a dog whistle, but except for you know, a dog whistle,
only dogs can hear it, except everyone. It's just a whistle.
It's just it's just a regular whistle. Yeah, it's it's
it's that he just tweeted it tweet. Yeah. So as anyway,
um as O'Toole was getting all secure the future piled um.

(03:59:32):
Canada's actual far right populist party, the People's Party, was
gaining much more popularity amid the pandemic and the anti mask,
anti lockdown, anti VAXX protests. The COVID nineteen pandemic was
a gift to the far right in general, as it
allowed the injection and proliferation of conspiracy theories to accelerate
at levels almost never before seen and provided fair recruiting

(03:59:53):
ground to gain new followers. The PPC latched onto this
and was extremely successful. They were you know, they sponsored protests.
They did a whole b of campaigns that are around
like anti mask stuff, anti vaccine, you know, all all
of it. Um. So the PPC was able to be
not just a safe harper for anti immigration, white nationalists
and neo Nazis and other far right groups, but also
now more mainstream anti lockdown, anti vaccine, anti government protesters

(04:00:15):
as well as you know, gun rights activists and some
general rule workers feeling left behind from even the Conservative Party.
So the PPC has changed from a niche white nationalist
party to a full blown far right populist force. What
Berner and the and the PPC have done so effectively
since the pandemic is to use the broad concerns around
COVID and freedom and the more you know, mainstream concerns

(04:00:36):
about economic anxieties, job loss, lots of businesses, immigration and
changing culture and managed and managed to rule all of
these things up into one tight package, which is really
appealing to a lot of Canadians who are very anxious
about the state of their country, especially amid the COVID
nineteen pandemic. So the results of the September snap election,
which was you know, last month, we're basically the same

(04:00:58):
as the twenty nine election, except the PPC went from
one point six percent of the vote to five percent
of the vote, a big, big change, uh. They That
means they were ranking above the Green Party and nearly
tying the block kebu Qua. So they made like, I know,
like one percent of five percent doesn't seem like tons,
but like this is a really big jump for a

(04:01:19):
brand new party, um, especially especially if they're ahead of
the Green Party and tying the Block Party. That is
like a notable shift um. The University of Ghulaf Professor
of of Political Science, Tamra Small said that said this
after the results of the last snap election quote, I
think the only leader who's a static about last night's
results is Bernair. I don't think they're going anywhere. I

(04:01:41):
think it seems that he's taken the populism and attached
to far right politics, the idea that Canada was immune
to this sort of far right populism, the idea that
Canada was going to be free from the populism that
we saw in Europe, like what Nigel Farage is in
the UK. But I think lots of people are wondering
if Bernara is just gonna say I'm not here to
form an actual government. I'm just here to challenge the
system and use that as a way of gaining massive support. Um.

(04:02:05):
After us CTV News emailed the PPC for comment for
their post election story, uh, the party spokesperson sent back
a one line email response, I don't respond to requests
from leftists. Activists masquerading as journalists get lost, So that's fun.
Also in late September, Bernard's Twitter account was temporarily suspended

(04:02:25):
for encouraging his supporters to attack journalists. Yeah. Just not like,
I'm okay with criticizing journalist and stuff, because most journalists
are like not great. But when you're using your political
Twitter account to just like tell people to just go
attack the press, usually it's a bad sign of of
like a political party. Usually it's just like, yeah, political

(04:02:45):
parties when they do that usually leads to bad things. Um.
We are going to talk about one kind of wrapping
up here. We'anna talking about one Ontario People's Party candidate
named Mario Greco, who was a another another high school
teacher UM and still proclaimed game developer UM of a
few years ago. I I see Chriss Wincent because like

(04:03:06):
you know, this can't lead to good tis the gamers
it can't be good. So A few years ago, Greco
made a video game called Happy Culture Shootout UM. Quoting
an article from Press Progress dot c A Happy Culture
Shootout is a Space Invaders style game that allows players
to control spaceship that shoots laser beams at caricatures of

(04:03:27):
various identity groups. Quote. This game is about an alien
order to invade Earth and transport all humans to happy Land,
Greco says on his personal website, which includes other games
that he authored, like Die Mare, which is about a young,
misunderstood hero who sees to liberate post war Germany. UM
Boy in a in a sist in a since tell
did video obtained by Press Progress. The People's Party Canada

(04:03:50):
delivered a presentation to university students several years ago, offering
his post mortem on the game. Um Reco expressed surprise
that his students and faculty reacted negatively to the game,
with one calling it the most racist game I've ever played.
Greco says his game is not racist in the slightest,
noting that he made fun of his own Italian heritage.

