It Could Happen Here Weekly 98

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
of the week that just happened is here in one
convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
there's got to be nothing new here for you. But
you can make your own decisions.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Welcomes it could happen here.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
I am Andrew of Future Channal Andreism, and I'm here with.

Speaker 4 (00:33):
Oh wait without the Q. Oh no, yeah, it's ties
me and Mia Long. I'm also here at apparently missing
cues instantly.

Speaker 5 (00:42):
I don't know.

Speaker 4 (00:43):
It is barbarically early for me, So.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
Yay, b barically What time is it?

Speaker 4 (00:50):
Ten o'clock?

Speaker 2 (00:52):
Well, come on, come on, come on, come on.

Speaker 4 (00:56):
Look, it would have been fine if it wasn't up
till three am last night dealing with a session of
minor crises.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
Damn, that's unfortunate.

Speaker 4 (01:05):
Yeah, it's all right.

Speaker 3 (01:06):
Otherwise, if it wasn't a crisis, I would have like
flexed my early bird supremacy.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
But you know.

Speaker 3 (01:14):
I have enough since like seven sixth day or something
like that. It'so a whole job now, but I just
didn't do a lng of this one. And yeah, so
today I wanted to shed light on some really interesting history.
I think of the anarchist movement in Egypt. I've read
in this book called Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial

(01:37):
and Post Colonial World, and there's a section by a
guy named Anthony Gorman that I found really interested in
I just had to share.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
It's really specific.

Speaker 3 (01:47):
To the anarchist Egypt anarchist history of like the late
nineteenth and early twentieth century, And honest I find that
whole period to be very interesting, actually because I am
a dreaded Paradox Games fan and I enjoy my little

(02:08):
you know, like you three, you know, like that that
period in history. Honestly, any period of history prior to
World War Two I find interesting. Everything World War two
is just like a complete boat to me, and then
everything past World War two.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
Is like cool.

Speaker 3 (02:24):
But it seemed like the World War two period itself
not my thing, you know, Like tell me about the Phoenicians,
talking about the Phrygians, talking about the Carthaginians, But I
don't really care about the axis, and which tank was
the superior tank and.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
All those different things.

Speaker 3 (02:46):
A lot of these couldn't got history buffs into not
to a personal one cereal of course, whatever you know
floats your boat. But for me, I really like that
pre WORL War II sort of stuff and Victorian eras
one particularly interesting point in history, and a lot of
things will.

Speaker 2 (03:05):
Happen in that time.

Speaker 3 (03:07):
Industrial revolution was shaken up around the world, Colonization was
going on, and the effects of that, but you know,
reverberate for centuries to.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
Come, and.

Speaker 3 (03:20):
The true successor to the Roman Empire, in my opinion,
the Ottoman Empire was kind of going through a series
of crises, and Egypt, which was under the Ottoman Empire
and then Brook free of the Ottoa Empire, had its
own stuff going on. So I don't want to get

(03:42):
too much into that whole mess, but I want to
give some context because you know, this isn't this is
a history episode. It might be a two part history
episode in fact, So let's just start back.

Speaker 2 (03:56):
In the late nineteenth century.

Speaker 3 (03:58):
So there's this foreign work in community in Egypt thanks
to Muhammad Ali no relation, and he was the ruler
of Egypt from eighteen o five to eighteen forty nine.
This guy was all about modernizing stuff like the military,
the state administration, and the economy. So he invited skilled
folks to come to Egypt and lend their labor.

Speaker 4 (04:17):
Oh, isn't he the guy that Napoleon fought for a
little bit?

Speaker 2 (04:20):
I think so? I think so.

Speaker 3 (04:22):
I mean, who didn't Napoleon fight? I'm sure if he
could have, Napoleon would have fought.

Speaker 4 (04:27):
Like the dinosaurs, Napoleon fighting Cavement on the moon like.

Speaker 3 (04:32):
And speaking of Napoleon, I really don't appreciate how I mean,
no disrespect to hawqu In Phoenix, but was Napoleon like
in his twenties when he rose up the ranks military
and all that.

Speaker 6 (04:46):
Like?

Speaker 3 (04:46):
I could be mistaken, I could be confused him with
the other Napoleon. But I'm pretty sure Napoleon was not
the old man when he was making a lot.

Speaker 2 (04:53):
Of the moves he was making. Let's see again, I
could be wrong.

Speaker 4 (04:57):
Well, he was more in seventeen seventeen sixteen. I'm leaving
I'm I'm leaving the maths of this as an exercise
for the reader.

Speaker 3 (05:08):
What really through his new office that there's like multiple
Napoleons and so I mix up the histories of the
different Napoleons. Reasonable, But if it wasn't that Napoleon, I
know for sure one of the Napoleon's in question was
like relatively young when he was making some of his moves,
like in his early to mid twenties when he's rising

(05:31):
up the ranks kind of thing. Yeah, but I could
be entirely mistake, and I'm sure somebody will correct me.
None of this is relevant to what this episode is about.
But yeah, so Muhammed Ali again no relation. His successors,
Sayid and Ismail, took things to the next level after

(05:52):
he passed on with some major infrastructure projects. They were
building railways, they were expanding canals, they were gonwa the
urban development, and they need a bunch of skilled workers
for a lot of that. So they brought in Italians, Greeks, Syrians, Dalmatians,
and of course they use their local Egyptian laborers as well.

(06:13):
Many of those workers came to work on the famous
Suez Canal, of course, and that required a massive workforce.

Speaker 4 (06:21):
Yeah, many of them died. Yeah, canal dinging, like like
canal digging.

Speaker 2 (06:27):
I don't know if female high immortality rate profession.

Speaker 4 (06:31):
Yeah, yeah, like you might as well dig your own
grave too, like like dig it before you start, so
they can bury your body halfway through.

Speaker 3 (06:40):
Yes, it's like not gallows humor. It's like canal humor.
You know, it's like we're dig this canal. We're going
to die here anyway. It's kind of similar thing I
could in the Panama Canal, although in that case they
brought in a lot of Beesian and other Caribbean workers
to Yeah, you.

Speaker 2 (06:56):
Know, set that up.

Speaker 3 (06:58):
And actually the Panama now is responsible for, like what's
responsible for I think a third of the Beasian economy
at one point because the remittances they were being sent
back to their families at home. That's a whole different
chapter in history. But yeah, so this this massive and
diverse workforce is bringing, of course, not just their labor,
but ideas, because whenever you get people together, they start talking.

(07:21):
Egypt was already considered something of a place of refuge
for political exiles, so it's not very surprising that anarchism
was starting to gain popularity around that time, particularly with
the Italians in Egypt.

Speaker 4 (07:33):
Yeah, that's the thing. That's the thing in this period
is like you can literally track the spread of anarchism,
like by where there are a bunch of Italians in
Argentina too, It's like anywhere there are Italians, anarchy spreads.

Speaker 3 (07:48):
It's like it's a me anarchism. Yeah, that's that's gonna
set somebody off. My apology is to the Italian community.
I shouldn't have said that.

Speaker 4 (07:59):
Yeah they had, They hadn't invented fascism yet. This is
back when the Italians were still cool.

Speaker 3 (08:06):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm probably gonna get a letter hopefully.
You know, there's nothing else what's attached to it. Italians
already had a history with the anarchist movement as we know.

Speaker 2 (08:19):
I mean some people would.

Speaker 3 (08:21):
Of course, you're familiar with folks like eric co mana tester,
so there's no surprises there. Label and political radicalism court
sparks first in the Italian Worker Society or Society Operao
Italiana in eighteen sixty, which was formed to look out
for the interests of its members, and later on in
the mid eighteen seventies you had these veterans from Gary

(08:44):
Bali's campaigns, and by the way, Gary Bali is one
of the figures responsible for the Italian unification. And then
you also had other radicals, forming Thought and Action, a
political association with Massinian principles. Messini, by the way, Giuseppe
Mussini was an Italian Republican who advocated for liberty and
democracy and class collaboration and all that. Jazz Marx once

(09:08):
called him an everlastin old ass which is just really
funny and I had to include that there. He's just
like me for real anyway. And then in eighteen seventy
six more radical splinter group became an official section of
the First International in Alexandria, which is one of the

(09:29):
earliest attempts to create a worldwide association of workers and
socialist groups. I don't know if it could happen. He
has ever discussed, like the history of the International.

Speaker 2 (09:38):
It's before but it gets messy, Oh god, it's yeah,
it gets.

Speaker 3 (09:45):
Messy, It gets cattie, it gets like we had to
spill that tea at some point.

Speaker 4 (09:50):
Yeah, it's fucking wild, like especially especially once you get
into like the seventeen different Fourth Internationals, and it's a
time like the the Second International is such a disaster
that Hoseny Mubarik is part of it when he gets
overthrown like it's a it's it's it's a good time.
And by a good time, I mean an incredibly bad time.

Speaker 2 (10:12):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 (10:13):
Honestly, I just have to throw my head back and
laugh quite hotly when I hear folks talking about, you know,
why can't they left unite?

Speaker 2 (10:22):
You know, like where's the leftist unity?

Speaker 3 (10:25):
Why can't we just come to like nah, this has
been taking place since nineteenth century.

Speaker 4 (10:33):
My absolute favorite version of this is people being people taught,
people being like, Ah, mar Marx wouldn't want there to
have been so much discord on the left. It's like,
have you ever read any Marx like that? That is
a man who's writing is about sixty percent yelling at
someone whose ideas he's also stolen, like by volume. Like
one of his most famous, like one of the things

(10:55):
that you get designed to read from marks in college
is the German Ideology, which is like four hundred page
of him being annoyed by people whose ideas are slightly
different than his. It's like like, this is this is
this is an ancient tradition.

Speaker 3 (11:06):
The irony of Marx calling somebody else an avalastian old
ass will not be lost on me. And quite frankly,
this idea of oh Max wouldn't want this, Marx wouldn't
that really comes from that sort of messiahification of Marx.

Speaker 2 (11:24):
I just coined that to him. You know, I could
send me my flowers in the.

Speaker 3 (11:26):
Male because essentially what people are doing is treating Marx
and marx ideas and Marxism. It's just like Christianity two
point zero. You know, it's kind of like how you know,
people would have been saying, like, oh, Jesus wouldn't want
all this division in the church, except he just replacing
Jesus Marx and the chewch with the left.

Speaker 7 (11:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (11:44):
Like Marx has this famous line where he goes like
if he's reponding to like the first like French Marxist,
and he goes, if this is Marxism, then I am
not a Marxist. Oh yeah, and then everyone proceeded to
ignore him but call themselves Marxists. Well this is great
things have gone.

Speaker 2 (12:03):
This is yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (12:04):
I mean even in their lifetimes, all of these figures
that we respect now, they didn't really like the admirers,
like Mala Testa was quite embarrassed that he had fans.

Speaker 4 (12:15):
I recall, yeah, no, it to be clear, to be clear,
that is that is the appropriate were actually having fans.
It is a terrifying thing, right sure, Flea and terror
exactly exactly.

Speaker 3 (12:29):
Back to Alexandria, right where the First International's first official section,
one of its sections came about. And it was one
of the earliest attempts to create a world wide association
of workers and socialist groups and expanded and it formed
sections in Cairo and in Port Said and in Ismailia
or Ismailia Ismailia. And they even had the idea of

(12:53):
spreading socialist propaganda and different languages like Italian and Greek
and Turkish and Arabic to reach more folks in the
quote unquote East. They want to take the ideas of
the First International beyond chest European communities, you know, try
and reach out to the locals. Unfortunately, for those familiar

(13:13):
the history of the First International, it fizzled out, so
you know, they couldn't really fully execute their plans. But
you know, they got to get them credit for trying
to make a difference beyond their own little circles. Meanwhile,
Egypt was in the midst of a deep political crisis.
The military was pissed because of the disastrous Egypt to
European War. The upper ranks the civil service, the army,

(13:35):
in the business world had become dominated by Europeans, who
were paid much more than native Egyptians. The country's inability
to service its debt from cost the infrastructure projects and
lavish spending by maayel It's rue at the time led
to European control over its treasury in eighteen seventy six
and other European treasure pressure. Ismayel was to pose in
eighteen seventy nine replace their son Telfiek, who aimed to

(13:59):
basically satisfy each his creditors by any means necessary. And
so this tumultuous political climate provided both challenges and opportunities
for the anarchists in Egypt. A revolt led by an
Egyptian officer of the Egyptian Army, Ahmed Urabi, sort of
deposed Telfik, establish a constitutional government and n British and

(14:20):
French influence over the country. Although he was characterized as
anti foreign, Urrabi received support from some foreign elements, including
the very same Italian workers in Alexandria and a lot
of the anarchists in the area. Now, as we know,
anarchists are not really advocates of nationalism, so they will
fight for national liberation causes. So anarchists and nationalists foul

(14:43):
themselves on the same side when it came to fighting
against European imperialism in Egypt. So when the British were
causing trouble, anarchists like Malchester teamed up with nationalists led
by Urabi to resist foreign domination. However, the the British
and French governments, who were intent on protecting their investments

(15:04):
and nationals, confronted Urabi, which resulted in British forces bombard
in Alexandria and eventually occupying the country in eighteen eighty two.
Throughout the early years of British occupation, the anarchist movement
in Egypt faced both internal divisions and factionalism. Both internal
divisions and factionalism, similar to what was happening in other

(15:25):
parts of the world. Anarchists and socialists had been uneasy
comrades under the umbrella of the International during the eighteen seventies,
but the defection of a particularly locally influential figure named
Andrea Costa from libertarian socialism from libertarian Socialism in eighteen
seventy nine caused a significant schism.

Speaker 2 (15:43):
Within the local movement.

Speaker 3 (15:47):
Let me reread that so anarchists and socialists had been
uneasy comrades under the umbrella of the International during the
eighteen seventies, but the defection of one particularly locally influential
figure named Andrea Costa from the School of Libertarian Socialism
in eighteen seventy nine caused a significant schism within the

(16:10):
local movement, and the movement also suffered other interial divisions,
particularly with the enduring conflict between anti organizationalists and anarcho
syndicalists on the role of collective association in achieving anarchist
aims quote. Until the end of the nineteenth century, the
former trend appears to have been in the ascendency, but

(16:31):
the growth of the labor movement anarcho synicalists expanded their influence.
Other disputes reflected the power of personalities. Ugo Parini, a
key figure staunch anti organizationalist, was notorious for his uncompromising
style and was a persistent obstacle to create a cooperation
among anarchists. Not until after his death in nineteen oh

(16:52):
six was a national program of action agreed, which provided
a solid basis for collaboration within the Egyptian movement. Now,
I didn't find any rightings by Ugoprini himself to speak
his piece, but it sounds like he might have been
a e alas and old ass himself, if you know,

(17:13):
after the moment he died, they were able to finally
come together and come to agreement on something that means
pros like a significant obstacle to the organization of efforts.
But you know, he fought with his principles and he
died by them, so you know some respect there. So
until the end of nineteenth century, the anti organizationalists seem

(17:37):
to have had the upper hand, but with the growth
of the labor movement, anarchist syndicalists gained a lot more influence.
Tut tut leftist disunity strikes again. The real downside of
this history is that the anarchist movement was still quite
European and quite male, and the rights and nationalist movements

(17:59):
were not exactly helping matters. However, while the majority of
anarchists women, there was a women's section establishing Chiroage in
the eighteen seventies, so there was some female participation happening
as well. You know, it's the real, real barby moment.
There you know, real win for feminism. The ethnic diversity

(18:20):
of the anarchist movement in Egypt did expand over time,
though although Italians remained the dominant group until World War One,
they were one attracted Greeks, Jews, Germans, and various Eastern
European nationalities arabifhone. Egyptians also began to play a lot
more significant role, as seeing in the involvement in industrial actions,

(18:41):
educational activities, and anarchist meetings during the early nineteen hundreds,
and the occupational backgrounds of these anarchists were just as
diverse as the ethnicities. Skilled artisans, including carpenters, masons, tailors,
and painters were among the majority. Some came from the
petit bourgeoisie like cruisers and tabanawas, while others were involved

(19:02):
in trade or word for merchant hoses, and the movement
also include professionals like doctors, lawyers, and journalists. By the
late nineteenth century, the anarchistic community started to shift its
focus towards the new working class, such as cigarette workers, printers,
and employees of large utilities like tramway companies. However, despite

(19:25):
this diversity, and despite all the calls for internationalism. Local
nationalist associations still held a lot of power because they
provided their communities with welfare services and social events and
all that. It's kind of like how immigrants in new
countries even today will typically like group together in enclaves

(19:46):
and communities to share their culture and to share their
support economic and otherwise, when in a situation where everyone
around you is perceived as foreign, and you can some
measure of security and say, if you know, what's a
cultural proscilation, that is a thing that immigrants tend to do,
and these workers were immigrants to Egypt, and so they

(20:09):
kind of did the same thing. Unfortunately, many of these
national associations were controlled by bourgeois interests in the Greek community.
For example, the powers of the bourgeois o higarchy in
funding and controlling community institutions really worked to keep workers
in line with what the authorities wanted, because if you
stepped out of line from what this oligarchy wanted, you know,

(20:30):
you kind of like lose access to those essential community institutions.
And if you try, if you still have like a
family to take care of, a family that you might
have brought to Egypt or started in Egypt, or really
just struggling against meat or you know, your fish out
of water and you don't really know any other languages,

(20:51):
you just know your own people. To be isolated like
that is really hazard a situation to be in, and
so that's how they kept people in line. But that's
in terms of the European nowists. There's also some rise
in Egyptian nationalism. They also had some sway originally Egyptian
nationalists called signs of militant labor as part of a
European disease an alien Egyptian context, which, by the way,

(21:15):
I've noticed a lot of.

Speaker 2 (21:16):
Right wing organizations and movements.

Speaker 3 (21:23):
Tend to apply that pseudo anti imperial label to things,
so you would see it with for example, some right
wing African nationalist groups would describe the presence of homosexuality
in the country as a consequence of European imperialism. European

(21:45):
cludism is completely foreign to any kind of African context,
history or whatever, which.

Speaker 2 (21:50):
Is entirely false. But they do use that sort of like.

Speaker 3 (21:58):
False anti imperialism to build up their power base and
build up their reactionary base, So it's a partner. You
can't observe a lot of these right Way movements and
particularly global South right way movements. Interestingly, though the Egyptian
nationalists who were calling in militant labor European disease, the

(22:21):
opinions turned around kind of quick when they saw how
potent it was for exercise and power. In nineteen oh nine,
the Watani Party openly backed the formation of the Manual
Trades Workers Union, which was a diverse body of Egyptian
urban workers, because they recognized the party finally recognized both

(22:41):
the need to constitute a broader national community and the
political potential of the workers in the struggle against British occupation. Now,
before the different nationalists came around on this, the anarcho
Synicolists had already begun trying to attract more Egyptian workers
into their internationalists anarchist struggle. They knew how They knew

(23:01):
that to make a real impact they had to connect
with native Egyptian workers.

Speaker 2 (23:06):
But it's a thing, you know.

Speaker 3 (23:07):
The international union structure wasn't always practical for them. Many
occupations in Egypt were pretty much exclusive to Egyptians, and
many occupations in Egypt were pretty much exclusive to Europeans,
so forming those unions was easier, said than done, but
I didn't stop the anarchists from trying. You know, they
saw the importance of promoting lab organization and militancy among

(23:28):
the Egyptian working class, and so when the cab drivers
and Alexandria went on strike in nineteen oh three, the
anarchists were there to gas them up. The anarchists who,
of course trying to emphasize what the workers had in common,
the lack of boundaries that labor has that doesn't care
for things like nationality, or religion or race, that all
workers had the same needs, the same struggles, and the

(23:49):
same aspirations for their well being. Of course, the nationalists
had their own political visions, so while anarchists emphasized international
solidarity and shared interests, nationalists will resort into nativist appeals
and organizational tactics to splinter the labor movement and break
up at internationalist orientation. To give them some credit, though,

(24:11):
the Returning Party did recognize the importance of allying with
foreign workers and urged Egyptian workers during the Trams strike
of nineteen eleven to unite and strengthen yourselves and increase
your numbers through combination and through unity with the European workers,
your comrades, and let me get to nineteen nineteen and
the quote unquote nineteen nineteen revolution. It's kind of a

(24:34):
significant moment in Egyptian history, and anarchists were there, so
let's talk about it. In nineteen nineteen, the British government
imposed new taxes and restrictions on civil liberties, which further
fewel the discontent and united Egyptians from various social, economic,
and political backgrounds. The spark that ignited the revolution was

(24:56):
a deportation of Egyptian nationalist leaders Sad Saglu and other
political figures by the British authorities for opposing their policies. Irresponse,
massive protests erupted across the country, with strikes, demonstrations, and
civil disobedience becoming widespread. Egyptians from all walks of life,

(25:17):
including workers, students, intellectuals, and peasants, took part in the movement.
They were influenced, in part by the strategies and tactics
of the syndicalist presence in the region and abroad at
the time. The revolution gained momentum and the demands of
the protesters became more explicit, calling for full independence, a constitution,
and an end to British rule. The British authorities initially

(25:39):
tried to suppress the protests with force, which of course
led to violent clashes and bloodshed. However, the resilience and
unity of the Egyptian people ultimately forced the British government
to recognize the scale of the uprising and the strength
of the nationalist movement. In nineteen twenty two, the United
Kingdom unilaterally declared Egypt's independence. Do the British continue to

(26:02):
exude considerable influence over Egyptian affairs, One could argue that
the specter of anarchism would raise its head again in
Egypt's history, particularly during the Hour of Spring in twenty eleven,
when anarchic tactics can be found across the Middle East
and North Africa. In the next part, I'll be talking

(26:23):
more about what anarchists would doin in Egypt in the
late nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. But for now, I
hope that today's anarchists in Egypt and elsewhere can keep
the flame of freedom burning or power to all the
people peace. Oh one, this has been Andrew. You can
follow me on eat dot com, slash Andrewism and support

(26:46):
the Patreon, a picature dot com slash Saturn. See y'all
next time. Welcome to take it up in here. I'm

(27:07):
Andrew of the channel Andrewism, and I'm here.

Speaker 4 (27:11):
With Mia who didn't miss them learning today.

Speaker 3 (27:20):
I just wanted to shed lights on just some of
the interesting history of the anarchists move went in Egypt.
This is part two, first part really, but just went
into the historical context and progression and how the anarchist
community emerged in Egypt, you know, fueled by this growing
Mediterranean network of migration, labor, mobility and communication.

Speaker 2 (27:40):
Of course, it started.

Speaker 3 (27:42):
With the Italian community, known for their anarchism in that time,
but they soon gained the support of other groups sharing
a radical vision of social emancipation. I learned all this
from the book Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and
Post Colonial World, particularly the section written by Anthony Gormann
on Egyptian history. In the years leading up to World

(28:08):
War One, anarchos cynicalism, represented by the International Union, played
a leading role in organizing and developing a militant labor movement,
advocating for international solidarity among workers. They adapted well to
Egypt's diverse society, embracing ethnic and religious pluralism and internationalism
while opposing capitalism. Anarchists, along with socialists and liberals, contributed

(28:32):
to the advancement of secular thoughts and Egyptian intellectual life,
leaven significant impact on their society. However, the anarchist movement
faced challenges due to the state's coercion through surveillance, prosecution,
and deportation. The authorities portrayed them as dissolute political adventurers
pushing an alien ideology. Despite their achievements in formulating and

(28:54):
anti capitalist discourse and advocating for social emancipation, other forces
like the Egyptian Communists and Egyptian National Movement would take
on some of the ideas with a louder and more
prominent voice. Do they just want to give more details
on the movement and what exactly they were doing in
their heyday? Clearly, the anarchists went to Egypt was not

(29:16):
confined to the local It was all about connected with
anarchists from different countries, making international friendships and fighting for
their shared ideals. The anarchists in Egypt got involved with
the conference in Verva's and conferences in London and Italy
and hung out with anarchists from Istanbul, Greece, Tunisia and more.
Egypt became the spot for anarchists in the eastern Mediterranean,

(29:39):
and they'd made connections all the way to the United
States and South America.

Speaker 4 (29:44):
It's kind of interestingly playing a similar role to like
early nineteen hundreds Japan in terms of the anarchist movement,
where yeah, it's you know, get you get these sort
of like regional hubs that develop and people sort of
like moved through and around them, which I think is
really interesting.

Speaker 3 (30:01):
Yeah, yeah, agreed, agreed, and each of being a hub,
you know, a lot of big name anarchists to are visiting, oh,
you know, a big name talking people like am Claire
cypriani Elis Recluse, Aricoma ro Testa, Luigi Kaliani, and Pietro Gory.
And of course with these agitators in the mix, the

(30:25):
authority has got a little new of us. But the
real life flood of the movement with not these influential figures,
they were the publications that this community was producing and
reading and distributing. The anarchists in Egypt didn't just read
from newsletters all around the world though that was a

(30:46):
part of it, but they also contributed.

Speaker 2 (30:48):
Their own articles.

Speaker 3 (30:49):
But always happening in Egypt, they're connected, informed and motivated
by the international community they had built. There are a bunch
of publications dedicated to workers is use, offering insights, debates,
and discussions on common difficulties on matters of labor organization
and strategy. Facilitated by an increasingly developed international transport system,

(31:12):
particularly steamership services, the International Anarchist press served as a
vital channel the dissemination and diffusion.

Speaker 2 (31:19):
Of the movement's ideas.

Speaker 3 (31:20):
It was the anarchist Library before the anarchist Library in
terms of.

Speaker 2 (31:27):
How they went about organizing and propriation.

Speaker 3 (31:30):
In Egypt, the anarchists there recognized the unique challenges of
the local situation.

Speaker 2 (31:35):
That they have to deal with.

Speaker 3 (31:37):
For the European anarchists, promoting the message of emancipation and
combat and the exploitation, ignorance and injustice caused by capitalism,
the states and religious authority would be no easy task
in a region where, for one, they're already being seen
as part of the onicle and attempts of political domination

(31:58):
by Western powers, and also in a region with very
deep historical religious divisions, you know, such as the Crusades
and the British French colonization. It's really one of the
major projects I suppose the European anarchists needed to communicate
to the local population was that their ire did not

(32:19):
lay with Europeans as a whole. It lay primarily with
the European ruling class. And so when it came to
critique and societal issues and has strongly attacked the evils
of capitalism, and of course that had the best reception
among the Egyptian workers. Of course, this isn't to say
that the European workers in Egypt were like completely in

(32:42):
common with the Egyptian workers. Despite the fact that the
ire of the Egyptian workers should really lie primarily with
the European ruling class that was responsible for the imperialization
of their country and the expectation of their people. The
presence of the European workers did also contribute to the

(33:02):
exploitation because those European workers were paid so much better
than Native worn workers were. It was experienced and privileges
that the Native One workers did not.

Speaker 2 (33:14):
Have access to.

Speaker 3 (33:16):
Interestingly, although anarchists typically advocate for emancipation from all religious authorities,
Islam wasn't specifically targeted in their literature, and there was
probably a pragmatic consideration for whether anti religiou rhetoric would fly,
considering they could just be reported because of course that
was a crime. They still took on a hostile attitude

(33:38):
towards Egyptian state, though condemn its course of actions, surveillance culture,
and abusive power, but they didn't confront it head on.
The program of action was far more focused on the
goal of social transformation through the use of propaganda, education,
and workers associations. Because of the mixed conditions in Europe
and in Egypt, the ideal people of different races, religions,

(34:01):
and nationalities united in solidarity had some real potency to it.
So the internationalist mission was a very central component in
their messaging at public conferences and at labor meetings, but
it really was more so about the speaking the propaganda
of the word rather than the propaganda of the deed.
In fact, interestingly, for that time, the anarchists in Egypt

(34:23):
didn't really engage in much propaganda of the deed at all,
propaganda the deed being you know, political violence and assassination attempts.
For those who know you know a bit about the
anarchists of that time. Propaganda of the deed was what
they were known for. They had some some big name
assassinations in the bios. For example, Franz fudinan I believe

(34:45):
was assassinated by an anarchist.

Speaker 4 (34:47):
Wait, no hold on, France Ferdinand is the guy who
was killed by Gavrio Prinsept, the guy who started World
War One.

Speaker 3 (34:58):
Right, I've seen some so says call him a nationalist,
souses call him an anarchist.

Speaker 4 (35:04):
I don't think he was an anarchist.

Speaker 3 (35:08):
Yeah, he was exposed to socialist, anarchist and communist writings
when he was younger, through school and through his roommate
Danilo Irich, but he was more so associated with nationalists,
particularly when he got around to assassinate in Franz Ferdinand.
Nazis and fascists did call him an anarchist and a socialist,

(35:34):
but it seems as though although he was inspired by
nationalists and anarchists, he was more so in the nationalists
side of the equation.

Speaker 8 (35:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (35:43):
I mean they did kill a few Habsburgs, which always
always a good thing to have less Habsburgs in the world.
You can you can you can make you can make
a chart over time and what access is good and
the other access is habsburg. You can see that they're
inversely correlated.

Speaker 2 (36:00):
Yeah, have spigs or something else.

Speaker 3 (36:03):
But yeah, the anarchists in Egypt not too much into
the political violence and assassinations. They were focused really on
promoting the ideas through spoken and written communication, you know,
like public meetings, demonstrations, in the press, and the press
was really the crucial axis of their efforts and disseminating
the ideas and sustaining their identity. They had local properly,

(36:24):
they had local publications like that Tribuna Liberal, Lepero Looks
and others, which save to spread anarchist thought and discuss
ideas and issues of social emancipation. The weekly paper l'apero

(36:46):
mostly promoted anarcho syndicalism, and then the paper Ill dom
Dominie came up and decided to adopt a more tridently
libertarian tone. And then you have Rise Again or Or,
which is another people another weekly that promoted a very

(37:07):
strong anti clerical line. And then there was the people
who Ergatis, which was or the Worker, and that was
an organ for the emancipation of women and the worker,
and it provided primarily for a Greek language readership are
see a lot of these papers will tailor towards specific languages,

(37:29):
so that Greek had Italian and you also.

Speaker 2 (37:33):
Had French like Leugnon and le Idea.

Speaker 3 (37:38):
But despite its polygod character, the anarchist press in Egypt
doesn't seem to have included an Arabic language newspaper, which
is kind of weird when you're surrounded by Arabic speaking people. However,
anarchism had regularly featured in the mainstream Arabic newspapers since

(37:58):
nineteen since the eighteen nineties, usually however in reports and
the activities in the movement abroad, not locally in Egypt.
At the same time, there were also journals like Al
Muktataf and Al Hilal, which carried articles discussing the origins
and development of anarchist thought and practice. It seems as
though in eighteen ninety seven there was also a figure

(38:20):
who engaged with socialized ideas, but that particular publication seems
to have been closed down quite quickly by the authorities,
particularly for feature in the work of Salama Musa and
Shibli Schumayl, who were two Egyptian writers who were clearly
influenced by anarchist ideas. Something that just occurred to me

(38:42):
is that what it could be influencing this is that
the Italians, in the Greeks and the French and all
these different people who are writing about these anarchist ideas
in Egypt, It's possibly they had a bit more leeway
and it came to the local authorities that locals themselves

(39:04):
would not have. Their foreign status may have provided them
with slight immunity in comparison. And this is just me
spitball in, but it's possible that araborphone writers and speakers
would be taken on significantly more risk if they were
to agitate in the same ways that these.

Speaker 2 (39:24):
You know, migrant workers were advocating.

Speaker 3 (39:27):
And then there's also the component and that speculation, but
there is a proven component of financial difficulties and limited
literacy rates among the Egyptian population that made it difficult
to distribute Arabic language material, religious and anarchism, you know,
because a lot of the workers in Egypt who spoke

(39:48):
Arabic were not literate. What did help though, because you know,
the anarchists were about that life. They would go to
cafes and read the newspapers out loud to reach their
target audience. The first podcasters exactly exactly, the first podcasters

(40:13):
for real, as the anarchist movement in Egypt was really
commemorating important political events, celebrating the principles through posters, leaflets
and flyers celebrating the animalu history of events like the
Parist Commune in May Day really spread that message at
international solidarity among the workers.

Speaker 2 (40:32):
Anchists in Egypt also.