(04:04:10):
He also claimed that some students thought his gay Pride
parade level was hilarious. My friends and I love people
of all cultures, and we also love humor of all
types that includes harmless racist jokes. Greco said in the video.
The game was intended to make a joke about how
ridiculous cultural stereotypes are, so we can laugh about it
together and move on with our lives. UM. During the presentation,

(04:04:31):
the People's Party candidate offered a interesting side note about
the games Israel level. According according to Greco, a faculty
member at the university strongly recommended that he removed Jewish
stereotypes from the game. He was like, no, get rid
of it immediately. Don't have any religious content whatsoever. I
know that subject is very, very touchy. So yeah, this

(04:04:51):
is just a game where you race shoot to minority people. UM. Anyway.
In twenty six and Greco posted a photo on Facebook
of an el stration of Pepe the Frog, which he
said was drawn by one of his students in in
the white board of his York Region high school. UM.
Peppe had a little speech bubble that said free Kakistan

(04:05:13):
great yea so now Nazis so Currently, Greco was spending
his time tweeting about critical race theory and trying to
get into office under the People's Party banner. UM. In
his Twitter bio, he calls himself an egalitarian, libertarian nationalist
and he still also teaches computer science at Ontario Higher

(04:05:34):
call themselves fascists. I know it's it's not fun. These
people are all all for the worst most scum. UM.
And one one more thing before we sign off. UM.
Last month, right before the September election, I was forwarded
some pictures of some People's Party of Canada posters and

(04:05:55):
flyers put up linking to their campaign website that someone
came across UM around town, not not Portland's, like somewhere
in Canada. UM. Under the PPC logo there was you know,
pictures of people's faces and big black text that said
it's okay to be white, right bad. So that's the

(04:06:18):
liberal utopia of Canada, everybody. UM. And basically, like the
reason why I want to put these episodes together is because,
like we we lots of like, you know, we make
a lot of jokes about, you know, escaping to Canada
as the States gets too fascist, and I just want
to like say, like I'm not saying Canada's get at
the same rate, but Canada is not immune to the
same thing, like it's it's it's, it's it's you can't

(04:06:39):
you can't run away from authoritarianism by moving, yeah to
a country with no history of authoritarianism, like I don't know, Germany,
uh huh. Yeah. And I think the everything is important
with with Canada particularly is that like Canada is like
affected by American political trends. And you see this absolutely
like like one of one of the things that I
remember looking now when I was when I was looking

(04:07:01):
into sort of uh if you look at the history
of like anti Asian riots for example, So there's a
huge wave and night No. Seven that goes like it
goes all the way up the West Coast, a lot
of them, and it ends in Toronto. Yeah, a lot
of you know. Yeah, and you see you see that
like and you see that like today to where it's like, yeah,
the Toronto I think has the highest rate of anti
Asian attacks like in North America. That's not pretty impressive

(04:07:24):
considering like the absolute ship show going on in like
New York, in l A and Seattle, and it's like, no,
Toronto's worse. No, It's it's real bad. There's I talk
a lot about how the far right's getting a lot,
a lot more, a lot stronger of an influence in Alberta,
and it is spreading into other eastern eastern provinces, not
just inside Quebec. You know, there was the insult attack

(04:07:46):
in Toronto a few years ago that killed like, I
think like a dozen people. Of course, there was the
Quebec mosque shooting. There's been a lot of these kind
of things popping off, and you know, there's there's even
more starting in like British Columbia as well, which is
which has a decent far right kind of influence, at
least on the eastern side of BC, um away from
like Victoria and from Vancouver. UM. So, yeah, I just

(04:08:08):
wanted to like place together and be like, hey, you know,
it's it's worth looking at these countries that we usually
view as you know, generally doing better and be like no, like,
it's the same thing is happening there, and it's all
it's all part of the same overarching slide right word
that we've seen in both in the UK we were
even seeing it now in Germany. We're seeing it, you know,
in the obviously the States under Trump, and in Canada,

(04:08:30):
even though the liberals have won the past few elections.
It's still scooting right word. So yeah, I just wanted
to put this thing together. If you want to keep
up to date on Canadian stuff, you can check out
the Canadian Antihit network, which does work tracking extremism in Canada.
And yeah, that is ah, that is what I put together, Sparrison. Yeah,

(04:08:51):
you're welcoming, You're welcome. Well, that's the episode that's gonna
do it for us here, and it could happen here today,
come back tomorrow or you know when ever, and we'll
talk about another part of the world. Maybe I don't
know Portugal. Fuck it, I don't have stuff pulled up
for parture life. You have to me by tomorrow. No,

(04:09:11):
that's what we're doing now. Follow us on Twitter, on
Instagram and it could happen here. Pot Nicols on media
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heat death of the Universe. It could happen here is

(04:09:31):
a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from
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find sources for it could happen here. Updated monthly at
cool zone media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
On April four, Dr Martin Luther King was shot and

(04:09:53):
killed in Memphis. A petty criminal named James Earl Ray
was arrested. Case closed right. James Sylvy was upon for
the official story. Some of the evidence, as far as
I was concerned, did not match the circumstances. This is
the MLK Tapes. The first episodes are available now. Listen

(04:10:15):
on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts. I'm Jake Halbern, host of deep Cover.
Our new season is about a lawyer who helped the
mob run Chicago. He bribed judges and even helped a
hit man walk free until one day when he started
talking with the FBI and promised that he could take

(04:10:37):
the mob down. I've spent the past year trying to
figure out why he flipped and what he was really after.
Listen to deep Cover on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Make sure
to check out Drink Champs, your number one music podcast
on the Black Effect podcast network host n O r

(04:10:57):
E and d J E f N sat down with
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But when I went and did the Donda thing, he
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(04:11:18):
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