Speaker 3 (40:34):
Very fond of showing solidarity to their international figures like
Francisco Ferrer, who was a very influential Spanish anarchist thinker
who did a lot of work in the field of
anarchist education. He created for their schools, which influenced figures
like Goldman to create their own modern schools in the

(40:55):
US and elsewhere. And he was arrested and then executed,
which led to a lot of protests both locally and internationally,
making him something of a martyr for the anarchist cause.
And so the outrage expressed at the execution of Ferrero
was not simply just a protest against state attorney, but

(41:15):
also recognition of his status as an advocate for cycle education,
which is an important vehicle for you know, social emancipation
before Francisco Ferrever was executor, though anarchists in Egypt were
already working on educational programs. In fact, they launched their
most ambitious project, the Free Popular University or Universita Popularity

(41:39):
Liberal or UPL, in Alexandria in nineteen oh one. The
UPL aimed to provide free evening education to the popular
classes and received you great support across Alexandria and society.
Courses included you know, the works of Tolstoy and Bakunin,

(41:59):
the arts, and pragmatic topics like worker negotiation strategies. However,
the upl's radical nature also brought criticism, with the Italian
authorities initiating legal proceedings against the UPR lecturer for some
remarks he made about the assassination of the Italian king
Umberto First, I of course leave you to speculate what

(42:22):
those comments and remarks may have been. But despite some
initial public support, its critics accused the UPL of being
based on depraved principles. Now I mentioned this school before
in the episode did on Islam and Anarchism, and like

(42:43):
I said in that episode, ouric speakers wouldn't quickly marginalized
from the education, and the UPL gradually became more aimed
toward and controlled by upper class interests. In fact, within
a year, reliably bourgeois elements had arrested control of the
UPL from its anarchist phone and had ratid controlled the

(43:05):
UPL from its anarchist founders and proceeded to transform it
into a vocational college that, among other things, taught shorthand, accountancy,
and languages. So, despite its very brief existence as a
revolutionary project, the UPL marked an important movement for anarchism
in Egypt and inspired other movements seeking educational reform. The

(43:27):
upl's impacts and vision influenced egypt Egyptian nationalists, who established
the Higher Schools Club in nineteen oh five, which also
emphasized educational means for political purposes. Anarchism in Egypt had
a significant impact on the development of the labor movement.
As a new working class emerged towards the end of

(43:49):
the nineteenth century, anarchois cynicalism emerged as a powerful force
advocating for formal collective organization as the instrument of social revolution.
Of course, each just's labor movement was entirely new, as
killed have been part of the traditional Ottoman order, regulating
trade and providing mutual lead. But the modernization efforts of
Muhammad Ali no Relation and Egypt's integration into the international

(44:11):
capitalist system changed that landscape, affecting the role of guilds
and shape in the working class. Foreign workers, like I
just mentioned before, came into Egypt alongside native Egyptian labor,
but despite the differences between them, evidence does show a
strong cooperation and collaboration between the groups.

Speaker 2 (44:30):
The native Egyptian working class was.

Speaker 3 (44:35):
Affected by a variety of factors, but there was a
model of collaboration that was emotion between European and Egyptian workers.
The Cigarette Rollers Union, for example, was initially a Greek
body in Cairo, but later became more inclusive as their

(44:58):
successful strike and eating nine to nineteen hundred marked a
milestone in Egyptian industrial militancy. However, their subsequent strikes fixed However,
subsequent strikes faced brutal confrontations with the police, leading to.

Speaker 2 (45:15):
Divisions among the workers.

Speaker 3 (45:18):
By the end of the first decade of the century,
the Anacosynicalist International Union had emerged as a significant force
based on universalist principles and international solidarity. The optimism for
the future of a socialist center in Cairo was a
reflection of the broader movement within the working class led
by anarchists and syndicalists. Anarchism first appeared in Egypt among

(45:41):
Italian political refugees and workers during the eighteen sixties, Nurtured
by a development international network of labor transporting communications expanded
beyond Italian circles, attract members from across Egypt's diverse communities
the heterogenos through the discourse of radical social emancipation and

(46:01):
propaganda and public action declaring the universality of humankind and
the crime the evils of capitalism state power. On this dogma,
the anarchist movement would come into force in Egypt's history.
In the years after nineteen hundred, Anarchist cyndicalism played a
central role in development of the labor movement, ar circulating

(46:22):
the rights of workers in struggle against capital, against capital
and promoting internationalists activism.

Speaker 2 (46:30):
Get wildly rejected.

Speaker 3 (46:31):
Yet while they rejected nationalism as an organizing principle, anarchists
did at times make common cause of the nationalists against
imperialism and arguably had a reverberating influence on the strategies
and tactics of the nationalist movement. That's all I have
for today on this brief moment in Egyptian anarchist history.

(46:56):
But I hope it illuminated very interesting chapter and context.
That's fair.

Speaker 4 (47:06):
Yeah, And I think there's another kind of important, broader
lesson from this that is I think mostly forgotten, which
is that you know, from this period of I don't know,
roughly the late eighteen hundreds through about nineteen seventeen, like
in most parts of the world except for basically like

(47:29):
Western Europe, or not even Western Europe, like apart from
basically like the Germany's, if you're talking about socialism, there's
like anywhere in the world, there's a very very good
chance the thing you're actually talking about is anarchism. And
you know, there's been a sort of systemic attempt by
both liberal and sort of later communists like historians to

(47:51):
sort of like wipe this historical record clean and make
it look like everything was always sort of like the
sort of on rush of Marxism, but that just wasn't true.
And they were very powerful anarchist movements on every continent,
and they did a lot, They did a lot of
really interesting things and yeah, yeah, that that really.

Speaker 3 (48:13):
Needs to be respected and recognized and it hasn't so far,
so fully this and if folks check out the book,
they can get some more insights on some of the
other actions that have taken place in that time. Again,
the book is anarchism and syndicalism in the colonial and
post colonial world. It really illuminates a lot of that

(48:35):
lost history. Thanks for joining me and we on this
episode of That Could Happen Here Again. You can follow
me Andrew on the YouTube channel Andrewism and support on
patron dot com slash Saint Drew.

Speaker 4 (49:05):
It it could Happen here. Yeah, that's the podcast that
you're listening to. It's also a thing that is happening.
The thing that is happening is it is a kind
of rough time to be a transperson in the US
and also in most other countries. And you know, we
do a lot of episodes on this show about how

(49:25):
it's rough and why it's rough and the specific things
that are happening. But also sometimes we do we do
the other part of the podcast, which is to put
it back together part of the podcast, or in this one,
I this is more of a bring to birth a
new world from the ashes of the old episode. And
in order to talk about doing that, we're talking to
Samantha Medina, who's an organizer for Donut Workers United and

(49:49):
also the Coalition of Independent Unions and Shineyid who is
an organizer for the CiU and also the IWW And yeah,
both you two welcome to the show.

Speaker 6 (49:57):
Hey, thanks for having us, good to be on.

Speaker 4 (50:00):
Great to talk to both of you. And so the
specific thing that Yeah, I wanted to talk about today
is the Trans Day of Solidarity that is being organized
in Portland right now. And yeah, I wanted to I
guess we should start with what is this event, who
is doing it, and then we can get into why
it is being done.

Speaker 9 (50:21):
Sure thing. So, the Trans Day of Solidarity is an
event being put on right now by the Coalition of
Independent Unions, and it's an event that's basically about both
celebrating trans people in the labor movement and the worker's
movement as a whole, highlighting the importance of workplace in

(50:44):
union organizing for trans communities as a way for us
both to survive but also to struggle towards our own liberation.
And finally, it's a way of it's a way of
sort of us clarifying how we can start using workplace
struggle as a means of turning the tide against the

(51:07):
current genocide with this.

Speaker 6 (51:09):
Yeah, that covers most of it. I think the only
thing that I'd like to add is a lot of
what this event is around is bringing awareness to the
trans community and specifically our experience within the labor movement
and on the job. And it is a way, as
Shaneide mentioned, to kind of like highlight exactly what unions

(51:32):
do and can do for trans people well at the
same time also giving us a moment to remind unions
that they should be doing more. Even if what they're
already doing is great, they could always do more, and
especially in a time right now where trans people are
facing the discriminations particular to us across this country right now,

(51:55):
and as she mentioned, the world, but focusing on the
United States, it's really important that the avenues that are
there to protect us are aware of how to protect us.
So I think this is our opportunity to kind of
remind unions to step it up a little bit.

Speaker 4 (52:12):
Yeah, And I mean, I think I think another thing
that's kind of important about this in particular is yeah,
you know about bunch of YouTube are intimately aware of this,
but I don't know if overrepresented is the right term.
But like trans people, like literally right now in particular,
are effectively the vanguard of new union organizing. They are
you know, enormously like quote unqule I guess, I guess

(52:35):
overrepresentati or whatever that's the word you want to use
in in you know, like among union organizers a lot
of actually and then this I think is you know,
another thing I'm excited about for this is that like
you all are kind of like at the forefront I
guess of like what the new sort of union organizing
stuff is and how it's how it's sort of you know,

(52:55):
how how it's been working, and so like that the
fact that this is like the one place where there's
actually a lot of us and that you know, is
a place where there's enough of us that it actually
matters is important and that you know that that works
in a lot of directions at the same At the
same time.

Speaker 6 (53:12):
Yeah, I mean, I think it's good to acknowledge that, like, yeah,
there are a lot of trans people that are organizing
their workplaces. There's a lot of trans people taking part
in their unions, and you know, a lot of that
I think comes out of necessity, like if we're not
there to discuss our needs with these unions or to
create our own unions at a necessity where like maybe

(53:34):
our CIS coworkers don't understand the struggle that we face
on the shop floor, so by reminding them, we're able
to make it better. You know, Like all that's great
and true and everything, but I think it's also really
good to acknowledge that like LGBTQ people in general, whether
they just be trands or otherwise, have been organizing and

(53:55):
organizing their workplaces for decades now. So I think a
lot of this like, yeah, we're seeing a lot more
trans people involved, but we're also seeing a lot more
recognition and visibility of trans people than ever.

Speaker 9 (54:07):
Bookedore right, well, and part of the reason we're so
involved is because it's a matter of basic survival. Right.
The average trans masculine and non binary person make about
seventy percent of the media and US wages, whereas transpendent
people make sixty percent. And this is below like compared
to SIS people. You know, that's that's wild, right. The

(54:31):
level of homelessness of discrimination of job, loss of hours
being reduced, punishment of sexual harassment on the job is
just you know, it's it's unconscionable and it always has been.
Even in the good days. It was garbage and miserable
and honestly took a lot of us out.

Speaker 4 (54:51):
Yeah, And I mean, you know, like part of part
of the thing with that RUND is like that all
of that has knock on effects, right, you know, if
you can't get a job and the job you can
get pay less. A lot of this forces people, you know,
like the rate of homelessness is unbelievably hot. People get
evicted constantly, and this, you know, this, this, this all
this ties together with sort of like transhousing struggles, because

(55:12):
that's a huge thing. And yeah, the conferences, this is like, yeah,
a lot of a lot more of us end up dead.
And the way that we don't end up dead is
by fight. Is by fighting in one of the places
that you know, like one of the places we've gotten
good at is fighting in the workplace.

Speaker 9 (55:29):
Absolutely, And I like, I mean, I'm talking from my
own experiences, you know, as an organizer and as an
IWW member for god seventeen years now, Like wow, yeah,
it's like I think about all the major campaigns that
I've seen, and all of them, all of them have
had trans people at as core organizers for each and
every shop, from the Canvasser's strikes to Burgerville to a

(55:53):
number of like fast food shops and service sector shops
and retail shops. Like every single time, there are folks
that are are trends that are playing key rules. Which
is given that we're what probably between two and four
percent of the population at least, uh, you know, at

(56:14):
least according to current testaments, probably gonna be higher, but
you know that's shouldn't be possible.

Speaker 5 (56:21):
Yes, that is shocked.

Speaker 9 (56:23):
It makes no sense except for the fact that well,
survivability bias. Motherfuckers, it's this or we're dead.

Speaker 6 (56:31):
Yeah, like very well, no, no, no, it's I mean
that is the blatant truth, right, And I mean, like
even if we're not talking about life and death, I mean,
it's the difference of whether we have access to a
bathroom to use, you know, yeah, like you know, like yes,
of course this is also about life and death. But like,

(56:52):
you know, I think another thing that trans people base
a lot is like access to health care or really
the lack thereof access to health care, and especially healthcare
that will actually get us, you know, the medication that
we need to be on or the surgeries that we need,
because again, these are issues that help with dysphoria, and
we all know the statistics on how dyspory affects people

(57:14):
of all ages, and that is again a matter of
life and death. So like, I don't think that's wrong
to not sugarcoat that stag.

Speaker 9 (57:22):
Yeah, right, And there's another side to it too, is that, like,
this is also a point of community. This is a
point of actually like folks from you know, it's meeting
up with other trans folks, but it's also like working
together with others like with CIS coworkers and friends. Right,
this is a point of belonging and togetherness and of
being able to really be there for your neighbors and

(57:43):
your friends and your coworkers in ways that like and
to be a part of community, which is something that
is often strict of us. Right. Yes, it's about survival
and it's about what we need to do in order
to keep breathing, but it's also about we need to
do to live, you know, to go beyond survival, to
have joy, and to have enough money to make it through,

(58:06):
and you know, maybe people to actually have something for ourselves,
maybe be able to not have the constant anxiety but
instead spend more time being happy about who we are.
Ceacy to overlook that. But again biased sample source, but

(58:26):
almost all my fondest memories are from being side by
side with my fellow workers.

Speaker 6 (58:31):
Right absolutely. And I think also, you know, like time's
gone long enough now where you know, trans people are
starting to be something that people are aware of, something
people are talking about. Whether that's in the best ways
or not, We're at least more than we've been. And
I you know, I think like organizing in general, community

(58:52):
in general, whether that's you know community, uh, within the
city you live in or within your workplace. You know,
like a lot of our success at being able to
live the lives that we want to have, or be
the people that we want to be and be respected
for that really does come down to our family members,

(59:14):
our co workers, our friends, and ultimately complete strangers who
we need to rely on.

Speaker 10 (59:23):
You know, I.

Speaker 6 (59:25):
Hate to use the word ally, but we need our
allies more than ever and it's about time that they
step up to and that starts typically speaking in your
community and in your workplace. I think it's also really
good to address the fact that, like, you know, when
we're talking about trans issues and organizing around them and

(59:45):
like organizing workplace in your community and all that, Like,
it's it's also important to acknowledge how intersectional the trans experiences.
And that's something I really wanted to stry to we
got talking about specifically about unions and things like that,
because also unions are an incredibly intersectional piece of politics
and life that we need to appreciate. Because when we

(01:00:09):
talked about these statistics affecting trans people, they affect disabled
trans people and black and brown trans people at much
much more much higrates then they affect white trans people.
And I think that unions being something and not just unions,
I mean every aspect of organizing and community building really

(01:00:33):
needs to pay attention to this. But I think this
is something that is so ingrained in unions that unions
have been fighting for this sort of protections that are
very intersectional, you know, like whether they're protecting women in
the workplace, whether they're protecting black and brown people, whether

(01:00:53):
they're protecting disabled people, or whether they're protecting trans people.
That is a large part of why you unions were established.
You know, we talked about wages and working hours a lot,
and that is all fine and dandy, and it's wonderful,
and that's something that is a base core value of unions.
But I don't think it's celebrated enough how much work
unions did in equality in this country. And I think

(01:01:17):
this is just a continuation of that tradition. And trans
people just happen to be one of the largest topics
right now, and we tend to have one of the
largest targets on our back, more than we've ever had before.
And so yeah, I think that's why we discussed unions
in relation to this, because for you know, working class folk,

(01:01:39):
that's where a lot of our organizing begins.

Speaker 4 (01:01:43):
Yeah, and I think I think it's actually honest, it's
had an interesting impacts on the kind of union organizing
as happening because you know, like one of one of
the sort of consequences of transferbient discrimination in workplaces is
that you get a lot of trans people in what
is okay, I refuse to call it service sector. I'm

(01:02:07):
gonna there's gonna be a whole episode that's been yelling
about the sort of service sector that's coming to a
recording thing near you, specifically like job jobs and fast
food jobs that are very low wage, like high turnover things,
and particularly fast Who's been a very interesting because that's
a that's a sector that like a lot of trade
unions just completely ignored, like they just gave up on

(01:02:30):
and you know, like they've been starting to organize like
Starbucks in the past few years, right, but like you know,
like if you want to look at the people who've
actually been trying to organize fast food workers, it turns
out it's a bunch of trans people because because because
who works, because who actually does this stuff?

Speaker 11 (01:02:45):
Right?

Speaker 9 (01:02:46):
Turns out turns out, Yeah, there's.

Speaker 6 (01:02:52):
A lot to be said about that, Like with larger unions,
and larger unions, especially within the trades, have done a
lot of great work, you know, and that's lovely and
I appreciate them for that. But on the other hand,
they really did turn their back on the service sector
industry for the silliest reason possible, which is that high
turnover is just too difficult and we want to talk

(01:03:12):
about people, Yeah, it's just too difficult, you know, who
wants to organize something difficult, right, like that might cost
too much money or not make them enough money, and
which I find highly hypocritical of unions in general. I mean,
like not of all unions, but like if that is
a stance that unions will take to not organize the

(01:03:33):
service industry, being a union seems to be exactly why
you would target those industries, right, because those are where
workers need it most. And if we want to talk
about high turnover rates being the reason, who do we
think is affected the most by high turnover rates? You know,
like it is hard to find a job as a
trans person, let alone keep a job for any length

(01:03:57):
of time. There's oftentimes no upward mobility for trans people
in that job, and so you pace a variety of
life issues when you're not making enough money, which inevitably
leads to you losing your job and adding to the
high turnover rates in these companies. This is exactly why,
And we can get into you know, what we've been
up to and what we're doing later, but that's exactly

(01:04:18):
why the CiU and the IWW and other organizations like
us do what we do, is because we believe in
helping the workers that need it most, who are underrepresented
and not taken care of by the larger units.

Speaker 9 (01:04:31):
Because we are those workers, right, I mean, that is
the thing. We're able to do this and put you know,
I mean, we'll put the fucking hours in because that's us.
We're doing this because it's the only way out. Right. So,
like when we schedule something like or like create an
event like the Trans Day of Solidarity, we're doing this

(01:04:51):
because both on the backbone of years of experience, but
especially like collectively but also bringing in new organizers because
we knew how. We can think back to how we
were brought in, right, we can talk think back to
our friends, our allies, and our especially our transfellow workers
who were the ones who mentored us well before the

(01:05:14):
tipping point in a lot of cases, right, because this
is why we're here. And like thinking about who this affects, right,
I mean, like, it affects trans people deeply, and it
can cut off our access to the healthcare that many
but not all of us very much need to keep going.
And the threats above us, you know, only increase as

(01:05:35):
the like you know, the oppressions you face are are increasing. Right,
if you're a transpression of color, if you're disabled, like
you were saying, right, like shit gets worse, it gets harder,
the sword over your head dangles a little closer, so
we work to figure a way to get out from
under it. But it's also like why the Transitay of Solidarity,

(01:05:59):
Like when we talk about it, it's it's an event
that that is what it is because it's designed to
not simply be us just speaking into the wind, but
it's meant to be a practical thing. Right. The the
whole event itself is is like a rally with you know,
trans speakers from you know a number of different shops
and unions in town. But it's also then just quickly

(01:06:20):
becomes just a flying picket, right, And this is a
tradition that I think we do miss a little bit
in this country. The flying picket's an old one and
it's a it's a fucking goldie. It's where you get
a big old mob of people and you just start
going to places all over your town and throwing fucking pickets.
It's everything you love about a breakaway march and also

(01:06:43):
a picket. At the same time, it has direct economic
leverage to it. You can do you know, people, It's
it took a minute. But and you know this is
also coming from someone who's organized in premierly in Portland,
so there's a certain bias here. Your locale may vary,
but if you organize enough pickets in your city, people

(01:07:03):
might cross them at first, they get a lot less
likely to the more you do them over the years.
So the more pickets to throw, the less likely people
are to cross them. And if they are not likely
to cross them, that impact that you know, increases their impact.
So you know we're gonna be given our speech, is sure,
and we are going to speak to our experiences. That's critical.

(01:07:23):
And then we're also going to ruin some people's day
or you know, make their day if you're the.

Speaker 4 (01:07:27):
Workers, Yeah, ruin some bosses day exactly, just always the
best kind of day.

Speaker 9 (01:07:39):
Well, it's also part of the reason, listen, should bosses
have good days? I'm going to go on a limb
and say no never ever ever you want to, yeah,
damn straight. At the bare minimum, you get at least
one less good day than us.

Speaker 6 (01:07:57):
And you know what, you know what if the bosses
don't like having these bad days, then they can just
go find another job. Yes, exactly, it's not that same deal.

Speaker 9 (01:08:08):
Right, they can actually contribute to their communities, you know,
do some real work for a change, which in this
case is sometimes just working a fucking till.

Speaker 4 (01:08:21):
That's okay, speaking speaking of things that suck, we need
to take an ad break. This is the best ad
pivot I've been able I've been able to think of
in the last like six minutes. So we're taking it
right now. Now, we're going to get this good again
and we're back. So one of one of the things

(01:08:43):
that I also wanted to talk about is about I
guess just talking a bit about what the Coalition of
Independent Unions is and how it's sort of formed, and yeah,
I don't know the sort of potentials they're in because
it's it's a really interesting organization coalition.

Speaker 6 (01:09:03):
Yeah, absolutely, So the CiU, it's got a long history
if we really dig deep into it. I mean, effectively,
this idea started after organizing within Portland for the last gosh,
I think people may people have been organizing here forever.
But let's say, how long ago did Burgerville Workers Union start, Shanaan.

Speaker 9 (01:09:28):
Let's see. We there's that's a question. If you want
to talk about the official date we went public Shore
twenty sixteen. If you want to talk about the antecedents,
you'll find it in the Industrial Research Organizing Group Precarious Workplace. No,
it is Low Wage Workers Subcommittee the Portland General Membership

(01:09:51):
Branch of the IWW circa August of twenty thirteen.

Speaker 4 (01:09:55):
Incredible, way the way Still you're welcome.

Speaker 9 (01:09:58):
Yeah, Oh, money, money, I'm do you know how many
fucking acronyms do we have?

Speaker 2 (01:10:03):
Oh?

Speaker 9 (01:10:03):
My god, listen the number of things I had to
take the GMB when I was BST, despite not actually
being the tea part of the BST, the only tea
part I'm not part of. Oh. I could tell you
about the GOB and the GEB until the cows come home.
But the point is they're antecedents. The CiU is a
relatively new organization with deep roots in Portland. It kind

(01:10:24):
of came out of the flurry of independent unions that
kind of in fast food service and retail that flourished
in the wake of the Burgerville Workers Union. Burgerville Workers
Union itself goes public in God, that was April of
twenty sixteen, Because of course it's been that fucking long.
It was in the works a while before that. God,

(01:10:51):
all those meetings. The earliest antecedents are arguably the Portland
General Biership branch of the IWW's Industrial Organizing Research Group,
the Precarious Worker Subgroup, or maybe it was a little

(01:11:11):
wage Workers subgroup August of thirteen, But that's Antasus, right,
this kind of goes public. This itself is built on,
you know, the Jimmy Johns Workers Union, especially for on
the Twin Cities, and earlier in the two thousands, and
then of course before that, the Starbucks Workers Union that

(01:11:33):
had multiple different campaign flourishings. I think the earliest in
the late nineties early aughts in New York City on
which honestly you'll see some articles mention this on which
the foundations of the modern Starbucks Workers United now rests.
So what we've seen now in the wake of all
of this shit, right, is you have an incredibly militant

(01:11:55):
working class coming forward and they aren't popping off. They're
not waiting for permission from any org to just start
fucking organizing their workplace, sometimes filing for for union elections,
sometimes not the ones that have been filing for contracts.
There are, I have complicated feelings, but there are real gains.

(01:12:17):
You can make from contracts right that it is a
lot easier to get certain victories than you can and others.
Now there's also limitations, right, But the CiU comes from
a number of different unions coming together, you know, don't
work as united a few others to basically like actually

(01:12:38):
preserve you know, democracy in their workplace, to pool resources
around you know, trainings around contract bargaining and elections, as
well as to rely on each other for direct for
direct action assistance and things like that. And you know,
the the IWW has also got a thread in all
of this. But yeah, it's it's essentially of like, you know,

(01:13:01):
we're not trying to own everything, right. The CiU exists
as a platform for all the different types of independent
union activity that are occurring, right, and to create a
base on which we can actually start talking to each
other more, to cooperate and interact with each other. Right.
There is more of a contract focus in the CiU. So,

(01:13:23):
you know, I'm a wob with experience in duel carding.
You know, you have your contract union on the one hand,
and you're fighting union on the other. And this allows
folks to sort of approach union organizing and labor organizing
from any level of experience and any number of backgrounds.

Speaker 6 (01:13:40):
Right.

Speaker 9 (01:13:40):
I think that's the real strength of the CiU is
not to instead to constrain the upswell of worker miltancy,
but instead to give it a place to help put
down some roots while also allowing even more militant struggle
to intertwine within those growths.

Speaker 6 (01:13:58):
So I think that's a really great explanation the CiU
and how the CiU formed, and the purpose that the
CiU provides two workers all. I mean, so far, the
CiU is growing rapidly. We've been talking with a lot
of workers, and primarily in Oregon and in Portland, but
even workers outside of that purview. And I have a

(01:14:22):
lot of hope that the CiU is going to be
able to help unionization in a way that other unions
are not willing to at the moment or having difficulty
breaking into. And so far, so good. I mean, I
think we have gosh, I think there's like at least

(01:14:42):
trying to do the math right now in my head.
I do lose count sometimes, but I think we got
about six different shops involved in the CiU currently, six
including my own exactly six week up shops including.

Speaker 9 (01:14:56):
My own no, that's fine. Yeah, yeah, Oh honey, there's
so much more to come.

Speaker 4 (01:15:02):
There's so much to come.

Speaker 6 (01:15:05):
Oh, they're going to learn why we picked this city, all.

Speaker 4 (01:15:10):
Right, crows.

Speaker 6 (01:15:16):
But it's going really well, and we have a lot
more campaigns that are going to go public in the future.
But one thing that we really noticed while organizing all
of these campaigns, and you know, whether we ourselves organize
them or whether we had a hand in assisting them
organize themselves throughout the city, one thing that all of us,
various organizers started to realize is that we represent a

(01:15:41):
large amount of trans folks at all these jobs. And
now some of that could be chalked up to the
fact that we live in Portland and we kind of
live in the trans mecca, so of course you're going
to come across a lot of trans workers. But here's
the deal that we kind of noticed is that trans
workers regardless of living in Portland, Oregon or you know,
the fact that we have so many trans people living
here for a lot of reasons. I won't get into that.

(01:16:03):
We all know, which is why we moved here in
the first place.

Speaker 9 (01:16:06):
Refugees were Let's be real, let's run away refugees.

Speaker 6 (01:16:10):
Yeah, but we noticed that there's a lot of trans
workers working, as you reluctantly put it earlier, service industry jobs,
and not just service industry jobs, a variety of jobs,
but most of which are you know, minimum wage, poverty wage,
let's be honest, jobs that offer almost zero upward mobility

(01:16:32):
for trans folks. And so that's the thing that we
started looking at is the ladder, and as you go
up the ladder, you see less and less and less
trans folks. So down here at the bottom working, you know,
fast food jobs, working, sweaty donut jobs, working, you know,
in I mean the restaurant industry as a whole, I
think is a lot of we assist as well as

(01:16:56):
you know, potentially some grocery store workers and other people
like that. We don't have a whole lot of representation
in our workplaces that we make up, you know. I mean,
we can look at some of the larger industries in
town that do provide unionization for workers, and there's many,
but you know, I think it's easy to look at

(01:17:17):
like a lot of the auto industry or the warehouse
industries and things like that, and of course they have
trans workers, but it's an overwhelming amount working within the
service industry, and so as we started organizing more and
more service industry shops, we started realizing that we are
representing a lot of trans people. And what's really important
to us is that if we're going to be representing
trans people in the workplace, then we should give them

(01:17:39):
a platform and a voice to be able to speak
about their concerns and their issues that they haven't otherwise had.
And that's why the CiU decided to put on this action,
you know, and we chose it when we chose it
for a very particular reason, and to be honest, we
thought about doing it over Pride weekend, and I think
that would have been lovely. But on the other hand,

(01:18:00):
you know, Pride is about a celebration of existence, and
there's a lot of visibility during Pride already, so we
kind of step back. We reflected on that for a
little bit, and we decided that Labor Day is not
exactly a time of year where you hear about people
talking about LGBTP rights and trans rights. I mean, of

(01:18:21):
course there's a little bit of that going on, I'm
not sure and to say that there's none, but it
seems like a really great opportunity for us to host
this event over Labor Day week and give trans workers,
the working class an actual platform and a voice to
express their concerns issues and give their thanks. At the
same time to the unions who represent them and like

(01:18:44):
I said before, it could represent them even better. So
this is our way for reminding them and also at
the same time to follow up picket reminding Portland that
if you don't take care of your community and specifically
in this case, or trans working class community, then we

(01:19:06):
will make ourselves heard and you will listen to us
one way or another. And if we have to take
to the streets in order to have our voice heard,
we are more than happy to do that.

Speaker 9 (01:19:18):
Read the promise, black the threat. That's an old slogan,
but again it's when we really need to bring.

Speaker 6 (01:19:25):
Back and city birds. City birds are very important all this,
but I know nothing is.

Speaker 9 (01:19:31):
More important, but listen, listen, We're in Portland. The obligatory
crow conversation is just part of the bargain. The Liberty
weekend tends to be very important because this has been
a lot of retail and food and entertainment business happens,
and frankly, given you know, the whole genocide. We decided

(01:19:55):
we were going to help, you know, show the power
of organized labor by bring up of a wrench into that, right,
So why we chose Labor Day getting into sort of
like what the Trans Day of Solidarity is. We're going
to be having a speaker and rally at four pm
at Pioneer Square in Portland, Oregon on Saturday, September second.

(01:20:19):
This is a huge, huge weekend for food service or
entertainment and yeah, for retail. And while we're having trans
speakers from a number of different campaigns and you can
speak from four to you know, wrapping up at around five,
We're then going to start moving on a mobile picket line,

(01:20:39):
a flying picket all over downtown Portland because we need
to bring joy to a lot of workers and we're
ruin a lot of bosses' days. This is leverage and
we'll use it. We'll just cost them as many, you know,
as much money as we possibly can. We'll be hitting
a number of different stores. It looks like we'll be
hitting well you'll see it the march, but we'll be

(01:21:04):
going all over the city. We have everything covered in
terms of needs and amenities, there's going to be chants
and leaflets, there'll be medics a plenty, they'll be all
sorts of safety concerns will be addressed by or organizers
on the ground. So please come, one, come all. We

(01:21:27):
actually should have a marching band that'll be pretty fun
that I didn't expect to land up. It'll be a
Union marching band, no less.

Speaker 4 (01:21:34):
Nice, nice. I love to see it.

Speaker 9 (01:21:37):
It's gonna be pretty great. So if you like trans
people and making bosses cry, you should come to this.

Speaker 4 (01:21:47):
What time if we do?

Speaker 9 (01:21:48):
This is starting again four pm the at Pioneer Square
in downtown Portland, and then we'll be doing the march
throughout the city from row five o'clock.

Speaker 6 (01:22:01):
And I do recommend that folks wanting to come out
to the event be ready to chant, bring your walking
shoes because we have a bit of a trek ahead
of us making bosses miserable across town. And uh, make
some signage, bring, bring picket signs, bring you know in

(01:22:23):
in picket signs and support of both trans people, uh,
working class folks, union workers, or just reminding bosses to
stop being ship heads. Whatever you want to put on
your sign, it's lovely. I will give you a hint
as to one of the locations that we will be picketing.

(01:22:45):
And I think it's okay for me to mention this,
but you know, well, we'll make sure to picket the
world's worst tourist trap also one of the absolute one
of the absolute most difficult.

Speaker 8 (01:23:05):
Uh.

Speaker 7 (01:23:05):
You can't struggle that I've ever been a part of
only being one so far particularly, but you know it
really irks me. So anyways, if you're interested in that,
come on down and you can see the World's Worst
turns trap on your way.

Speaker 4 (01:23:23):
And for people who are not in Portland, I do
want to remind people it's it's probably not enough time
to do it this year, but you too, You too
can have a trans Day of solidarity. You could also
have it on a different day. We can have one.
If we planned this correctly, we could in fact have
three hundred and sixty five days of trans of transolidarity.

(01:23:47):
We could take all of the days. I don't know
this is people can have like the Leapier Day or
something like that. We'll get ther.

Speaker 9 (01:23:56):
We already have May Day. It's called you know, there's
no need for us a labor day. I really feel
like if we keep doing this every year. We can
just take it.

Speaker 4 (01:24:05):
Yeah, we can. We can get rid of fake every
day and make it based Labor Day again exactly.

Speaker 9 (01:24:10):
I mean it's trans Labor Day.

Speaker 6 (01:24:13):
I mean, I don't know, that's a lot. I mean
I'm only visible one day of the year, and I
only remember things one day of the year.

Speaker 4 (01:24:21):
I don't know, I know, Okay, okay, okay, there's there's
one day. We got one day of pride. There's like,
isn't there like a bisexual visibility day or something?

Speaker 5 (01:24:30):
There is one?

Speaker 9 (01:24:31):
There is, Yes, bisexuals only appear for one day.

Speaker 4 (01:24:33):
It's at least three days, and we know a four
right before. There's like two other trans ones. We we
could possibly have a full five days that we were visit.

Speaker 9 (01:24:45):
I'm just gonna put forward that, like listen, if you
also want to, you know, and if you can get
something together for Sunday, September third, we could just make
trans Data Solidarity followed by trans Day of Wrath, you know,
because if the picket line has to go too long, well,
you know, we get mny ownery.

Speaker 4 (01:25:03):
Well and also okay, like I have been watching you
all make up its wrath MONTHO, it's not enough Pride's
wrath tipe jokes for too long and there has been
not enough wrath. So I'm calling you for more wrath days.
We need to actually do the day.

Speaker 6 (01:25:18):
Absolutely. Oh so gonize your workplace.

Speaker 12 (01:25:22):
Oh, absolutely organize your workplace fine, you know, and if
you find out that like the people that own your
company are fascists or helping to fuel the genocide, organize
even harder.

Speaker 9 (01:25:33):
Help get friends involved, have them try and get on
jobs to help take those motherfuckers down. Remember, there's so
much you can do to cost the people that are
trying to kill us a lot of money, well also
making your lives so much better.

Speaker 2 (01:25:47):
So do your part.

Speaker 6 (01:25:51):
Hope to see you all again, Well not again, I
hope to see you all there and again. It's going
to be September second, four pm Pioneer Square, downtown Portland, Oregon,
and be there for the rally. Listen to people's voices.
We are doing this for a reason. It's important that

(01:26:13):
we give trans folks a platform and support us on
the picket line. We would really appreciate this other. Oh,
you can also find a link to all this on
the Coalition of Independent Union's Facebook page. We also have
an Instagram. You can find us on just just type
in Coalition of Independent Unions or CiU.

Speaker 4 (01:26:35):
And you can find that in the decripsion Perfect.

Speaker 6 (01:26:39):
Perfect And if you need any more information, please feel
free to hit up either of those accounts. I'm'd be
happy to inform you on whatever you need.

Speaker 4 (01:26:49):
Yeah, I'm with that. Wishing everyone a happy Transda solidarity.
If you're a boss, wishing you a bad Transda solarity. Yeah,
and everyone, go go out into the world, make more
trans day or stas of solidarity, make more bosses, sad,
make workers happy. This is within your power to do.

(01:27:10):
And yeah, go go into the world and make mischief. Hi.

Speaker 10 (01:27:31):
Everyone, it's me James today and I'm joined by Hulia
Messner from Seawatch. She's one of the spokespeople for sea Watch.
Sea Watch your organization at rescues Mediterranean rescues migrants in
the Mediterranean.

Speaker 5 (01:27:45):
Hud Hi, good morning, welcome.

Speaker 11 (01:27:48):
Hi, thank you so much for your invitation.

Speaker 10 (01:27:50):
Yeah, not good money for you. I guess could you
start off by explaining to us perhaps what sea watch
does and why there's a need for it to do
that as well?

Speaker 11 (01:28:01):
Yeah, of course, So Seawatch is a Civility and Search
and Rescue Organization. So we are trying to save people
from distress at sea, in the Mediterranean Sea. So you
can imagine a situation being very cruel at the European
external borders right now. So far more than two two
hundred people drowned only this year while trying to flee

(01:28:22):
to the European Union and the area we cover, people
are mostly fleeing from Tunisia and Libya for example, to Italy,
but also trying to reach Malta for example. So what
we are trying to do is actually really rescuing bar
with ships. So currently we have two ships. One is
prepared at the moment for its first operation and the

(01:28:45):
second one had just had rescue on the weekend and
is now currently blocked initially. And on the other side
we also have monitoring airplanes surveying the area and trying
to monitor the human rights situation over the Mediterranean and
trying to monitor firstly state violence but also secondly trying
to give information when the airplanes are finding boats under

(01:29:09):
stress then for people being rescued.

Speaker 5 (01:29:12):
Okay, so there's a lot there.

Speaker 10 (01:29:14):
I think that we should probably break down for people
and the first thing I think is you said that
one of your boats is blocked.

Speaker 5 (01:29:21):
Now, Yes, maybe people won't.

Speaker 10 (01:29:23):
Be familiar with the way that certain European countries have
reacted to the migration coming across the Mediterranean. So can
you explain what blocking constitute.

Speaker 11 (01:29:36):
Yeah, so, in Europe, like since a few years, in
several years, we also see an increase in ultra right
wing movements and also ultra right governments. So what is
happening now, especially in Italy where we are operating from,
is that we have a ultra right wing government under
the President Georgia Miloney installed and the government is currently

(01:29:58):
trying to hinder will see rescue because it's a way
to actually hinder and also block migration. So in the
beginning of the year, for example, there was a decree
put in place that really makes it so much harder
for us to operate. And at the moment after our
rescue on the weekend, we are blocked for twenty days,

(01:30:20):
meaning that we cannot go out and do our usual
work in the Mediterranean, but our ship has to stay
import because Italian authorities are claiming that we violated the decree,
which is actually going against international law.

Speaker 5 (01:30:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 10 (01:30:36):
So I think when you say that they're trying to
hinder migration in the Mediterranean. That's quite a nice way
of saying, I guess, because what this means is that
they are making that migration even more dangerous than it
already is by not allowing people to be rescued. Right,
and as you said, it's already incredibly dangerous, and the.

Speaker 11 (01:30:56):
More right, the Mediterranean Sea is a graveyard. Like as
I said, more than twenty two hundred people died this
year only crossing, and thousands of people died since twenty
and fourteen, like numbers can be seen like with the
IUM or the International Organization of Migration for example, that

(01:31:19):
a're monitoring also the situation in the central central Mediterranean.
And what this place or this external border actually constitute
constitutes is a crime scene, a crime scene again for
crimes against humanity because state states are like purposefully really
intentionally letting people drown.

Speaker 10 (01:31:42):
Yeah, and yeah, it's tragic, it's really horrible. Can you
explain a little bit about like the way that I guess,
just the mechanics of people crossing the vessels they use
where they like the journey people have seen the Mediterranean
at all, like depending on where they live aby. See,
they might live on the med but if they don't know,
maybe they've seen beaches and beach holidays in Spain or something.

(01:32:03):
And obviously that's that's not all of it. So can
you explain a little bit about the conditions of the crossing.

Speaker 11 (01:32:08):
Yeah, so people are all people that we rescue mostly
are trying to flee from Tunisia as well as Libya.
So the situation in Libya, for example, is really horrible,
is very violent. There's a lot of documentation of torture camps,
of rape, of murder, of slave trade, and people that

(01:32:31):
comes come from the sub Sahuarent region and are trying
to flee to the European Union are crossing Libya for example,
but also in Tunia at the situation at the moment
is very dire. Is it's very racist. There's like racist
violent campaign started by the Tunisian president in the beginning

(01:32:54):
of the year especially, so we see a lot of
institutional racism, We see a lot of racism and also
a lot of islands on the streets. So people are
really trying to flee from the country and people are
using all means possible of pause because they have to.
There's no easy way to come to Europe. Then people
fleeing cannot just take a train or an airplane actually,

(01:33:17):
and then like trying to reach shores of the European Union,
of a boat is they only means, so they're really
forced to do that. And boats that are used are
for example, inflatable boats, but also metal boats. And these
metal boats especially are very very dangerous because they are
only like constructed really not in good conditions, so they're

(01:33:41):
really easy to sink.

Speaker 6 (01:33:43):
So as soon as.

Speaker 11 (01:33:44):
Water comes in, these boats are actually sinking. So people
are also mostly not wearing life wet, so it's really dangerous.
Like the number of people on the boat is way
too high for their capacities. So most boats as soon
as they go on to see they are actually in
distress and they are in need of rescue.

Speaker 10 (01:34:04):
Okay, yeah, and then let's talk about some of the
rescues that see what has been able to do, because
some of them have resulted in the really big numbers
of people you've been able to save? Right, I think
there was one in twenty seventeen, which is fifty something people,
Is that right?

Speaker 11 (01:34:19):
Yeah? I mean could very well be twenty seventeen. I
didn't work with sewers. So I don't know which rescue
me you mean exactly, But for example, just now, on
the weekend, we rescued seventy two people actually out of
distress at sea with our ship Aurora.

Speaker 10 (01:34:35):
Okay, so let's talk about like what that rescue looks like.
I guess what happens is maybe they and the aircraft
spot so the ship is in distress. Is that right,
and then your ship can respond and go to them.

Speaker 6 (01:34:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 11 (01:34:48):
For example, there's also another organization it's called Alarm Phone.
They are like a distress hotline where people in distress
at seek and call, and they are also giving them
the information to all ships in the area and of
course two authorities. So on the weekend, our Aurora actually
first supported another civil search and rescue ship from Open

(01:35:08):
Arms with their rescue and then was led to this
particular distress case also with the help of our monitoring
flights operations which are called airborne, and the people were
then rescued on Friday, as said, seventy two people. And
then normally what you have to do is of course

(01:35:30):
informed like the competent authorities in the area, so state authorities,
and according to international law, then state authorities have to
coordinate the rescue, so we of course communicated, communicated with authorities,
and authorities only after a while actually assigned us to
the port of Trapani. So Trapani is in Sicily, on

(01:35:53):
the island of Sicily, and it was much farther way
than the nearest port, which was on the island of
Lump So you have to imagine, of course, distreads and
the rescue cases are very dangerous situations and people of
course need immediate support and need immediate transfer to the

(01:36:15):
land where medical help can like intensely happen, et cetera.
Because people might be on sea for several days, they
might be in psychological but as well in physical pain
and stress. They might have burns from actually a fuel
and seawater mixed, for example, and of course dehydration is

(01:36:39):
a very very big danger and risk for people in
distress at sea. So after we rescued and after we
got assigned the port of Trapany, we made very clear
to the authorities that Trapani is way too far and
that according to international law we need to go to
a Lump producer because it's the most suitable nearest port.

(01:37:00):
But then we got noticed that we are not allowed
to go to Lum Producer actually, and that meant that
we were in total forced to stay on CEA for
thirty seven hours, and also for those people in distress
and rescued, they were forced to stay more than twenty
four hours additionally on sea, like having to really endure

(01:37:22):
those really difficult this really difficult situation. The next day, Saturday,
we were still on see the sun like really burned
relentlessly by that point, and people were facing dehydration. One
person actually fainted, and it became really increasingly dangerous the
situation on board, which is why we community communicated more

(01:37:45):
and more with authorities and they were then forced after
a while to let us enter to Lump Producer because
the situation was really dire and people needed to disembark
this embark on land.

Speaker 10 (01:37:57):
Yeah, I think that's a really good summation of like
some of the sort of like hostility you encounter from states.
Another thing that see, what she's encountered at least in
the past, is either negligent or like interference by state
agencies at sea. I'm not sure if it's a navy
or the coast Guard. I think it was maybe the
coast Guard, the Libyan coast Guard whod interfered with a

(01:38:18):
rescue and this may have been before you started to
It's find it.

Speaker 11 (01:38:21):
Yeah, but the so called Libyan Coast Guard is an Yeah,
it is an actor that is really violent, violently intercepting
people that are trying to reach European shores and are
also violently interfering with rescues of civil search and rescue ships.
So we saw for example, shooting, like shootings in the air,

(01:38:43):
like in the direction of our airplanes, but also in
direction of other search and rescue ships. For example, we
saw intimidations, We saw violations of international law and human
rights by the so called Libyan Coast Guard. Because what
is happening is that the European States, the European Union
is actually supporting the socoed Libyan Coast Guard to intercept

(01:39:05):
people at sea, so to really block people from getting
to the European Union.

Speaker 10 (01:39:11):
Yeah, and it seems to be like a strategy throughout
the European Union.

Speaker 6 (01:39:14):
Right.

Speaker 10 (01:39:15):
It's rather than supporting people as they come, making this
journey less dangerous, they're trying everything they could do to
keep people in North Africa to stop them coming to
Europe at all.

Speaker 11 (01:39:26):
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely, We see this on a very practical
level in the Mediterranean Sea, but we also see this
on a political level, so with externalization policies, with deals
with Tunisia. For example, just recently there has been a
deal between the European Union and Tunisia with a lot
of money involved to actually trying to block migration again

(01:39:48):
and to increase the support for the Tunian Coast Guard,
for example. But we also see a lot of political
talks between Italy and Libya. Libya is also now a
former colony of Italy, so there's very close ties and
ties and a lot of influence. And just a couple
of days ago there was the transfer of two ships

(01:40:11):
from Italy to do so called Libyan Coast Guards. So
they're really also, yeah, supporting this very violent, very dangerous
actor with technical.

Speaker 4 (01:40:22):
Means m hmm.

Speaker 5 (01:40:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 10 (01:40:24):
And obviously, like people who listen to all our episodes
will be aware, like there's increased violence in the Sahel.
There's not a large shale protests in Syria this week,
it's not as if the people will. There will still
be dangerous situations for people to flee, and what the
EU is doing is making that dangerous journey more dangerous

(01:40:44):
rather than sort of accepting that it's a thing that
happens to humans and trying to make it less deadly.

Speaker 6 (01:40:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 11 (01:40:51):
Absolutely, And it's like it's a very politically induced situation
and we are like the European Union is supporting human
rights crimes, like with the money of the European Union,
human rights crimes are actually committed. So a couple of
weeks ago we saw the quotations from Tunian authorities of
people on the move to the Tunian Libyan border, so

(01:41:15):
to the desert, and people were actually left there to die. Literally.

Speaker 10 (01:41:20):
Another way that you guys encountered state level hostility is
with these legal actions, right that have been taken against you,
against seawatch, against individuals who are part of sea watching,
against vessels that Seawatch aren't. Can you explain some of those.

Speaker 11 (01:41:35):
Yeah, So for example, I mean the most recent one
with the blockade of our ship, so it's blocked like
according to state authorities because we or they claim we
violated the Italian decree that I just talked about, and
they actually said that we had to request a port

(01:41:58):
in Tunisia and bring people back to Tunisia, which would
have been completely against international law because Tunia cannot be
considered a safe board or a safe country of origin.
So now we are in the process of like waiting
for the Aurora actually to be de blocked again. But

(01:42:19):
also Italian authorities of course trying to criminalize person like persons.
For example, in the case of Carula Rocket, who was
a captain with us in twenty nineteen and who who
had to enter also the port of Lamproducer because of
the very very difficult situation on board, because the ship

(01:42:40):
was forced to stay several days really on the Mediterranean
Sea and the situation became very dire. So there was
also proceedings against her in person. So really people that
are trying to show solidarity and support people on the
move to claim their human right to claim asylum are
criminalized on the basis of the accusations that are just

(01:43:05):
completely not true. For example, was also like all the
charges against her were dismissed, there was no legal.

Speaker 6 (01:43:12):
Ground for them.

Speaker 10 (01:43:13):
M Yeah, but that harassment obviously still hinders your work,
right even even if the charges are dismissed, like the
time that the ship can't go out, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 11 (01:43:22):
And it also is also a means to like to
to implement fear now in people's minds, because of course
it is super scary to be to be accused by
a state to have actually violated law and you are
facing charges of years in prison, and like only that,

(01:43:47):
fear can already do a lot. But we don't only
see this in Italy. We also see this a lot
in Greece, for example, a country which is also really
trying to criminalize humanitarian and politically or like humanitarian workers
that are standing in solidarity with people on the wove.

Speaker 10 (01:44:07):
Yeah, and so people might not be as familiar with
the landscape of migration. So maybe you could just explain,
like where the boats are based, because you talked about Greece,
so I know that that Maltese authorities have also like
bought cases against Sea Watch. Can you explain the different
landscape I guess of where your boats are based and
where they tend to sort of end up relocating or

(01:44:31):
taking people to once they've been rescued.

Speaker 11 (01:44:34):
Well, we take people who've been who's been, who've been
rescued a lot to Italy, but we're also of course
trying to coordinate with Maltese authorities who author the legal
responsibility to take people in that Maltese authorities or Malta
the state is actually really irresponsive, so we really see

(01:44:57):
as little engagement of the country as possible. We see
a lot of hindering of migration. We see very special
cases with Malta where Malta Maltese authorities are actually, for example,
communicating to merchant vessels who are finding or who are
in vicinity of distress cases that they should just hand

(01:45:20):
out fuel to the boats or hand out water. So
those distress cases, those boats are actually making their way
to Italy on their own, so they are out of
Maltese responsibility.

Speaker 10 (01:45:31):
Oh wow, yeah, so it's kind of passing the back along. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's just so sad and how similar so much this
is to the way the US deals with people coming
across our land the border, which is often dear to
say they have they been back to Mexico, which again
is a violation of international law and it's not a
safe place. And again people in the US have been

(01:45:53):
criminalized for providing drinking water to people in the desert,
right and even if it doesn't work, it scares people.

Speaker 11 (01:46:00):
Yeah, And it's like, definitely it's not only a European
kind of situation. It's the situation at borders in general,
because borders are in the end like a construct to yeah,
to safeguard in like like I don't know how to say,
like in the cordination marks you're a parent space.

Speaker 10 (01:46:25):
Yes exactly, yeah, and to kind of yeah, I don't know,
enforce some kind of notion who's in, who's out, and
who's the other and who's the same. I wonder one
thing that people will be wondering is obviously see waches
a large scale operation with quite substantial assets, and people
may be wondering, how you see which funded? How do

(01:46:46):
you get you know, you need experienced captains, you need
maybe people who experienced in rescue operations that see pilots.

Speaker 5 (01:46:55):
So where do all these people come from?

Speaker 11 (01:46:58):
Well, like they come I mean also from the general public.
We have so many volunteers that are working with us.
Really also we have people that are writing us and trying,
like trying to support and of course like everybody can
or anyone can have a look at the website. We
have job offers on the website usually as well, and

(01:47:18):
like if you want to support, really have a look
and also try to reach out in case of any questions,
and like Seawatch and also other civil sea rescue organizations
are really sustaining themselves and are financed by donations. So
we are solely financed by donations, and we are really
like trying to keep the work up as much as

(01:47:41):
much as possible, and we have lots of different opportunities
as well to support not only by working with us,
but also in spreading our message on social media. So
that's maybe the easiest for everyone who has social media accounts.
Just like search Seawatching, you'll probably find our accounts on Twitter,
on Instagram, on Facebook, but also on TikTok for example,

(01:48:03):
like inform yourself, educate yourself and share the message, talk
to your families while having dinner, talk to your friends,
and also support really self organized groups of people on
the move. So for example, you can inform yourself by
finding refugees in Libya the group or refugees in Tunisia
on Twitter and they are actually talking about their situation

(01:48:26):
in the country. But also like like on on miggression groups.

Speaker 10 (01:48:33):
Yeah, I wonder like talking about refugees in Tunisia and
Libya has sort of reminded me recently, we discussed on
an episode like the presences of Wargner group in Africa
right specifically they've been in Libya before, they are now
in the Sahel in Central African Republic, in different places,
and how people have reacted very differently to a presences

(01:48:53):
of Aargner group in Ukraine to the presences of Wagner
group in Africa. And I wonder this isn't to say
that people I don't want to be construed to saying
that people shouldn't have solidarity with people fleeing con conflict
in Ukraine, because they should and those people have every
right to a.

Speaker 5 (01:49:08):
Safe place too.

Speaker 10 (01:49:09):
But has there been a change in the tone or
just the material support for you guys since the conflict
in the Ukraine grew broader of the Dombats and Crimera
into the full scale invasion.

Speaker 11 (01:49:23):
I mean, we see like we are in a situation
of like multiple crisses. Now. Of course we saw the
invasion of Russia in Ukraine, but we're also we're facing
climate change, We're facing dire economical situations, et cetera. So
also our generations went down in the in the past year, definitely,
but we are still also are so lucky to have

(01:49:45):
like a very strong solid like solidary basis of people
supporting us. So I think it's like it's kind of
both a little bit.

Speaker 10 (01:49:55):
Yeah, I always think like with respect to the solidarity,
and I've never really like every time so that there's
a larger scale crisis at the southern border of the
United States, right, Like recently, the United States government, very
similar to what you were describing, was keeping people in
the open desert and leaving them there for days without
food or water, and hundreds of people mobilized to help them,

(01:50:16):
people who you might not expect to be particularly radical
in their politics or you know, in the sort of
direct action people, but they were great and everyone helped
and answer result, no one died. One young woman died
in Texas in CBP custody. And like I always think
if people could see it then, like you were saying,
they can see your videos, people, there's a very human
response to never want that to happen to another human being.

(01:50:38):
It's just hard when there's there's so much going on.

Speaker 11 (01:50:43):
Yeah, And also it's I think it's completely understandable that we, like,
not every person can concern themselves with all the topics
all the crisis situations we're facing right now, and like
no one expects that of us, but we can expect
of stay because it's day of duty that like they
are taking care of people actually, and they are really

(01:51:06):
trying to set the base for everyone to like to
claim the human right and it states themselves that actually
like wrote down those human rights because of a certain situation.
So I mean, especially in Europe, we really have like
we're just considering our history is just considering the history
of Germany. We just like it's it's platant ignorance and

(01:51:28):
also completely against any historical evidence, against any historical work
we've done, what the situation now is and what we're
actually doing at the external borders like committing human rights
crimes and like ignoring the situation actually like increasing the
dangers for people on the move on daily basis. And

(01:51:49):
I think, I mean it's not only I mean you
also mentioned this before. Now, like it's also situation you're
facing in the US, and we really have to like
build strong transnational movements and strong transnational ties to like
work against state violence order violence in general.

Speaker 10 (01:52:07):
Yeah, I think that that's an excellent point that this
is part of a broader kind of state violence that
everyone should be opposed to like it hurts everyone in
the end. And yeah, as both of us being European people,
we've seen that like very obviously, but we know government
seem to have forgotten. One thing that you mentioned that
I wanted to talk about before we finish was climate change,
because you said, you know, we obviously like the it's

(01:52:30):
very hard for someone living in Europe or North America
this year to pretend that climate change isn't happening, like
with soaring temperatures, hurricane in California, wildfires everywhere. Can you
explain a little bit, because I think one thing that
people fail to connect is and maybe that's largely due
to not bad reporting perhaps, but like it doesn't get

(01:52:51):
mentioned in reporting when we talk about migration, we don't
talk about climate change, and we talk about climate change
and talk about migration. But the two go hand in hand, right,
Like the people, certainly many of the people that I
see our certain border coming from areas most affected by
climate change. Is that something that see what sees too
like as parts of the world that are more marginal
for people to live in get even harder to live in,

(01:53:13):
those people coming being forced to leave.

Speaker 5 (01:53:16):
I guess, well.

Speaker 11 (01:53:19):
Look at science now and at research and like millions
and millions of people more will be possibly be because
of climate change in the next in the next years.
We can't deny that fact. And we as European states
and European societies are a big part of why this
is actually happening and why climate change is increasing in

(01:53:42):
the in the speed that it is increasing right now.
So we have a huge responsibility to take care and
like to support people actually on the move. And I
mean as seawatch, we don't make any difference as of
why people are fleeing, people are in the stress, said see,
people are being rescued. That's it. That's the only responsible like,

(01:54:06):
that's the only perspective we have supporting people that are
in distressed at SEE, because if you are calling an ambulance,
they also don't ask, oh, hey, why are you actually
calling the ambulance like the jew and why are you
in this situation? The ambulance just coming. And this is
this should also be always the case in the Mediterranean.

Speaker 10 (01:54:27):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, or anywhere else people at SEE. So
I wonder, like the last couple of I think they
wanted to ask you more broad but you spoke earlier
about the rise of right wing governments and movements in Europe.
And when we obviously talk about the history of the
right wing in Europe and we think about fascism, and

(01:54:51):
I know people who listen to this podcast will be
very invested in like their their history and current struggle
of anti fascism. And would you say it was fair
it would be fair to cast what see what she
is doing within the broader spectrum of opposing fascism or
opposing I guess of nationalist state violence, right wing state violence.

Speaker 11 (01:55:10):
Absolutely, we are part of antifascist movement. We are anti
fascists by court, so we definitely define ourselves as antifacious activists.

Speaker 4 (01:55:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 10 (01:55:22):
Nice, And I wonder last thing that people want to
show the solidarity you mentioned some ways, is there anything
in particular, like I know people have contacted me about
volunteering for sea, which before en have directed them to
your website, But when we do have a lot of
listeners in Europe, and they are particular things that you're
looking for in volunteers. Obviously, anyone can donate and they

(01:55:43):
should if they have money, But what are you as
are certain qualifications you desperately need or so.

Speaker 11 (01:55:50):
I mean, we of course, always looking for people that
are supporting our operations, especially on sea, but also with
our airplanes of course, So if you have captains qualifications
or other qualifications that allow you to go to see
and sale, or engineering qualifications for example, or medical qualifications

(01:56:13):
as well, we're always looking for nurses for doctors supporting
on the ships, then please just like have a look
at the website and reach out. We have a specific
form as well where you can just also sign in
for interest basically, and then our crewing department takes care
and sees like who and like when it's actually fitting.

Speaker 10 (01:56:33):
Okay, yeah, that's great pla people can reach out and
before we finish up, is there anything else that you'd
like to share with people that you think we haven't
got to.

Speaker 11 (01:56:43):
I think we didn't talk about FRONTACS for example, or.

Speaker 5 (01:56:45):
Oh yeah, let's do it. Do you explain frontext to people?

Speaker 11 (01:56:48):
Yeah, So FRONTICICS is the European Border Protection Agency I'm
so called actually of course god and border agency and
FRONTICS is it's also surveying and working on the Mediterranean
Sea and like responsible for for border protection specifically in

(01:57:14):
general or it actually has a double mandate, so border
protection on the one side, but also coast guard duties
Europeans on the other side. What we criticize is of
course that FONTECS does so called border protection and does
not actually support people on the movement, people in distress.
So this double mandate does not work at all. We

(01:57:36):
see a lot of non coordination, a lot of a
lot of non information and also a lot of violence
of context. So for example, FANTECS or there was a
report from Human Rights Watch for example, and that fontext
is complicit in pullbacks by the so called Libyan Coast

(01:57:56):
Guard because there is actually communication between FONTECS and the
so called Libyan Coast Guard, and the so called Libyan
cost guard. Cost Guard can then detect boats in the
stress their location with this information but provided by FONTICS
and bring people or force people back to Libya for example.
So FANTAICS is really an actor that we criticize hugely

(01:58:18):
and that we actually working towards their abolishment because how
the organization or the institution is working right now does
not have anything to do with the legal.

Speaker 6 (01:58:32):
Rights of people.

Speaker 5 (01:58:33):
Yeah, and people will.

Speaker 10 (01:58:34):
We spoke with Ruth Kinner, who who's a professor in
Love for about lifeboats in the UK, because the UK
has a notionally it has a very real distinction between
rescuing people at sea and doing border reinforcement and those
two different things, no different, Yeah, if people like It's

(01:58:56):
also in crop Parkins book Mutual eight, he talks about
the value of lifeboats and volunteer organizations such as your own,
that it's very foundational to people talk a lot about
mutual aid, but this is like one of the I guess,
like foundational examples of it. So like, can you explain
what a better system? And obviously I'm not asking you
to like solve all the world's problems, but like, would

(01:59:18):
what would it? We can make relatively few changes, I guess,
and make this so much more humane and not have
someone's little children around in the Mediterranean so that I
don't know, people don't have to live next to someone
who speaks a different language from them, or whatever people's
fears are of migrants, can you explain what that would
look like?

Speaker 11 (01:59:35):
I mean, we need freedom of movement, that's for sure. Like,
and this is also one of our basic demands. We
need freedom of movement for everyone. We need people to
have legal and safe pathways through Europe, so safe passage.
We need a system that, in accordance to the needs
and the wants of people, people are actually also redistributed

(01:59:58):
over the European Union and can join their family members
for example, or their friends, their support systems while trying
to flee violence, while trying to flee from places where
they cannot live in the end, So this is really
like what we are focusing on in the end to
have people coming to Europe through safe passages. So and

(02:00:23):
this is really what needs to be established. And of
course in this current situation, as a first step, we
need a European coordinated search and rescue program with the
only mandate to rescue votes in distress, to rescue people
in distress, to actually make sure that the situation, the
death trap that the Mediterranean seas actually constituting at the moment, stops,

(02:00:46):
Like this situation has.

Speaker 6 (02:00:47):
To stop immediately.

Speaker 10 (02:00:48):
Yeah, and it could stop very quickly, right the level
of resources at state type available to deploy, they could
make this go away very quickly.

Speaker 11 (02:00:57):
I think they could have. There wouldn't be actually focused
on externalization and blocking people to come.

Speaker 10 (02:01:05):
Yeah, And I think, like, I don't know, when you
think about that, that's a conscious choice and the results
of that. It's very, very sad. And I mean in
the UK we seem to just talk about it openly now,
like they have whole campaigns about stopping small boats. But yeah,
I think people need to realize that, like, it's not
boats that they're stopping, it's little children that they're consigning

(02:01:26):
to risking their lives.

Speaker 11 (02:01:29):
Yeah, children, it's women, it's men, it's non binary persons,
it's everyone who wants to reach safety, and everyone deserves
to be rescued. Everyone deserves to be to live nor
questions asked.

Speaker 10 (02:01:44):
Yeah, no, I think that's a wonderful place to end. Actually,
I think it's a hard statement to disagree with. Can
you what are your Twitter handles? Where can people find
and follow seawatch.

Speaker 11 (02:01:55):
Do watch crew?

Speaker 5 (02:01:57):
Okay, and that's all over, that's your U r L
as well.

Speaker 11 (02:02:01):
Yeah, so let me have a look. So I'm not
saying saying anything wrong, but Seewatch crew so at Seawatch
Crew all together and US and small is actually our
German account and our international account is at Seawatch underline
in I n t L for international, and then we

(02:02:24):
also have an Italian account for all Italian speakers.

Speaker 10 (02:02:27):
Okay, perfect, Yeah, we'll make sure that we link to
those two. And thank you very much for your time
this afternoon, your time, morning, my time.

Speaker 11 (02:02:35):
Thank you so much for the request for talking to us.

Speaker 1 (02:02:38):
Yeah, of course, welcome back to it could happen here
a podcast about things falling apart, and you can't spell

(02:03:02):
falling apart without Republican Party, or at least several of
the letters fall into the party you use that for
that are also in this Garrison. Hello, how are you
doing good well with Garrison in Atlanta?

Speaker 13 (02:03:18):
Yeah, yes, I just got back from a visit in
Portland where we watched many upsetting things.

Speaker 5 (02:03:27):
Bak, we didn't.

Speaker 1 (02:03:28):
Watch a lot of upsetting things, Yeah.

Speaker 13 (02:03:30):
Probably the most upsetting of which was the first of
the twenty twenty four Republican primary.

Speaker 5 (02:03:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:03:36):
Yeah, boy, it sure was nice watching those Indonesian war
criminals reenact their crimes. Really cleared my mind after watching
the Republican debate.

Speaker 13 (02:03:48):
Yeah, that was a really good palette cleanser.

Speaker 1 (02:03:52):
So, you know, this is not the most timely thing
because we didn't want to just like do a reaction
podcas has where we talked about here's what we thought about.
You know, vi Vec's answer or anonymous white man number
four is answer to you know, these various questions.

Speaker 13 (02:04:09):
I thought Chris Christy was very put together.

Speaker 4 (02:04:12):
Very on.

Speaker 5 (02:04:15):
Message.

Speaker 1 (02:04:16):
Yeah, now we wanted to look at like wait for
some polls to come out and and actually kind of
both talk about what happened and kind of what worried us,
and also how it seems to be playing, uh with
the bass and the American voters in general, because all
of this matters, because again, the Republicans are I mean,
we are all a little bit the architects of collapse

(02:04:38):
here and in our in our lovely society. But the
Republicans they like to they like to really pump that
shit into a higher gear. So, you know, I think
the thing that kind of stuck out to both of
us most and the thing that's been one of the
primary kind of takeaways that one of the main things
people have talked about after the debate, uh was, was

(02:05:00):
Vivek's performance. Vivek Ramaswami, who is prior to I even
made a little comment prior to it that I didn't
I didn't know much about him or think he was
much of an entity in this because, uh, you know,
in in part because that's true. He was somebody who
is just kind of coming onto the scene in politics.
I wanted to talk a little bit about how he

(02:05:21):
started that because there was some stuff I was unaware
of here prior to him announcing his candidacy. He's one
of these guys who kind of started because he comes
out of biotech. He's a quote unquote entrepreneur, and specifically
he's the kind of shitty entrepreneur who like has managed
to get rich largely without actually contributing anything, like primarily

(02:05:43):
buying up patents for drugs in development that he profits
on but then later are found not to work. Is
a big part of how where his fortune comes from.
And he started kind of about really about a year ago,
I think, trying to brand himself as a kind of
political influencer, specifically through like social media. And he had

(02:06:07):
been getting a lot of attention, like as a result
of the success of his because he's one of these
guys he's good at using social media. He gets up
to you know, he's had a couple one hundred thousand
followers when he announces his candidacy, and prior to announcing
his candidacy, he had done well enough at kind of
building a brand for himself that in twenty two or

(02:06:29):
twenty twenty two, early twenty twenty two, he and the
Daily Wire start putting together a contract and they want
to bring him on, presumably for like a frightening, like
a deeply upsetting amount of money, to do something that
they haven't really done before, which is just kind of
launch a like a show based around him that's like

(02:06:52):
a news and politics show, which was a little bit
different kind of than a lot of the deals that
like they've had before, where it's more like, you know,
here's Matt Walsh's podcast where he's going to, you know,
try to get people killed. Here's Been Shapiro's podcast where
he's going to get angry at the Barbie movie. This
was like, we're launching a news and culture like a
news and politics podcast, and Vivek's going to be like

(02:07:14):
the face of it, right, yeah, with.

Speaker 13 (02:07:16):
Like attempts at actual like a political analysis, mostly from
a libertarian perspective.

Speaker 1 (02:07:21):
Yes, yes, And so that's the idea and kind of
midway through after you know, a significant amount of time
in development and according to kind of what Jeremy Boring,
who's the CEO of a Daily Wire, said after they
had spent a bit of money kind of working on
sort of the concept for this, he backs out rather suddenly,
boring later said his priorities were changing and we could

(02:07:43):
have chosen to be aggressive about it. We did spend
a little bit of money on the prep that we've
been doing. Like so, I think there's a little bit
of bad blood there actually between them. But he bounces
from this deal with the Daily Wire to announce his
twenty twenty four campaign run. And this seems to have
kind of started in early part, like earlier on in

(02:08:04):
this year, start of twenty twenty three, when he has
this meeting with a small group of who were described
in this ABC News article as conservative operatives, to discuss
his exciting plans. I'm going to read a quote from
that article. I'm going to run for president. Ramaswami sat
on the call. Ramaswami pitched himself as a candidate who

(02:08:25):
could make serious waves in the Republican primary at the meeting.
When met with some skepticism, Ramaswami argued that his candidacy
could also dissuade Florida Governor Ron De Santis from entering
the race. According to a source who was on the call.
In the lead up to his announcement, Ramaswami would tell
several other conservative activists that he believed that if he ran,
it could stop DeSantis from running or impact his viability

(02:08:46):
as a candidate if he did enter the race. Sources
said his campaign has turbocharged Ramaswami's social media presence, with
his number of followers on Twitter known as x nearly quadrupling,
ballooning from a little over two hundred and thirty six
thousand prior to announcing his candidate to see to now
nearly a million followers just six months later. And so,
you know, there's a couple of things that's interesting to

(02:09:06):
me about that. One that he's sort of he pitched
himself as I can stop DeSantis from running. And it's
a little unclear to me if these are guys that
specifically like hate Dysantis, or if it's more they don't
want him running against Trump, they don't want like a
fight between those two guys.

Speaker 5 (02:09:22):
Yeah, I'm saying.

Speaker 13 (02:09:23):
Postpone his political trajectory a little bit.

Speaker 1 (02:09:26):
And it was also, you know, before the debate, it
was kind of looking like because he was he was
creeping up on Dysantis yea, and like the last couple
of polls before the debate, taking and beating him in
a couple of states, which was interesting, you know, it
was kind of looking like it was working. And then
in the aftermath of the debate. We'll talk more about

(02:09:47):
Poles later and we'll talk about other candidates, but it
looks like he's kind of either plateaued or lost a
bit of support, even though a significant number of Republicans,
most in some polls think that he won the debate,
which is interesting to me. Now, when you and I
watched this, kind of the thing that that concerned us

(02:10:07):
was that we both saw him as sort of messaging
to the Nick Fuintes crowd. And what I mean by
that is young conservative activists who are at least willing
to dance with explicitly white nationalist ideas and who have
some sympathies with the insurgent right, including with acts of

(02:10:28):
violence committed by the insurgent right. You know, And obviously
Vivek is not he's not Nick Fuintes, he's not a Nazi,
he's not going to make jokes about the Holocaust. But
he does talk about certain things in a similar way,
particularly this idea of like the fact that immigration is
altering our national character. He talks national which is something

(02:10:50):
you hear a lot sometimes in more explicit terms from
these like basically these Nazis right, So it's it's kind
of a he's taking this term and he's washing it
a little bit.

Speaker 13 (02:11:00):
Yeah, I mean he throughout the debate, he definitely was
like very quick to betray himself as like the most
conservative person on stage whenever there'd be a question about
like like how extreme are you on this topic, and
they didn't raise it that way, but that's essentially what
they're asking. He was the first person to raise his
hand every time, and he did it very enthusiastically. Many

(02:11:21):
of the other people on stage had a lot of
like half raised hands. Yeah, we both noticed that Dysantis,
before raising his hand on a certain question, looked both
ways across the stage to see who else was raising
their hand before he raised his. But every single time
Vivik was the first guy to like jolt his hand up.
He was very it was very very intentionally positioning positioning

(02:11:45):
himself as the most extreme option on the on the
table there. And it wasn't just I think the content
of what he was saying that that made kind of
parallels between him and people like Nick Fuentez are just
kind of younger, younger conservative of like content creators and influencers.
It was also like the way he talked, like his

(02:12:05):
his his speech pattern, how fast he was.

Speaker 5 (02:12:09):
Very high school debater.

Speaker 13 (02:12:11):
Yeah, yeah, it just it's it was reminiscent of all
of like the horrible shit that I watched for my job,
like whenever I've watched through a whole bunch of like
like like zoomer conservative content creators.

Speaker 4 (02:12:23):
It was.

Speaker 13 (02:12:23):
It was that, but now on the debate stage. And
this is something I even like kind of talked about
in the last uh the Santis fash wave thing is
like where we are about to hit this big wave
of conservative zoomers who are going to be starting to
run for office, who were raised in this media environment,
and they're going to act like all of these kind
of commentators that we see on like YouTube, that we

(02:12:44):
see on Rumble, that we see on Twitch. They're going
to be emulating that style.

Speaker 1 (02:12:48):
I want to put a pin in that because we're
going to come back to this with a with some
audio from Nick himself that expresses a similar opinion. But
I want to note a couple of the things that
he specifically expressed that I found, we found very fascy,
and that I cansider to be really concerning. Top of
the list is the fact that he has openly stated
his desire to bomb Mexico.

Speaker 5 (02:13:06):
That is a real problem.

Speaker 11 (02:13:08):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (02:13:09):
And the degree to which a significant number of folks
on that stage weren't completely willing to put that off
the table is deeply concerning. That's not great, that's a
that's a Now. The upside is that, like, maybe that's
crazy enough that there's no chance Independence will vote for it,
But you never fully want to say that in America.

(02:13:30):
There's no way to know, no way to know whatsoever.
The other thing is that, you know he has so
Nick and a lot of these guys on the fascist
youth right, they're huge into removing people from being able
to vote. You know, Nick himself is basically a monarchist, right,
like he wants a Catholic monarchist.

Speaker 13 (02:13:50):
He's like a Catholic monarchist fascist.

Speaker 10 (02:13:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:13:52):
And by the way, this is not a fringe opinion.
Michael Knowles, who is one of the major personalities that
the Daily Wire, one of the largest conservative news organists
in the country. Has just recently went on a rant
talking about all the benefits of monarchy and protecting freedoms,
by which he means the property of rich people.

Speaker 13 (02:14:08):
Knowles is also a tradcat justice Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:14:11):
Knowles is also a Catholic traditionalist. Yeah, and so these guys,
you know, they both talk about that. And the thing
that Vivek is doing that is sort of the more
acceptable because you can't get up on stage yet at
a Republican debate and talk about the need for a
king right, but you can talk about the need to
cut people out of the franchise right. You know, Nick

(02:14:33):
being much more extreme and having the freedom to be
more extreme, talks a lot about repealing the Nineteenth Amendment,
taking the right to vote away from women. Vivek is
not going to say that, but he did say this.
Young people don't value a country that they just inherit.
That's why I've said every high school senior, I believe
she'd have to pass the same civics test that an
immigrant in this country has to pass in order to
become a voting citizen of the country. If that eighteen

(02:14:55):
year old wants all the privileges of citizenship as well.
This is deeply con learning for a number of reasons,
including the fact that any barrier you're put to voting
is going to reduce the number of people, specifically people
who are likely to vote for Democrats who do it.
But number two, like who gets to determine those tests? Well,
we're already seeing the way in which the state positions,

(02:15:19):
and like states like Florida on education are fundamentally changing
the amount of information kids are allowed to get, they
also theoretically would have the ability to fundamentally change the
nature of this test, you know, so that you know,
you have to express certain opinions and be inculcated in
certain opinions in order to be able to vote.

Speaker 2 (02:15:36):
This is a real problem.

Speaker 5 (02:15:38):
Vivek, you know, concerns us both for this. Again.

Speaker 1 (02:15:41):
We will talk about his kind of popularity in a second,
but I wanted to because when we both kind of felt,
you know, this is a guy who has a lot
of that fuintes energy he's bringing. And so I looked like,
what is Nick been saying about this guy? And I
found this video from a website you're gonna hate called
Zoomer Nash News Garrison. It's a substack that just a Yeah,

(02:16:06):
it's like a lot of clips from Yeah Nick Show
and stuff. So we're gonna we're gonna start watching this
Zoomer National News clip because there's a couple of points
that he makes in the first couple of first few
minutes of it that I think are are unfortunately worth
listening to and then discussing and then being unhappy.

Speaker 9 (02:16:28):
Yeah, the only person that is going to be good
for is Vivak.

Speaker 8 (02:16:32):
It's bad for DeSantis because he can't confront Trump. It's
bad for everybody else for the same reason. The only
person that's good for is Vivak, who's going to get
a bigger stage. And that's why I wanted to talk
about tonight because it's interesting about the Vak. He's an
interesting phenomenon. He's a child of immigrants from India.

Speaker 9 (02:16:54):
I think his parents are from India.

Speaker 8 (02:16:56):
And they moved to Ohio and he became a self
made nearly a billionaire. I think he's got an eight
figure net worth, nine figure net worth. I read on
Wikipedi he's got nine hundred and fifty million dollars. So
he's a self made nearly a billionaire, first generation Asian

(02:17:16):
immigrant who as far as I know, didn't really have
a much of a public profile or any kind of
a political presence, and just took the country by storm
with a viral social media campaign. I think people just
like what he says, at least that's what it appears
to be. And he's been controversial. I think a lot
of people like him. I think even people that don't

(02:17:38):
like him have commended him on his campaign, which has
been successful. He's competitive with DeSantis. DeSantis had a bigger
war chest than Trump. He had a bigger war chester
than any governor in the United States has ever had.
I think he had raised two hundred million dollars in
the last cycle, and he had the support of the
Jews in Israel, and oh his mine to governor and

(02:18:01):
back maybe the next best known politician in the race
next to Trump and governor of a major state. And
so in other words, he's got all these advantages, and
this other guy who really started from scratch is now
competitive with him. And I'll say too, it is unfortunate
his look because you know, I know that probably a

(02:18:25):
lot of Republicans are not totally on board with like
Hindu Indian and I'm not making any kind of comment
on that. I think that's just how things are, just
like with Bobby Jindal or some of these other guys
that ran. When I see an Indian guy running with
a name like vivek Ramaswami, let's not pretend I think

(02:18:46):
that's that's also a disadvantage for him, probably because the
Republican voter base is all white.

Speaker 6 (02:18:51):
It's ninety percent white.

Speaker 4 (02:18:52):
And I know that they're they.

Speaker 8 (02:18:56):
Undertake great pains to convince the world they're not racist
or xenophobic or something like that. But you know, I'm
sure they are not in love with that idea. Quite frankly,
I'm not in love with that idea. I want a
Christian to be president, not a Hindu. And I also
would prefer a president whose name I could pronounce, like
Joe Biden, not vivek Ramaswami.

Speaker 1 (02:19:20):
Now, all right, that's quite a line from Nick. I
think what he's actually saying there, Like, I think that's
that's a joke, right, That's quite a line from Yeah,
I think he's making he's making a little bit of
a bit there, I don't think. But but and that
becomes a little bit clear a bit later on, because
he he talks about you know, he's talking about there

(02:19:41):
kind of both how impressive, you know, objectively, the success
of avex campaign has been, and how it points to
the fact that he has done some stuff right, even
while he's saying I don't think he can win with
the Republican voter base the way that it is, which
I think is you know, partly shown by kind of
some of these polls that that come out showing him
losing support. But he he comes in a little bit later,

(02:20:01):
a couple of minutes later, and he talks about why
he likes Vivik, what he finds intriguing about him, and
I think that this is kind of valuable to hear.

Speaker 8 (02:20:10):
It's really more like an advertising pitch. It's like a
marketing pitch. It's the it's the perfect stereotype of like
a canned used car salesman political pitch. That's what they're
all like, Mike penns, Chris Christy. You could say they're
like full of shit, like That's how it would characterize it.
They're like another full of shit conventional, polished politician. And

(02:20:34):
they also all went through the steps. They're one state
wide elections, you know, they're all governors or senators, Chris Christy,
Nikki Haley, Asa Hutchinson, Bergham, DeSantis, they're all governors. Tim
Scott's a senator, and they have that canned full of
shit polish political thing. Both Yang and Vivek not only

(02:20:57):
are they not white, they're Asian and children of immigrants,
but there's also something that characterizes them that they're kind
of like a new type of campaign where it's super smart.
When you listen to Vivek, it sounds a lot more
like a podcast. It sounds a lot more like a
polemical commentator like me, or like Tucker or like whoever,

(02:21:20):
like Alex Jones for that matter, although that's a specific
sort of thing, but maybe you understand what I mean.
They're they're almost talking like they're talking to American people
who have a higher IQ.

Speaker 13 (02:21:34):
So sure, sure, buddy, your average podcast listener, your average
high IQ podcast.

Speaker 1 (02:21:41):
This sounds smart like a podcaster, right, you know, we
all know that about podcasters.

Speaker 13 (02:21:47):
It's it's it's super interesting that he made the exact
same uh like observation that we did well when watching
the debate, we like turn to each other. He's like, ohh,
he's doing nick flood tests.

Speaker 1 (02:22:01):
Yeah, no, and Nick Flinn test has has a similar
idea about him. So, you know, I think he's he
really does worry me. You know, as we've stated his
his polling isn't better in the wake of the debate. Yeah,
but his personal brand has never been better, and that
he's everywhere every big network's been having him on to
talk about shit like this has increased his visibility not

(02:22:25):
just on social media but as a political commenter and
kind of the things that he's saying, because they are
so much more extreme than stuff you know, even a
guy like Pince was willing to say, I think that's
a real problem. I think it's a problem that's going
to be with us for a while because he's very young.

Speaker 13 (02:22:41):
Yeah, yeah, I mean based on some of the poll stuff, Like,
I'm not worried about him as someone who I think
will be president. That's not my concern. My concern is
how he's going to be both influential and he's Yeah,
he's setting himself up to be influential, and I guess
even even more so, it's he's like an indo cater
of what the future of the GOP is going to be.

(02:23:02):
And that's the big thing that is like causing me
concern because, Yeah, it's the type of thing I've been
thinking about more and more the past year as we've
had our first wave of like zoomer candidates and also
you know millennial candidates that are they starting to fill
up Philip offices.

Speaker 1 (02:23:19):
Yeah, and I you know, I looked into I went
to Nick's telegram too, because I kind of wanted to
see is there more that he's been saying, and he
has actually been sharing a lot about Vivec. One of
the things I found was just like Vivek has called
specifically for Fuintes to be unbanned from Twitter.

Speaker 5 (02:23:34):
Nick is one of the few.

Speaker 1 (02:23:36):
People Elon is like, I am not willing to truck
with this motherfucker keep him off of my website. Uh,
And Vivek is is really not okay with that, which
does point to, like, you don't specify that like most
Republicans kind of prefer to believe pretend that Nick doesn't
exist in public. So the fact that he's going to
bad for him like this does point to the fact

(02:23:57):
that he sees value and he sees a political future
and the people that Nick speaks to.

Speaker 5 (02:24:04):
For himself, right, this is.

Speaker 13 (02:24:08):
He's like very aware of this side of the political interests,
Like he knows what their talking points are, He's familiar
with how they speak, like he he's he's able to
understand that this is like an actual, like political contingent.
They may not be as reliable in showing up to
the polls, but it is, you know, as more and

(02:24:28):
more boomers, Uh die off, Sorry, no offense. Some of
these are the people that are some of these are
the people that are gonna, you know, start filling in
filling in the voting gaps.

Speaker 1 (02:24:42):
The other thing that he shares a lot from Vivec,
and there was like the specifically a clip from the
debate where Vivec talks about like cutting aid to Israel, right,
and obviously being the guy, we're not We're not pro
the Israeli States. So I'm not against that from a
certain point of view, but I'm not for the same
reasons that Nick.

Speaker 5 (02:25:03):
Very different reasons.

Speaker 1 (02:25:05):
Yeah, but it is worth noting that, like that's another
reason why Nick likes this guy, right, So yeah, that's
that's kind of the core of the vivic stuff I
wanted to talk about. The next thing to bring up
is sort of how shit polling after this now, as
we've noted, there's been like, you know, I found an
MSN article that was a I believe it was actually

(02:25:27):
just them republishing a Washington Examiner article. Lovey, it's really
solid to hear that Washington Examiner is kind of a
right wing rag. They analyzed five poles taken just before
and after the debate. Trump saw a decrease in two
of those poles and no change in the other three.
This decrease, it's not insignificant that the two poles show

(02:25:48):
him both bush him down something like six points, which
is not nothing, right, Yeah, but that he's still up
by around forty So it's also not like a seed change.
You know, it does suggest a couple of things. One
of the things that suggests is that there is value
to him, especially since it looks like he has lost
some of his ability to message and some of his

(02:26:09):
ability to rile people up because of the way social
media has changed. He doesn't really use Twitter anymore. You know,
he made a post recently, but.

Speaker 13 (02:26:16):
He made the first posting in years.

Speaker 1 (02:26:19):
Yeah, got Elon very excited. But he can't really and
and he you know, he loves to rant on truth
social but it doesn't break through the same way stuff
on Twitter did, and it's possible nothing on Twitter can
break through that way anymore because of how much changed
it is. You know, it's not the same Twitter that
he wrote.

Speaker 13 (02:26:38):
Absolutely, it's not the same Twitter it was in twenty fifteen,
twenty six now not even the same Twitter it was
in twenty twenty. Like, no, it is no then severely
altered as as a platform and how it affects real
so real world events.

Speaker 4 (02:26:52):
You know.

Speaker 1 (02:26:52):
I think the thing that you're seeing here is that
he does have his core, which is, you know, a
third or more of the GOP who will be right
or die for the rest of their lives presumably, but
there is a softer chunk of support that is eroded
by him the fact that he's not in the limelight,
the fact that he wasn't up there, you know, slinging
mud and arguing and you know, talking with these other

(02:27:14):
candidates and so yeah, this is this is kind of
a thing you could It's probably a mistake. I'm not
saying a mistake from a point of view being good
for the country, but a mistake in terms of like
his campaign that he wasn't up there, which is kind
of worth acknowledging and probably worth continuing to study, and
it may be it may have the effect of pushing

(02:27:35):
him to take part in some of the other debates.
DeSantis has said he thinks Trump will be at the
third debate.

Speaker 2 (02:27:40):
Who knows.

Speaker 1 (02:27:42):
In terms of how everyone else did, DeSantis went up
a little bit about a two point bump, which is,
you know, not terrible, but it's also not significant, especially
given the size of Trump's lead. It's not the kind
of given the amount of cash burn he's been going through,
it's not the kind of rays he needed to keep
his campaign vibe.

Speaker 13 (02:28:01):
It was what he did not do a performance that
people were kind of expecting him to do, and I
think everyone kind of assumed he would tried really hard
to come out as the as like the obvious front runner,
and he kind of flopped at the debate in at
least in my opinion, he came off as very like muted,
very like low key. He didn't he didn't really say

(02:28:21):
much one way or the other. He was so obsessed
with with what other people like, trying to make sure
that what he was saying was okay based on what
everyone else was saying on stage. It was very weird.

Speaker 1 (02:28:31):
It was very weird and not the kind of energy
that suggests I am building a political machine, right, yeah,
and carry me into office. Pence went up by about
four points to seven percent of voter support. Nicky Haley
jumped about five points. And I would say I think

(02:28:52):
DeSantis and Pence and probably Haley have are in here
because they really think they can win. You know, there's
a couple of those governors and stuff whose names I've
I've already forgotten that.

Speaker 4 (02:29:05):
So nobody knows.

Speaker 13 (02:29:07):
Yeah, is like everyone knows Chris Christy is not going
to be the president like we know, and he's not.

Speaker 1 (02:29:12):
He's not really He's running to get a TV show
on MSN, right, maybe a book deal too. I guess
it's possible that's part of Haley's ambition to I don't really,
I don't have his greatest sense for what's going on.

Speaker 13 (02:29:23):
Yeah, It's how they're all treating Trump is interesting because
they're also all like kind of auditioning to be vice president,
but some of them don't want that job because they're
they're being like very like like anti Trump. On stage,
the most most people were soft to Trump.

Speaker 1 (02:29:38):
Yeah, and I think Vivek was both auditioning for like
the future of his political I don't think he reasonably
expects to be president this election. I think he may
think he can win that in the future. And I
think he sees this as look, I'm young, and I'm
going to start building and he and if that's the case,
then he has done the first thing that he would
need to do to be a real candidate one day,
which is make a national name for him self as

(02:30:00):
a guy in politics. I think he may be auditioning
for vice president. And Trump recently commented like, yeah, you know,
I'm not against the idea necessarily.

Speaker 13 (02:30:10):
Yeah, he said he was like impressed with his performance
at the debaters or something along those lines.

Speaker 5 (02:30:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 13 (02:30:17):
And I mean the immediate reaction from almost almost every
kind of big like influential, millennial gen x kind of
right wing content creator person. They were all saying that
the VEC like very clearly won. Yeah, like all of
all of all of the Daily Wire people were very
we're very pro the VEC and kind of riding that train.

Speaker 6 (02:30:39):
Ye.

Speaker 13 (02:30:40):
Musk recently, even even even even before the debate, switched
sides from from being the Dysantis guy to being the guy.
So it was a lot of a lot of like
the intellectual dark right type type stuff of like like
online tech conservative. They were all very quick to jump

(02:31:02):
on the yeah, the X train, and based on his
performance at the debate, they were happy with his overall
demeanor and messaging.

Speaker 1 (02:31:11):
Yeah and.

Speaker 5 (02:31:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:31:17):
So you know, again, as it kind of stands, has
anything changed, Well, yes and no, Like the overall sweep
of the primary, Donald Trump is so far ahead that
it does seem unlikely that he's going to lose. But well,
we've also seen it's possible for him to bleed support
and if you remember far back to twenty fifteen, twenty

(02:31:37):
sixteen when he was in these debates with the other
Republican candidates, he didn't really bleed support, like he was
very consistently moving forward. So that is interesting. That does
suggest some things about how the situation has changed. And yeah,
it's also interesting you know, Poles kind of show that

(02:32:02):
voters did. And maybe one of the reasons why Vivik's
performance didn't boost his campaign overall is that he entered
into it with the highest expectations of any of the
debaters among like Republican voters. Probably this is because you know,
in the speeches and stuff he's been given before. He's
a debate guy, like that's obvious about him anytime you
hear him talk. So I think people weren't expecting him

(02:32:25):
to do well, and so maybe it didn't. You know,
if people are expecting you to perform well and then
you win, it's not as impressive as a you know,
if you kind of come come out or left field there.
So maybe that's part of why he's not seeing stuff.
One of the things that's interesting to me is the
stuff that was talked about at the debate compared to
what actually Republican voters care about. The thing that came

(02:32:49):
up first in the debate is the thing that is
number one, getting inflation or costs under control. Obvious that
that's going to be top of the list for a
lot of voters. Forty four percent of Republicans consider controlling
immigration to be a primary concern, which did come up
a bit. One of the things that pissed off a
lot of the Daily Wire crew is the fact that

(02:33:10):
there wasn't really a lot of talk about wokeness or
trans people during the debate, because that kind of shit
is not like fighting liberalism and wokeness and President Biden
like it all gets kind of like lumped together about
a third, you know, of the electorate. That's their their
big concern among Republicans.

Speaker 13 (02:33:30):
It's primary for it. It's primarily for like online clicks
and for driving engagement on whatever Facebook thing you want
to do to harass the school board. It is not
the uh, the prime focus of the presidential.

Speaker 1 (02:33:44):
Yes, and like the issues with trans people and stuff
on its own does not come up here as like
a major It's nobody's primary concern among Republican voters. Like
it's these weirdo freaks on the internet. Which isn't to
say that like they have good attitudes towards that, but like, yeah,
it makes sense that that's not going to be what
you put front and center in the debate. One thing
that's interesting to me is that both election security and

(02:34:07):
limiting abortion, which are huge issues and we're big parts
of the debate, are very much minor side show issues
for voters. About ten percent of voters consider of Republican
voters consider election integrity their primary concern. About six percent
considerate a limiting abortion a top priority, which is teeny right,
Like it's not a popular thing. They just have to

(02:34:29):
because of that hardcore of the base. They have to
signal for it.

Speaker 13 (02:34:32):
The Veck was the only first on stage to claim
that climate change is not real.

Speaker 1 (02:34:39):
Yes, yes, yes, which was interesting, especially as this hurricane
batters Florida. And that's deeply negative too, right, the complete
denial of reality. It doesn't take long, and Vivek did
not do this, but it's not a long journey to
go from I don't believe climate change is real to

(02:35:00):
I think those fires were started with lasers from space,
you know, and they're and versions of that, right, which
is deeply concerning to me. But uh yeah, that's uh,
that's you know, the Republican debate and and Vivek Ramaswami
that's kind of uh are our thinking on him? As
he embraces Nick Fuintes, thought, boy, I don't love saying that.

Speaker 13 (02:35:23):
Yeah no, But like my main my my main takeaway
from this debate was that this was based on the performance.

Speaker 1 (02:35:33):
I'm just gonna cut out, have danil cut off from
that my main performance. My main opinion was this was
based and then yeah, there we go. Garrison's debate analysis,
thank you.

Speaker 13 (02:35:44):
Please, based on the VEX performance was that this really
was like the first glimpse of the types of like
long term results of the al Right era in like
actual like organized politics. Yes, it's it's, it's it is.
It is. It is our first peek at like this
upcoming online conservative wave of zoomers and millennials who are

(02:36:06):
you know, between my age and Robert's age, who are
gonna be running for office in the next ten years,
who were heavily influenced by the online alright era. And
that's very worrying. I mean, we saw a little bit
of that with DeSantis' campaign staff sharing videos, videos that
were approved by like a lot of people in his staff.
It wasn't it wasn't just one guy. We we have

(02:36:28):
we have since found out that those videos were like
approved like in a in a in like a specific
like propaganda like chat that these people had I think
I think on signal. Yeah, So like it is, it is.
It is part of like this this this wave that
we're just starting to see glimpses of here. And it's
not great, no, I you know it it it It

(02:36:50):
remains to be seen like if these things will actually
like pan out in elections, though, I mean, like it
doesn't seem like the vac is gonna do very well
as an actual presidential candidate during this race. Previously, when
when when when Republicans have kind of ran on these
very kind of online topics, like back in the twenty
twenty two midterms, it it failed to give them kind

(02:37:12):
of yeah, the return on investment. So it's we'll still
kind of see how how kind of viable this strategy is.
But I mean, we're only going to have more and
more zoomers and millennials running for office. Like It's yeah,
as we saw today, Mitch McConnell's literally disintegrated before our
very eyes. Yes, and more and more of these kind

(02:37:33):
of old guard of neocons or Trump guys are going
to age out in the next ten years, twenty years,
and you know it's it's gonna we are. We are
really going to see this new wave of politicians come in.
It is interesting how much of jen X just has
not been a has not been a generation that occupies office.

Speaker 1 (02:37:55):
No, well again, Garrison, you have not watched enough Mike
Judge cartoons, but that was made very clear in the
cartoon Daria.

Speaker 13 (02:38:02):
Yes, that is true.

Speaker 1 (02:38:03):
Yes, so I I think so I kind of want
to end I think the nope that was not Mike Judge,
What what was I thinking?

Speaker 5 (02:38:10):
Why did I say.

Speaker 1 (02:38:11):
That I'm an I I'm a I'm a fool? Oh wait,
because it's a spin off of Beavis and Budded. Yes,
that's why. Okay, all right, I solved that mystery, Thank God.
Now the mystery I haven't solved. And and the thing
I want to bring you to is, like we've said,
I don't I don't think ire of us think his
presidential campaign has electoral shot. Uh, but what about him

(02:38:32):
is VP? Do you think that's that's likely?

Speaker 4 (02:38:35):
Personally?

Speaker 13 (02:38:37):
There there's I mean, there's certainly a chance. Uh, there's
a chance. Trumps indicated that that that there's a chance.
I believe Trump said he's a very very very intelligent person.
He's got good energy, and he could uh and he
could be some form of something great, great Trumpian dialogue.
I'll tell you, I think he'd be very good as

(02:38:57):
as vice president.

Speaker 1 (02:38:58):
So yeah, it's which you know, I think the fact
that his his his overall numbers aren't trending up might
hurt him in that although maybe it'll make Trump feel
more secure that he's not going to like take anything
from him, you know, although maybe the fact that he
has gone so viral. It would would upset Trump because
he kind of seems to have preferred having a non

(02:39:20):
entity as his VP.

Speaker 7 (02:39:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (02:39:23):
I don't know, because it is like, Yeah.

Speaker 13 (02:39:26):
My previous prediction was that he would try to get
herschel Walker. That maybe kind of out of date. Now, Yeah,
that is certainly another one of these guys that that
could be in line. Certainly out of out of everyone
else on the debate stage, he was, Yeah, I think
the most the most Trumpian and the most like Trump
friendly guy. Yeah. The one other election kind of restriction

(02:39:47):
that he proposed that we have yet to mention is
to raise the voting age to twenty five Yes, on
top of having those Civics tests. But yeah, I mean
I I think it's possible, but it's it's a little
too far out to say for sure.

Speaker 1 (02:40:04):
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Well that is Uh, I think
where we're gonna we're gonna bring her to an end
for the night. Uh yeah, this has been it could
happen here until we could happen it certainly could Uh
you know, stay, uh did people give you a little concerned? Hey,

(02:40:29):
We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week. From
now until the heat death of the universe.

Speaker 5 (02:40:34):
It Could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media.

Speaker 6 (02:40:37):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool zonemedia dot com or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
monthly at cool zonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Behind the Bastards News

Follow Us On

Host

Robert Evans

Show Links

Popular Podcasts

Dateline NBC

24/7 News: The Latest

Therapy Gecko

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}It Could Happen Here Weekly 98